This is a bicycle model that was commonly used in the 1960s.The first ‘rantoons’—the three-wheeled predecessors of bicycles—were imported into Singapore in the late 1860s for businessman T. S. Thomson and chemist R. Jamie. These clumsy contraptions required a fair amount of physical exertion on the part of their riders, especially so in the humid tropical climate of Singapore. From around the 1870s onwards, Chinese blacksmiths started riding high bicycles to work at the Tanjong Pagar Dockyard, at a time when such contraptions were used mainly for recreational purposes in England. Also known as high-wheelers, these early bicycles had wheels that were asymmetrical in size, with the front wheel considerably larger than the one in the rear. It was only in the 1890s that the modern bicycle, then known as a safety bicycle, appeared in Singapore and the region. Its use in Malaya was pioneered by Europeans such as Walter Makepeace, who accomplished the amazing feat of cycling 363 miles from Malacca to Province Wellesley in eight days. The bicycle was soon adopted as a means of transportation by a number of professions, ranging from plantation estate managers to telegraph messengers, policemen and soldiers.
