Children's Pedal-powered Tricycle. 1850-60.

This luxurious toy was made in France during the Second Empire. It is a chain drive tricycle in the shape of a horse.
The 19th century is the golden age of the mechanical toy. These system toys are often the testimony of technical innovations and avant-garde spirits.
This tricycle must date from the end of the 1850s. It predates the bicycle and yet has a chain transmission as it will appear ten years later in the patents of Charles Desnos. Curiously, in this tricycle, it is the feet which give the direction and the arms which reel. They had not invented the pedal, but had invented the crank. A square mesh chain is driven, via a pinion, by the handlebar crank, crosses the neck and body of the horse and drives the lower pinion integral with the axis of the left wheel. Note also that this is the first case of differential applied to road locomotion.

The construction of this horse is typical of the 19th century and the beginnings of industry: Body in lacquered wood, head and rear end in cast iron, axles, cranks and front end in wrought iron, wooden wheels with copper tires.
Missing: the hooves of the front legs, one end of a rear leg, mane, saddle, tail.
Functional set. Original condition with a great patina.