Mary Marchbank, had an illicit ride on the machine, thereby becoming the first female cyclist. However, it is said that Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow copied the Macmillan machine in 1846 and passed on the details to so many people that for more than 50 years he was generally regarded as the inventor of the bicycle. Other claims to invention Some historians who have studied the invention of the pedal-driven bicycle, including David V. Herlihy, state that Macmillan was not the first inventor. Herlihy states there is no contemporary documentary evidence that a pedal-crank design was applied to a 2-wheeled vehicle and that letters from customers in Scotland to the Michaux company in 1868 state that all of the human-powered vehicles there are tricycles and quadracycles. A similar claim is made by David Gordon Wilson. See also Reported 1830s Scottish bicycle inventions Treadle bicycle Literature Dodds, Alastair (1992). Kirkpatrick MacMillan - Inventor of the bicycle: fact or hearsay? Proceedings of 3rd International Cycling History Conference, Neckarsulm, pp. 1–25. Oddy, Nicholas (1990). Kirkpatrick MacMillan, the inventor of the pedal cycle or the invention of cycle history? Proceedings of 1st International Cycling History Conference, Glasgow 1990, pp. 24–32. References 1812 births 1878 deaths People from Dumfries and Galloway Scottish inventors British blacksmiths Sustainable transport pioneers British cycle designers