THE COLT AUTOMATIC GUN ON A BICYCLE.
A dozen other novelties might be enumerated, but we have space for only two more. One of these was a bicycle on which six men can ride at once. We have all seen tandems and "quads," but bicycles with six saddles are not common, even at a national bicycle show. The first man does the steering, and the gear on his chain is very small. The second man's gear is larger, the third's larger still until the sixth man has a huge gear, something like 125 or 150. The speed that can be obtained on this wheel, or rather the speed that is said to be obtainable, is something too great to set down in type until it is actually recorded as having been done; but there is a story afloat that a wager has been made to build a track alongside the New York Central road, in order that one of the six-man bicycles may race with the Empire State Express.
INVALID'S TRICYCLE.
Another interesting and possibly very useful development of the bicycle is the power to change the gear. This wheel has a rod under the right handle-bar, very much like a brake handle. When you are riding along level ground, and do not touch the "brake," the gear is at 80. Soon you come to a hill. Then by pulling the "brake" handle up half-way the gear of the wheel is changed from 80 to 60, and thus you can go up hill, slower, to be sure, but much easier. After reaching the top of the hill you pull this rod up close to the handle-bar of the wheel, and the gearing is thrown off entirely, so that the bicycle will coast down hill without turning the cranks. Of course the rider can keep his feet on the pedals all the time.
This bicycle will be of great practical service if its machinery is solid and durable, for there are many bad places along a country road where a change of twenty in the gearing would save a large amount of strength in the total of a day's work, and at the same time, on level ground, much more distance can be covered by changing back to eighty. Then also with the ability to keep your feet on the pedals, you can feel sure of not losing the control of the machine when coasting.
Meantime the great bicycle show had many another novelty, for the description of which there is not space enough in this periodical. Taken altogether, the show was an enormous success, and though many of the novelties were covered up by thousands of ordinary '96 machines, still they were there, and could be found by any one who was looking for them carefully.