Penny-farthing the trend was short-lived, the penny-farthing became a symbol of the late Victorian era. Its popularity also coincided with the birth of cycling as a sport. Eugène Meyer of Paris, France is now regarded as the father of the high bicycle by the International Cycling History Conference in place of James Starley. Meyer patented a wire-spoke tension wheel with individually adjustable spokes in 1869. They were called "spider" wheels in Britain when introduced there. Meyer produced a classic high bicycle design during the 1880s. James Starley in Coventry added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle
Mode of production Mode of production In the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (in German: "Produktionsweise", meaning "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the following: Marx regarded productive ability and participation in social relations as two essential characteristics of human beings and that the particular modality of these relations in capitalist production are inherently in conflict with the increasing development of human productive capacities. A precursor to this concept was Adam Smith's concept of mode of subsistence, which delineated a progression of society types based on the way in which