14 Facts About James Starley

James Starley was an English inventor and father of the bicycle industry.

James Starley was one of the most innovative and successful builders of bicycles and tricycles.

James Starley's inventions include the differential gear, the perfection of the bicycle chain drive, and the penny-farthing.

James Starley began working on the farm at nine, showing early talent as an inventor by making a rat trap from an umbrella rip and a branch of a willow tree.

James Starley ran away from home as a teenager and went to Lewisham, in south London.

James Starley mended it when it broke down and improved the mechanism.

Penn knew Josiah Turner, a partner of Newton, Wilson and Company, the makers of the machine, and in 1859 James Starley joined its factory in Holborn.

Turner and James Starley started their own Coventry Sewing Machine Company in Coventry around 1861.

James Starley started making bicycles and Coventry soon became the centre of the British bicycle industry.

Notable were the high-wheelers, or penny-farthings, a version of which James Starley made with William Hillman.

At 6am on the Monday the prototype was being made and at 8am James Starley was stepping on to the London train to register patent No 3388,1877.

James Starley married Jane Todd when he was in his early 20s.

James Starley's sons continued manufacturing cycles after his death in 1881 but his nephew John Kemp James Starley made more of a mark.

John Kemp James Starley experimented with an electric tri-car around 1888 but the petrol-driven Rover 8hp car was sold in 1904, two years after his death.