Track bike aficionados, feast your eyes on the ultimate Fixie. Made from wood and iron, this front-drive bike from 1870 weighed a ton and probably provided a ride marginally more comfortable than being thrown down a staircase.
The bike was spotted on the Virtual Museum website of the BC 150 Applied Arts Project, which documents 150 years worth of objects made in British Columbia, from 1858 to 2008. Although the site is poorly laid out--there are no thumbnails or "Next/Previous" buttons, so you must laboriously click through a series of numerical links with no hint of what's behind them--there are countless examples of early design, from package designs for canned fish to beer bottles to early sidewalks and more.
