The early days of pedal-powered cycle (or velocipede) were a time of significant experimentation, the earliest examples had pedals that were connected directly to the front axle, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that a chain was added with sprockets to improve gearing.
This Coventry Rotary Tricycle was one of the designs that didn’t catch on, perhaps unsurprisingly. It uses a chain to drive the 46 inch main wheel and it’s steered via the pair of 21 inch wheels operated by a stirrup handle with a wooden grip.
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.