Kirkpatrick Macmillan (* 2 September 1812 in Keir, Dumfries and Galloway; † 26 January 1878 in Keir) was a Scottish blacksmith who has generally been given credit for inventing the first mechanically propelled bicycle, after a campaign for recognition in the 1890's by a relative of his, James Johnston, a corn merchant and amateur tricyclist.

Johnston's articles stated that Macmillan completed construction of a pedal driven bicycle of wood in 1839, and that it had iron-rimmed wooden wheels, a steerable 30 inch (760 mm) wheel in the front and a 40 inch (1016 mm) wheel in the rear which was connected to pedals via connecting rods. The entire machine weighed 57 lb (26 kg). Johnston claimed as evidence an old Glasgow newspaper cutting, as follows....

'Yesterday, a gentleman, belonging to Dumfries-shire was placed at the Gorbals police bar, charged with riding along the pavement on a velocipede to the obstruction of the passage, and with having, by so doing, thrown over a child. It appears from his statement, that he had on the day previous come all the way from Old Cumnock, a distance of some 40 miles, bestriding the velocipede. The velocipede employed in this instance was ingeniously constructed - it moved on wheels turned with the hand, by means of a crank......" (Glasgow Argus, 9th June 1842). The story goes that the magistrate was intrigued enough to ask afterwards for a demonstration by the miscreant, who rode figures of eight around the "court" yard. He was allegedly so impressed he slipped him the five bob to pay the fine.

The conclusions to be drawn from this are by no means cut and dried. Sceptics point out that it's unclear whether the machine described is a bi-, tri-, or even quadri- cycle. "Turned with the hand", a detail which Johnston always contrived to miss out, would appear to be describing an entirely different mechanism than a treadle crank, while "wheels turned by hand" might be evidence against a bicycle. On the other side it is not unknown for a reporter to get his facts wrong, or to have them mangled in the editing. Close reading is all very well, but a quadricycle with two turned by hand is a wheelchair, not a "velocipede", and in fairness to the scribe struggling to convey the new concept, a "hand-loom" weaver of the period would nevertheless have operated his living by means of his foot. Finally, since the Dumfries-shire Gentleman is unnamed, the anomalies are not even conclusive proof against Johnston's claims for Macmillan, never mind for. A certain James Charteris of Dumfries was known to have been an early pioneer, though his nephew David Johnson believed him not to have been the inventor, stating he bought his bicycle from some anonymous source in Glasgow in 1829(!).

Latterday sceptics of Macmillan's invention also tend to gloss over the fact that James Johnston's campaign fifty years later was principally directed against the priority of yet another South-Western Scot, Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow (Lanarkshire), who seems to have copied somebody's original and undoubtedly publicised the design so widely that examples were on sale in England and Scotland by 1846 at the earliest, for between £6 and £7. Thomas McCall, born two miles away from Macmillan, was another replica builder, inspired, it is said, by seeing Kirkpatrick (or "Daft Pate" as local gossip kindly cried him) riding his machine. In competition in Kilmarnock the McCalls completely outclassed the Michaux-style "Boneshaker" bicycles, the first really popular design. Boneshakers were pedalled directly at the front wheel, like a toddler's trike.

The trouble lies with the fact that despite all this partial evidence of bicycling ferment in the area, no pristine example of a crank-driven (sic) bicycle of clear provenance, or incontrovertible evidence of such a device, appears to have survived from the period Johnston claims for MacMillan's invention (1839-43). The bicycle displayed in Glasgow Transport Museum is a heavily restored machine, donated in 1909 and believed to have been built by Dalzell, while a McCall version resides in Dumfries Museum. Even the most hardened cynics, however, allow that there was a Kirkpatrick Macmillan, and that he did build some kind of "velocipede". A trade as a blacksmith would also have made him well acquainted with the concept of treadles, using one everyday at the bellows of his forge.

The current politically correct position for historians of cycling is to view the modern bicycle as not having been "invented" per se........... this is a bit like saying John F. Kennedy had a very bad brain haemorrhage. As yet there has been no conclusive proof discovered, for either side, to settle the argument satisfactorily.

Critical Literature

• David Gordon Wilson: Bicycling Science 3rd ed. 2004, pp.12-13

• David V. Herlihy: Bicycle - The History, 2004, pp. 65-69

• Alastair Dodds, Proceedings 3rd ICHC, 1992, pp.1-15

• Nicholas Oddy, Proceedings 1st ICHC, 1990, pp. 24-32

Devout External Links

• Kirkpatrick Macmillan on The Scotsman's webpage
• Kirkpatrick Macmillan on the BBC Biography pages
• Kirkpatrick Macmillan on the Great Scots webpages
• Guinness World Record, Earliest Bicycle

Agnostic External Link

• Scotland Magazine no.4 "The Wheel Thing" by Brigid James.

1812 births | 1878 deaths | Natives of Dumfries and Galloway | Scottish inventors | Blacksmiths

Kirkpatrick Macmillan | Kirkpatrick Macmillan