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Reinventing the Wheel: Bicycles in the Polar Regions

Reinventing the Wheel: Bicycles in the Polar Regions

1 July – 6 September 2014

This exhibition celebrates the arrival of Le Tour de France in Cambridge with a look at the surprising history of bicycles in the Arctic and Antarctic. The display will explore the role bicycles and bicycle wheels have played in the exploration of the Poles, both as indispensable tools and as items of fun.

Herbert Ponting with his photographic outfit on a dog cart, with dogs Miss Johnson and Lassie, 24 December, 1911. (Image: SPRI P2005/5/729)

A sledge wheel drifted up during the South Georgia Survey, 1951–57. (Image: SPRI P54/19/B25/27)

Images, diary extracts combined with a rarely seen, early twentieth century model of a sledge and several bicycle wheels used on polar expeditions explore how wheels, were the principal tool for measuring distances in sledge travel from the early nineteenth century right up until the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition will also tell the stories of explorers who have taken their bicycles on expeditions and of their ill-advised attempts to cycle on ice and snow, often narrowly escaping death in the process.

Attached to sledges and fitted with a device to mark each revolution, and working like a classroom trundle wheel, these 'sledge meters' were often made using bicycle wheels. They were essential for navigation and dead reckoning – an important method for calculating position in a featureless landscape.

The display includes a beautiful, delicately crafted model of a fully laden sledge, complete with sledge wheel, made in Antarctica by Lieutenant Edward 'Teddy' Evans, second in command on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13.

The exhibition draws inspiration from the spirit of endurance common to competitive cyclists and polar explorers. The bicycle wheel forms a link which illustrates how the psychological and physical strength, the fortitude, and the determination displayed by the competing cyclists is also present in the people who dare to face the extreme conditions of the Polar Regions.

Herbert Ponting with his photographic outfit on a dog cart, with dogs Miss Johnson and Lassie, 24 December, 1911. (Image: SPRI P2005/5/729)

Herbert Ponting with his photographic outfit on a dog cart, with dogs Miss Johnson and Lassie, 24 December, 1911. (Image: SPRI P2005/5/729)