When Edoardo Bianchi opened a small bicycle shop on Via Nirone in Milan in 1885, high-wheel bicycles with a large front wheel were still familiar sights. Bianchi’s own chronology shows how quickly the basic bicycle was changing. By 1886, the shop was selling the type known as the safety bicycle, with front and rear wheels of equal size. This was not a revolution invented by one workshop, but a change that emerging bicycle businesses helped bring into ordinary use.
The next shift concerned the feel of the ride. According to the company’s timeline, Bianchi made a bicycle with pneumatic tyres in 1888. On cobbles and uneven streets, an air-filled tyre offered a very different contact with the road from a solid wheel covering. The business was growing as well: it moved to larger premises on Via Bertani in 1887 and opened a new factory in Borghetto in 1890. The sequence captures how bicycle shape, comfort and production developed together.
For a rider today, this history is a reminder that familiar features were once new choices. Wheels of similar size, a more practical riding position and air-filled tyres helped turn the bicycle into something usable by many more people than the high-wheeler suited. Bianchi’s early record should not be read as a claim that the brand alone created these ideas. It is one Milan workshop’s account of a period when the bicycle rapidly took on a form we still recognise.