Robert Hunter wrote:

    “Small wheel turn by the fire and rod.

    “Big wheel turn by the grace of God.

    “Everytime that wheel turn round,

    “bound to cover just a little more ground.”

    Robert didn’t say anything about pedals, but, except when careening down mountains, the bicycle don’t roll lessen the pedals go round.

    Reading about bicycles, we might decide that the Dandy-Horse was the first real step along the road to bicycles.  The claim was that on level ground, a man -- women weren’t cyclers yet -- could cover ten miles in an hour on the two wheeled Dandy-Horse.  He propelled himself with long strides while “sitting” on a machine that looks a lot like a bicycle, but without pedals.  This was a kick for some, but not considered a serious device by many.  

    That is until, decades later, someone -- I don’t think we really know who, but we’ll say it happened in the late 1860’s -- put pedals on a bicycle and everyone realized that the whole idea really could fly.  

    What I realized while looking at the pedal museum is that when pedals broke onto the scene, they appeared pretty nearly fully hatched.  Sheldon Brown says that some say the Wright Brothers first put ball bearings in pedals, but I kind of doubt that.  I’m guessing that ball bearings came very early.  A picture of a Torrington #1 from the 1880’s shows a pedal that is remarkably similar to pedals still made by MKS and TA.  I don’t know if it has ball bearings, but it has a dust cap and I’m assuming that if you pull the cap you’d find ball bearings in grease.

    By 1900, we had the name Rat Trap applied to a pedal.  If anyone knows for sure how this name came about, I’d like to know.  In the meantime, because I can’t find anything about its origin, I’ve come to my own conclusion.  I’m guessing that the name came about this way:  Someone slipped his foot into the toe clip of a pedal, felt the cleat drop over the serrated edge, cinched the toe strap tight, looked over at his buddy who was giving instruction, and said, “My foot is trapped like a rat.”  

    Anyway, even though we often call platform pedals with serrated frames, rattrap pedals, I believe the term actually refers to the combination of pedal and toe clip.  They’ve been making them for a long time.

    Pedals with rubber blocks showed up by the 1930’s and Torrington put amber, glass reflectors in them.  Wow, take that CPSC.  We don’t need you sticking your noses into our bicycles because we’ve always been way, way ahead of you.

    In 1940, the Gnome et Rhone rat trap pedal shows up.  It had a propeller emblem on the side because the company also made airplanes until the 1950’s.  I think that’s pretty cool since I rode the heck out of a couple of BMW motorcycles and they have a propeller emblem too.

    In 1949, TA introduced their pedal.  If you have a set of the first edition, and you’re not using them, you might send them to me.  If you want to buy a set, expect to pay thousands of dollars according to Speedplay.  They are very pretty, but, last time I talked with him, Wayne, at Mel Pinto Imports, has new TA pedals that sell for a lot less.

    In the 1950’s an American company introduced a pedal with lights.  When you rolled it over from the weighted position, a mercy switch turned on battery powered, red lights.  Then in the 1970’s, Phil Wood put reflectors in his pedals and called them CHP because the California Highway Patrol approved them.  For those who don’t know it, that same highway patrol was, and probably still is, extremely anti-bicycle.

    As I looked at all the pedals, I saw plastic come and go and I saw titanium here and there.  It looks like the pedal makers watch each other pretty closely and keep remaking what’s been made before.  Of course, click-in pedals came along and changed the whole scene.  I clicked-in around 2003 and didn’t look back until I suffered a serious knee issue on a late brevet last year.  That has me rethinking the old idea of riding what Grant Peterson calls, step on pedals, again.

    However you look at it, pedals have gotten silly expensive and they haven’t changed all that much for a very long time.  Some track riders still ride with clips and toe straps because the best click-in pedals let loose now and again.