Michel-Jules-Clément Blin's miniature tricycle

The unusual object presented for the month of May is a miniature wooden tricycle with two places, made by Michel-Jules-Clément Blin. Born in Vierville on July 24, 1848 and died in the same commune on March 12, 1911 at the age of sixty-two, he belonged to an ancient family in the region.

He had replaced his father, a farrier in Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes and then in Vierville, after his paralysis. Incorporated into the 13th Dragon Regiment on October 20, 1869, he was taken prisoner the following year and detained mainly in Silesia, in Breslau and Neisse.

With pieces of wood, bone fragments and makeshift tools he had made, he made models of complicated instruments, tools and devices. Their sale to civilians helped him support him and his comrades. His widow had kept seven pieces from this period, intended for the Baron-Gérard Museum in Bayeux.

The most important was the tricycle, thirty-two centimeters long and twenty centimeters high on the handlebars. The rear wheels were 138 millimeters in diameter, the front wheel 154. The two seats were arranged in tandem: vélocipedist saddle at the front and gallery seat at the rear, able to accommodate a woman. Two joysticks and a handlebar placed between them also made it possible to move it by hand without a male companion.

The body of the text and the legend place this realization in 1871. The know-how of Blin's farrier had allowed him to build the wheels in the manner of those of carts. The article presents the object as a remarkable invention for its time.

Reconstructed or uncertain passages:
- The hook announces a realization in 1911, but the legend and the end of the text give 1871, consistent with the story of captivity. The old statement that the bicycle did not yet exist in 1871 is not taken up as an assured historical fact.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/Photos2008/1911-BlinATricycle.jpg