The invention of the bicycle is credited primarily to German Baron Karl von Drais Sauerbronn, who created the first practically used two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine known as the "Laufmaschine" or "Draisine" in 1817. This machine, also called the "running machine," is regarded as the first bicycle and von Drais is often called the "father of the bicycle." He patented this design in 1818, and it was the first commercially successful two-wheeled vehicle propelled by human power, although it did not have pedals and was pushed along by the rider's feet

. The addition of pedals came later. In the early 1860s, Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement improved the design by adding pedals to the front wheel, creating the first pedal-driven bicycle. Lallement filed the earliest patent for a pedal-driven bicycle in 1866 in the United States. Michaux's company was the first to mass-produce bicycles with pedals

. Thus, while Karl von Drais invented the original two-wheeled running machine in 1817, the modern pedal bicycle evolved through later innovations by Michaux and Lallement in the 1860s.