The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I am the most efficient machine ever built for moving a human body.
My first version had no pedals — you ran along while sitting down.
I did more for the freedom of women than almost any law of my century.
Nobody has fully explained why I stay upright.
Two wheels, a chain, and handlebars.
Bicycle
Susan B. Anthony said it had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. She was not speaking poetically.
The ancestor, Karl Drais's running machine of 1817, was a response to a crisis — the previous year's harvest had failed after Tambora's eruption and horses were expensive to feed. Pedals arrived in the 1860s, attached directly to the front wheel, which is why that wheel grew absurdly large: one turn of the pedals meant one turn of the wheel. The safety bicycle of 1885 added a chain and gears and made the thing sane again, and Dunlop's pneumatic tyre in 1888 made it comfortable. Within a decade it had rewritten what a respectable woman could do unaccompanied.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #25 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #24. Next: mystery #26. Or try #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19.