Karl Drais

Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig Freiherr Drais von Sauerbronn was born on 29 April 1785 into German nobility and worked as a forest official during the Biedermeier period. Somewhere in that life of timber and title, he turned inventor. His breakthrough was the machine that earned him the label "father of the bicycle" — a steerable, two-wheeled device propelled by the rider's own effort, the first of its kind. He died on 10 December 1851, decades before anyone would grasp how thoroughly his contraption would reshape cities, leisure, and movement itself.