With Canada Day so recently passed - I could mention one of the first great female bike racers: Louise Armaindo. Her story is worth a look.
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Now the Devil has the plans, all I have to do is not die.
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It was made this way because it is the only simple way to make a peddle bike. Without gear to get any benefit from the peddling you need a big wheel.
Don’t underestimate the complexity of bicycle gearing, even for a simple single-speed bike. There is reason this was invented only after the steam locomotive. The introduction of the first geared, chained (safety) bike was contemporary to the start of the Flying Scotsman service!
The same reason why the first coordinated flight in a plane was achieved by bicycle technicians 
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The last time I saw one of those in the wild was when my son was still learning to ride his bike. We took him to one of the “Sunday Streets” days at Golden Gate Park where the thoroughfare had been closed off for pedestrians and cyclists, a good place to learn to ride in a traffic-free area with nice wide streets.
Unfortunately the hipster on the penny-farthing was clearly just learning to ride too. The two almost collided, and the guy had the gall to chew us out for bringing a kid to who wasn’t yet fully proficient on a bicycle to the public park.
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These things are just big unicycles with a training wheel on back.
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If you ride a folding bike with 14" or 16" wheels you will know the sensation of hitting a dip in the road which matches your wheel curvature. The original penny-farthing riders would have had solid wheels, and the roads were probably not tarmac. The big wheel meant you could ride over most bumps. The pedals are in the right placer our legs. You have no gears, so it will be more efficient than a regular bike provided the road is level. It was difficult to get onto, but it would be the soft option compared to mounting a bad-tempered horse from the hire stables.
GCN's Guinness World (Penny Farthing) Hour Record! - YouTube
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Not only that, but also almost all major carmakers started out as bicycle manufacturers. And it turns out out that cycling literally paved the road(s) for cars - see the most excellent book by Carlton Reid, Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring.
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Not exactly. The cyclists were the first to push for “good roads” (i.e., water-bound Macadam paving or similar), it’s true. But their primary “push” was trying to persuade American farmers to tax themselves (or, alternatively, to provide free material and labor) to produce (coincidentally bicycle-friendly!) paved roads, citing all the benefits that would accrue to farmers.
And mostly, they didn’t succeed. The League of American Wheelmen produced lots of literature, but very little in the way of actual results.
Besides, it wasn’t long before the water-bound Macadam paving that cyclists advocated became obsolete due to motor vehicles’ higher speeds, which produces a low-pressure area under the vehicle that sucks all the binding rock dust out of the Macadam paving, causing it to rapidly deteriorate in the weather.
That’s why “tarmac” – tar-bound Macadam – became widespread as autos proliferated. And it generally replaced the few water-bound Macadam roadways that the cyclists had succeeded in getting built.
It was automoblies and the fuel taxes they paid (designed to proxy a user fee without needing toll gates) that led to the widespread proliferation of good, well-paved roads.
The LAW’s campaign led to some minor road improvements, but trying to credit the 1880s-90s Bicycle Boom as “paving the road for cars” is wishful thinking (and deliberate spin) on the part of present-day bicycle enthusiasts.
It’s completely ahistorical.
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Great minds, etc.
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How about a reverse-wheelie?
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Not all history books are about the USA and not being about the USA is not the same as being ahistorical. Carlton Reid is from the UK.
I haven’t read the book but I do know a bit about the history of cycling in Europe and the title at least is spot on. Roads, signage, support networks for travellers (repair facilities, hotels, lunchrooms, guides and maps for tourists etc…) were all invented before the car. Long before the car.
Before the 1880s most western countries did not have a road network designed for long distance travel. No empire, no empirical roads. Roads connected single nearby cities and towns, travellers on longer trips would wander from town to town.
DIrectional signs were unregulated, maintenance was considered a local issue, safety was never considered. Nothing had been designed since Roman times, a person travelling from say Bath (UK) to Rome would take the same route a Roman soldier would have but without the mansios and with much muddier roads.
Public transport on longer distances was rare and expensive but also extremely uncomfortable. The only one I know off what the Dutch trekschuit network and travellers around the world commented on it. And it was so slow on pleasant days travellers would get off and stroll ahead…
Not many made long trips on velocipede but when the first modern bike came around (Hat tip to Coventry!) this changed. People wanted to tour! It were cycling organisations that lobbied for, and sometimes even funded or created, the network and facilities to make touring on a bicycle possible.
Together with the expanding rail network Tourism was born! Without cars.
When cars came around and people started touring in them they used the infrastructure built for cyclists. How do you think Mercedes Benz(**) found her way? 
They used the same road network, same tourist maps, and the same signs. The lists of repair facilities, restaurants, hotels were expanded with places that sold gas and oil.
Early motorists often became members of cyclists clubs for the benefits if they weren’t already (Middle and upper class rich tourists, same lot.) Some still existing motorists/tourist organisations in Europe started out as cyclist clubs!
Best example I know of is the ANWB that started out in the Netherlands as a small cycling club and is now what in the UK would be called a quango that for example still handles all directional signage and an roadside service. It is also the biggest traffic lobbyist. They all did this first for cyclists!!(*)
So yeah, maybe not true in the US but… the world is bigger than that.
(*An often forgotten cause of the Dutch cycling culture is that the biggest motoring club was and always has been also the biggest cycling club.)
(**EDIT: **Mércedès Adrienne Ramona Manuela Jellinek of course, Benz was her father’s business partner.)
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That skull cap may be thin, but yes, it’s very effective. Troxel makes good stuff.
It’s ridiculous that there are still helmetless horse sports.
There’s also a theory that this design simply felt more natural to a society used to sitting high upon a horse rather than as low as we do in our cars and bikes.
Of course the very first dandy horses were as low as modern bikes but that is a consequence of the propelling method.
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Fédération Équestre Internationale changed the rule effective January 2021.
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Well, thank God/s, and thank you for hipping me!
I’ve ridden one and they aren’t that hard. My family belonged to the (Southern) Veteran Cycle Club so I got to ride all kinds of crazy bikes: bikes with ratchets so the pedals went up and down instead of rotating, the Coventry Gentlemans - a side by side tandem. The boneshaker, the predecessor of tbe Penny Farthing was crazy though, same principles but a smaller front wheel. It was basically wooden cart wheel though so the rotational weight made it like trying to ride a bucking horse.
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