Penny Farthing girl - February/March 1956 24 year old Frances Pidgeon (singer/dancer) on a Penny Farthing bike (borrowed from The Troubadour Club) The ordinary or penny-farthing is an early model of bicycle, produced largely in England and the United States in the mid to late 19th century. The earliest bicycles had pedals mounted directly on the front wheel. In order to increase speeds in the absence of any practical method of gearing, larger and larger wheels were built, culminating in the classic penny-farthing where the wheel could be 1.5m (60') or more in diameter. The name refers to the penny and farthing coins of the time, the former being large and the latter unusually small. Other popular names include high-wheeler, high bicycle and boneshaker, although the latter generally referred to any early bicycle before the invention of the pneumatic tire. It had only a brief vogue, arriving and departing within a couple of decades, but it has caught the imagination as visually representing the late Victorian era. This brief lifetime coincided almost exactly with the birth of cycle sport. ©2006 TopFoto/Ken Russell