Look at the image from a 1912 Pope Manufacturing Co. catalog of a Columbia bicycle.Read the excerpt from Chapter 1 of Wheels of Change.But it wasn't until 1817 that Baron Karl von Drais of Germany built a laufmaschine (running machine) that included some of the features that would carry through to the modern bicycle. An early edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica described Drais's vehicle as "at the best an awkward affair, composed of a couple of heavy wooden wheels of equal diameter, one behind the other, and joined together by a longitudinal wooden bar.”