Rickshaw
Pulled rickshaws created a popular form of transportation, and a source of employment for male labourers, within Asian cities in the 19th century.
Auto rickshaws are becoming more popular in some cities in the 21st century as an alternative to taxis because of their low cost of hire.
[4] The first rickshaws were invented in France in the late 17th century, to fulfill, along with other types of carriages such as cabriolets and fiacres, the unmet demand for public transportation created by the 1679 cessation of Paris' first omnibus service.
These vehicles, called "vinaigrettes" for their resemblance to the handcarts used by contemporary vinegar-sellers,[5] were fully-enclosed two-wheeled carriages with space for a single person.
[6] A painting named "Les deux carosses" by Claude Gillot shows 2 rickshaws in 1707.
[8][10] There are many theories about the inventor, with the most likely and widely accepted theory describing the rickshaw as having been invented in Japan in 1869,[8] by Izumi Yosuke,[11][12] who formed a partnership with Suzuki Tokujiro and Takayama Kosuke to build the vehicles,[13] having been "inspired by the horse carriages that had been introduced to the streets of Tokyo a few years earlier".
[7]The vehicle had a wooden carriage that rode on "superior Western wheels" and was a dramatic improvement over earlier modes of transportation.
It was made about 1880 and is described as: A rickshaw, or jinrikisha, is a light, two-wheeled cart consisting of a doorless, chairlike body, mounted on springs with a collapsible hood and two shafts.
"[21][nb 1] Starting in 1870, the Tokyo government issued a permit to build and sell 人力車 (jinrikisha: rickshaw in Japanese) to the trio that are believed in Asia to be the rickshaw's inventors: Izumi Yosuke, Takayama Kosuke, and Suzuki Tokujiro.
Generally, runners covered 30 to 50 kilometres (20–30 mi) in a day, at an average traveling speed of 8 km/h (5 mph).
[21] Many of the poorest individuals in Singapore in the late nineteenth century were poverty-stricken, unskilled people of Chinese ancestry.
Sometimes called coolies, the hardworking men found that pulling a rickshaw was a new opportunity for employment.
Perhaps the seated rickshaw passenger is too close to the back of the laboring driver, who, besides, is metaphorically a draught animal harnessed between shafts.
[32][33] The rickshaw's popularity in Japan had declined by the 1930s with the advent of motorized forms of transportation like automobiles and trains.
[19][20] In the 1990s, German-made cycle rickshaws called "velotaxis" were introduced in Japanese cities, including Kobe.
Japanese military hired many rickshaw pullers to have them gathered and organize with other cooks and seamen for an underground armed team to enact the anti-British Colony clan.
[39][nb 2] In the 1930s, cycle rickshaws were used in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Kolkata, India; and Jakarta, Indonesia.
In 1883, Jean Thomas Raoul Bonnal, Supérior Résident of Tonkin, import 2 rickshaws from Japan in the city of Hanoi and made copies of them.
Pedicabs were introduced in North America in 1962, where they were a means of transportation at the Seattle World's Fair in the state of Washington.
[16] In Madagascar, pulled cycle and auto rickshaws are a common form of transportation in a number of cities, especially Antsirabe.
Automated cycle rickshaws, called velotaxis, are popular in Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan.
