Kirkpatrick Macmillan

Johnston, a corn trader and tricyclist, had the firm aim, in his own words "to prove that to my native country of Dumfries belongs the honour of being the birthplace of the invention of the bicycle".

A Glasgow newspaper reported in 1842 an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a pedestrian in the Gorbals and was fined five British shillings.

[4] The Johnston doctrine of the bright, modest and industrious tradesman, achieving what others would only do decades later, captured the public imagination, especially in Scotland.

At the behest of Johnston, Thomas McCall built a replica to be presented as MacMillan's at the 1896 Stanley show (and now at Dumfries Museum) perhaps for financial reasons.

[7] 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.