Folding bikes are nothing new as a popular form of commuter transport but, like other feats of clever engineering, will still attract the curious and likely envious gaze of passers-by and fellow passengers alike. Indeed, unlike the common bicycle, its folding counterpart remains somewhat a marvel today, despite the design being almost as old as the conventional bicycle itself.

While there are many portable bikes that can be called ‘folders’, which are in fact better classed as ‘separable’ bikes, the notion of collapsing a frame into a more wieldy form remains the same. So, with so many folding bikes now out there on the market, it is worth looking back to the origins of this crafty invention.

Going back to the late 1800s, the first ‘folding’ bike followed shortly after the original ‘penny farthing’ design, with British inventor William Grout creating a high-wheeled bike that had a big front wheel which could be unbolted into four segments and subsequently carried. An innovative design, the Grout ‘portable’ was nevertheless undone by the clunky and time-consuming dismantling process, which defeated the ease of use that a folding bike was meant to provide. Neither did it help that the overwhelming popularity of the safety bike, diamond frame design eclipsed the folding novelty; a fate that befell the compressible trikes also available around this time. Despite this, the folding idea continued and was quickly applied by savvy innovators to the safety-bicycle, with multiple patents for folding models being submitted during the 1880s and ‘90s for the American and European market.

Like so many other innovations, it was the interest of the military that really pushed the folding idea to fruition, as the pre-war, and pre-mechanised, European armies in the early 1900s looked to field infantry with foldable bicycles for fast manoeuvres. The separable version of the famous Pedersen thin-tube bicycle was designed for such use; and while it was not taken up the British Army, others like it were used by the French and Italian militaries during the First World War.

The interwar period did not see folding bikes taken up by any inventors other than the chic Le Petit Bi; a highly influential small-wheeled bike which had a unisex, open frame and which was taken up by avant-garde Europeans (this design would come back in a big way). The Second World War meanwhile saw the arrival of the ‘parabike’, another military bike which would attract some interest following the conflict as models were sold by private sellers, but the economic reality of the war coupled with the post-war mania for the automobile meant there was not much room for folding bikes on the recovering market.

This changed with the arrival of the immensely fashionable Moulton small-wheeled bicycle in 1962, which competed with automobiles to make cycling cool again, particularly the Stowaway model. Building upon the small-wheel brilliance of Le Petit Bi, Moulton’s popularity was capitalised on by many competitors, who tried to copy its functional style. This paved the way to the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of folding bikes in the 1970s and ‘80s, as popular folders were produced including the Bickerton, Brompton and Dahon; all of which had Moulton in their DNA.

Since this time, folding bike designers have sought to press the envelope even further by electrifying them or using low-weight materials. This is where ARCC Bikes comes in, with the ARCC Folding Bike soon to be further unveiled in 2023. A ultra lightweight frame with a unique folding method, coupled with high-spec materials and classic style, watch this space for future updates on this exciting development from the minds at ARCC Bikes.

A Short History of the Folding Bike