Mind you, this is meant for children. Without age verification. Children!
I mean… you look at this picture and suddenly WWI makes perfect sense.
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Holy shit, you’ve just read my mind.
. . . . . .
Someone’s clearly enjoying the ride :
No visible trace of trauma.
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Speaking of enshittification… I promise, this is on-topic:
We’re having fun looking back at those curiosities. It made me think of documentaries, where historians pull old letters or diaries from an archive, carefully turning the pages with gloves. Preserved thoughts of a bygone era. People appear to be well-spoken if / once they could write. Or at least suspected that someone else might read their stuff in the future. Now imagine this in 2162…
If things keep going the way they are, they will find us well-spoken.
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That’s an interesting take! 
Yeah. Probably.
When it came about, extending the diameter of a working wheel for mechanical advantage was understood. Gear ratios were understood. But there had yet to be a linking material made that could do the job of the simple bicycle chain for a cost that didn’t make the entire enterprise a pipe dream…. yet.
Therefore if all you had was direct drive, then this monstrosity makes perfect sense.
It is not, however a perfect answer. That said it is a perfect catalyst to get us to where bicycles are today. once laminated bicycle chains were invented and perfected you could do with much more reasonable sized wheels and get a similar return of motive force.
and when a laminate steel process was invented that made layflat sprocketable chain reliable and affordable, everything changed.
Humans tend to be rather comfortable entities. Sometimes the shot needs to overflow the outhouse before we start working on the self-emptying toilet.
A big wheel can have advantages without the rider sitting stupidly high on top of it, with his/her weight just above (or almost) the balance point.
Buy this for someone you hate’s birthday. It is the perfect murder.
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I very deliberately did not include “center of gravity” in the list if well understood concepts.
Yeah.
The formula for this only came shortly after.
Hu + U = Ng
(High up + Unstable = Not good)