Karl Drais, one of the inventors of the first "bicycle", laid down his nobility title in the baden revolution
Karl Drais, one of the inventors of the first "bicycle", laid down his nobility title in the baden revolution
The invention of the bicycle is hard to pinpoint exactly. What we understand now as a bicycle is closest to the rover safety bicycle, but it's not like people started there. Certainly our guy is the first we know of to invent sort of proto-bicycle, not quite a balance bike, certainly not a bicycle bicycle (even if you'd include penny farthings), the dandy horse.
Also where you get the draisine from, btw.
Now figures of history were complex, he was a civil servant for a colonizing state, but he did actually later lay down his title of nobility in the spirit of the french revolution. Bias is obvious here, but kind of nice to think one of the inventors of the bicycle was a class traitor (good version).
He would later die pennyless and being declared insane in a revenge act of the government.