James Starley

James Starley (1830 to 1881) was an English inventor considered a founding figure of the bicycle manufacturing industry. Working in Coventry, England, he developed a series of innovations that transformed cycling from a novelty into a practical mode of transport, including improvements to the bicycle chain drive and work on the penny-farthing high wheel bicycle. He patented the Coventry Lever Tricycle in 1876 and, in 1877, patented a differential gear that allowed a vehicle's two wheels to turn at different speeds while still receiving power from the same drive, a mechanism whose logic would later be carried over into automobile design. Starley's workshops and businesses helped establish Coventry as the center of the British bicycle industry for decades afterward, and his nephew John Kemp Starley went on to build the Rover safety bicycle, whose diamond frame and chain-driven rear wheel became the template for the modern bicycle. Starley was born on 21 April 1830 in Albourne, Sussex, and died on 17 June 1881 in Coventry, Warwickshire.