Technology and Culture

Unlike its successor the modern bicycle, the velocipede has not yet been the subject of an in-depth study of its cultural impact on French society in the late 1860s. In this convincing book, the two authors set out to highlight the social impact of the velocipede, the way in which this technology was able to resonate with the social imagination of the time and become a marker of modernity, freedom, and Parisian identity. It sheds light on how the cultural developments described around the modern bicycle had already been introduced a generation earlier around the velocipede. This book complements the scholarship on the technical aspects of the velocipede and the historical development of two-wheelers, notably Kobayashi's Histoire du vélocipède de Drais à Michaux 1817–1870 (1991) and Hadland and Lessing's Bicycle Design (2014).

Translations of a well-chosen corpus of writings that capture the meaning and importance attached to the velocipede in France in the late 1860s make up the bulk of the book. These include an anonymous note addressed to the authorities to highlight the velocipede's usefulness and democratize it (Note on Monsieur Michaux's Velocipede, 1868); an operetta (Dagobert and His Velocipede, 1868); the Manual of the Velocipede (1869), compiled by Richard Lesclide, which promotes the velocipede as the embodiment of French cultural values; and some early poems. Both enlightening and amusing translations are very well introduced (with additional extracts) by the authors in the political, literary, and cultural context of the time, including the other contemporary productions of their authors. At the nexus of positivist philosophy and the democratic ideals on which the Third Republic would be founded, the development of the velocipede must be read in parallel with the cultural evolution of the late Second Empire, resonating with and contributing to contemporary interests in new technologies and progress, a nascent sense of independence, and a new national identity of the middle class. The quality of the book's iconography, which is finely described in the text, also genuinely serves the authors' purpose.

The authors focus on the tensions and paradoxes surrounding the meanings projected onto this technology. Addressed as much in the text as in the illustrations of the Manual, for instance, these concern first the links between the velocipede and carnival season as a means of emancipating women's movement in public space, challenging dress standards, and authorizing encounters between different social classes. Even if it remained accessible only to the upper classes, the way in which Lesclide portrayed the velocipede [End Page 360] held out the promise of upward social mobility. This is why the velocipede was both a marker of exclusivity and a symbol of democracy.

The second paradox is the velocipede's relationship with time. The velocipede is seen as an object of progress, but it is also presented, in order to gain acceptance, as part of the continuity of French institutions, connected to the familiar and the mythological. The relationship between human and machine, which is at the heart of the discourse of the velocipede's detractors (introduction), supports that of its promoters too. The human body is described as a machine, and the new technology allows humans "to submit the products of the industrial age to the will of the individual," thus freeing them from the machine age (p. 102). The hybrids formed by cyclists and their velocipedes are at the heart of the early poems studied (ch. 4).

Finally, the authors discuss the impact of the velocipede on the role of women in French society, between emancipation and eroticism. Although the Manual regularly lapses into sexist stereotypes and the velocipede erotic remains imbued with the male gaze objectifying women's bodies, this progressive text nevertheless suggests that the velocipede opened up opportunities for women, following in the footsteps of the first feminist movements in France in 1869. The authors base this discussion on comparisons with illustrations from previous collaborations between the...