The first book of its kind, The Road Rights of Wheelmen—written in 1895 by attorney George B. Clementson—set out the legal rights of cyclists using the roads.
In 1891 Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben, two young American students, set out on a two-year, 15,000-mile bicycle journey from Constantinople to Peking. It was one of many extraordinary journeys being made by ordinary people during the 1890s as the rank and file discovered the liberating possibilities of the bicycle.
One of America's earliest sporting magazines, Outing devoted many of its pages to cycling. The cycling craze of the 1890s created huge demand for cycling magazines, tour guides, maps, and how-to books, with ten percent of all print advertising reported to be cycling-related.
