#history When we talk about the horizontal bicycle, recumbent or recumbent, the pioneers were, without a doubt, the architects Louis Alexandre Blar and François Ernest Garin. In 1857, these men filed a patent for a mechanism that was powered by human force. The cyclist sat in a reclining seat, placing his feet on the pedals that supported the heels and rotated about an axis.

Each pedal had a ratchet that drove a wheel fixed to the same axis, to which the circular motion generated by the pedal was transmitted. This new mechanism was designed “to extract water, thresh wheat, crush hemp, lift loads and cut wood, stone, marble, etc”. The horizontal bicycle, as we know it, was practically around the corner.

The Recumbent Bike