How A Volcano Gave Us The Bicycle

In April 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted — the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Its ash and aerosols spread around the globe. Temperatures dropped. Harvests failed across parts of Europe and North America. 1816 became known as “The Year Without a Summer.”

The eruption killed tens of thousands directly and indirectly. It trapped a small group of writers at a villa on Lake Geneva and helped give us Frankenstein and one of the earliest vampire stories. But it also contributed to something that now shapes everyday life for more than a billion people.

It helped kill the horses.

The Horror

Failed harvests in 1816 devastated grain and oat crops — the staple feed for working horses. In many regions, horses died in large numbers or were slaughtered because their owners could no longer afford to feed them. Prices for fodder spiked. For the first time in generations, large areas of Europe felt a genuine transport strain: horses were suddenly scarce, fragile, and expensive.

In the Grand Duchy of Baden, in what is now southwestern Germany, a forestry official named Karl von Drais had a practical problem. His job required him to travel between forest districts. Horses were costly, unreliable and, in places, simply unavailable. He needed another way to move.

In 1817, Drais built a device he called the Laufmaschine — the “running machine.” It was a two‑wheeled wooden frame with a padded seat and a steering bar, but no pedals. The rider sat astride the frame and pushed against the ground with their feet, like running while seated. It weighed around 20–25 kilograms and was made of wood with iron fittings.

On 12 June 1817, Drais rode his running machine from Mannheim to the Schwetzinger Relaishaus — roughly 8 miles — in under an hour, faster than a horse‑drawn post coach on the same route. Local newspapers took notice.

The invention spread. In France, it became the draisienne. In Britain, people called it the “hobby horse” or “dandy horse.” Riders were mocked in cartoons for their strange posture, scooting themselves along with their feet. After numerous crashes, some cities banned the machines from pavements.

Yet the principle had landed:

Two wheels. One rider. Human power. No horse.

Everything that followed — adding pedals to the front wheel in the 1860s, adding chains and cranksets, rubber tyres, better brakes, gears — was an improvement on the basic pattern Drais laid down because traditional animal power had become unstable and expensive in the years after Tambora.

The Modern Relic

Today there are on the order of a billion bicycles in the world, likely more — comfortably outnumbering cars. In cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, bicycles dominate daily transport. In Beijing and many other places, bikes shape traffic flows and street design. Professional cycling is a global sport. Courier services, bike‑sharing schemes and cycle lanes are now standard elements of urban planning.

All of that traces back to a chain of events that begins with ash and ends with a commute: a volcanic eruption, a cold, hungry summer, rising fodder prices, a shortage of horses, and a German forestry official trying to get to work without one.

Karl von Drais died in 1851, poor and mostly forgotten. His original running machine had been fashionable for a few years, then banned or abandoned in many places. Pedals had not yet been added, and without them the device was tiring and impractical for longer trips. He never lived to see the safety bicycle of the 1880s, or the rise of everyday cycling, or the Tour de France.

Mount Tambora is still there in Indonesia. Its caldera stretches several kilometres across. In 1815, it unleashed an eruption that killed tens of thousands, darkened the sky, ruined harvests, starved horses, and left a group of writers at Geneva with nothing to do but invent new kinds of stories.

The novel they wrote is still in print. The machine he built is still on the road. The volcano is still watching both.

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