The bike boom or bicycle craze is any of several specific historic periods marked by increased bicycle enthusiasm, popularity, and sales.
An advertisement for a safety bicycle that was to cause the great boom of the 1890s, costing £12 10s (equivalent to £1,400 in 2025).
The Mount Holly and Smithville Bicycle Railway – 1892-1898
1977 Nishiki International Typical 1970s bike boom ten-speed road bike.
A safety bicycle is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this st
Bike boom
…of bicycles. The 1890s saw one of the biggest bicycle crazes of all, driven by several significant developments in bicycles: the invention of the "safety bicycle" with its chain-drive transmission, whose gear ratios allowed smaller wheels without a concurrent loss of speed, and the subsequent invention of the…
1885 Rover safety bicycle in the London Science Museum
Early safety bicycle (c. 1879) in the Coventry Transport Museum
1884 McCammon safety bicycle