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The Baron died in extreme poverty at the age of 65 years and a marble bust was erected in 1896 outside his home in Karlsruhe, which has served as a place of pilgrimage for thousands of cyclists who arrive to pay tribute to him from every part of Germany. However, the British were to continue his work in refining the bicycle using iron and thereby triggering the beautiful tale of the "steel horse".
All changes, still stubbornly refused by the Baron, were made after his death, or without his knowledge during the last years of his life. The British inventor Kirkpatrick McMillan invented the trolley lever, a rudimentary device that allowed the foot to act on the rear wheel and that was even equipped with a brake, but the most important and decisive step was made by a young French blacksmith , Ernest Michaux , who was only 14 years old when he was asked to make repairs to a bike that was battered and badly built.
The young blacksmith had the idea to replace the one that seemed to use a footrest attached to the front wheel hub, and was able to operate the wheel like a millstone. The front wheel, now driving the bike, grew in diameter than the other and the same Michaux replaced the seating platform with a real saddle, which was much more comfortable for the rider.
This Michaudine quickly took the top spot in design so much that in 1861 it was the undisputed master of the market and Michaux, along with his father Pierre, formed a society which emerged immediately.

Even this was not successful though, with prospective owners having to shell out the fabulous sum for those days; more than 100,000 francs to purchase one. This led to the Michaux  ending up in utter poverty, with Ernest dying, abandoned by all in a Paris hospital and his father a year later in an asylum.
The Michaudine, greeted with so much fanfare on their appearance, had the front wheels of 110 cm in diameter front and 90 rear spokes and were provided with very coarse, about twenty each, much like the wheels of carts. But heavy as they were, they could reach the speed of eight miles per hour and gave an idea of what would lay ahead.

However, the changes occurred very quickly throughout Europe: A German named Meyer, who lived in Paris, first used  iron pipes to build the frames and had the first idea of using circles to allow cable fixed solid tires. Soon after that Jean Suriray managed to insert the ball bearings in the hubs of the wheels and pedals, and later also to invent a saddle leather while in England, in order to increase the speed bicycles were built with front wheels disproportionately large (up to 160 cm. in diameter) and smaller and smaller rear wheels.
In 1869 Paris held the first exhibition of the velocipede, but the real bike, more or less as we know now, was probably born the following year, even with the war between France and Germany, with the invention of the wheel drive chain…