At the very first ICHC in 1990 I was invited to present a paper on Kirkpatrick MacMillan’s invention of the bicycle, supposedly in 1839. I had no reason to doubt the ‘facts’ of the story, my concern was that it should have been seen as a dead end. It was very clear that MacMillan had nothing to do with the invention of the bicycle as it was to develop after 1860 and the claim that he was ‘the inventor of the bicycle’ was fundamentally mistaken. However, as I looked at the available evidence, its paucity was very clear, whatever the story was, what was commonly understood as fact was largely myth.

Although many were convinced that the MacMillan story was bogus, no-one then went on to publish anything that developed the ‘case against’ the MacMillan story beyond what had been said in 1990. Indeed, some sixteen years later the opposite happened when Andrew Ritchie’s definitive survey of the evidence relating to Kirkpatrick MacMillan, Gavin Dalzell and Thomas McCall was published. While Ritchie was assiduous in assembling the evidence, the survey was far from objective, effectively creating a case for the defence. Thereafter, Ritchie’s work has been used to propagate the popular acceptance of the story.

Also in the last fifteen years there has been a significant increase in cycling activity in the UK. The MacMillan story comes up, unquestioned, almost every time a significant event is held in Scotland, indeed even the National Museum still propagates it. The time has surely come for the evidence that Ritchie presented to be reviewed from the position of those who question the veracity of the MacMillan story.

This paper considers Ritchie’s approach to the topic and the analysis it offers. It distils the approach to what I hope will be a far larger publication that, read beside Ritchie’s work, aims to provide the balance that is required to understand the nature and validity of the evidence that he presented.

This is a reassessment of what evidence there is to suggest that rear driven bicycles were invented in the South-West of Scotland in c1840. It takes a contrary position to that of Andrew Ritchie and much popular history.