<p>This late nineteenth century photo

depicts the usage of bicycles during parade drills in the Kyiv

Pechersk men’s gymnasium. Apart from the search of different ways

of using bicycles for recreation, sports, and urban transport, the

possibility of using them for military purposes does not seem to be

out of the question; the bicycle could be used as, let us say, a

substitute for the horse. There are nine bicycles on the photo. The

first two are near some grown-up men in civilian clothes, perhaps,

teachers, the others are the gymnasium students. The last bicycle in

the row belongs to the penny-farthing type (with a large front wheel,

a much smaller rear one and pedals attached directly to the front

wheel). This kind of bicycles was a precursor of the modern type of

the “safe bicycle”. Its presence may indicate that the first

bicycles appeared in the educational institutions of Kyiv as early as

before the 1880s.</p><p><font><i>Olga Martyniuk</i></font></p>