Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede
steam powered velocipede / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede was a steam-powered moving machine. It looked like a motorcycle. It was a steam engine on a bicycle. Louis-Guillaume Perreaux made the steam engine, and Pierre Michaux made the bicycle.[1] It was made in France between 1867 and 1871. It is one of three moving machines that people say could be the first motorcycle. The two others are the Roper steam velocipede of 1867 or 1868 and the internal combustion engine Daimler Reitwagen of 1885.[1][2][3][4] Perreaux made the steam velocipede better over time. He had built a tricycle version by 1884.[5] The only Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede made, on loan from the Musée de l'Île-de-France, Sceaux, was the first machine people saw when they went into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum rotunda in the Art of the Motorcycle exhibition in New York in 1998.[6][7]