Thomas McCall was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 cartwright

Cartwright

Cartwright is the occupation of making and repairing carts . It can also refer to:Persons:* Edmund Cartwright, English clergyman and inventor of the power loom.In places:* Cartwright, Manitoba, Canada...

. Born in Penpont he came to Kilmarnock at age 20, where he lived until his death (obituary 1904).

He built, in 1869, two versions of a two-wheeled velocipede

Velocipede

Velocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....

 with levers and rods tossing a crank on the rear wheel (English Mechanic 5/14/1869 and 6/11/1869). This was a reaction to the French velocipedes, of the mid 1860s, with their front-wheel pedal cranks. In fact, this rear-wheel idea occupied seven more inventors in that year (Lessing 1991).

When in the 1880s a rich corn-trader named James Johnston started a campaign to attribute the "first true" bicycle

Bicycle

A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....

 to his uncle Kirkpatrick MacMillan

Kirkpatrick Macmillan

Kirkpatrick Macmillan was a Scottish blacksmith generally credited with inventing the rear-wheel driven bicycle.-Invention of pedal driven bicycle?:...

and his native country of Dumfries in general, he attributed the McCall designs to MacMillan and dated them as of 1839. Skeptics allege that the reason McCall built a replica of his machines to be exhibited as MacMillan's at the 1896 Stanley Show, at the behest of Johnston, can only be a need of money (Clayton 1987). That alleged replica is now at Dumfries Observatory.

Further reading

N. Clayton: The First Bicycle, in: The Boneshaker #113, spring 1987, pp. 25–29

H. E. Lessing: Around Michaux - myths and realities, in: Proc. of the 2nd ICHC, Saint Étienne 1991, pp. 21–29

Obituary in Kilmarnock Standard, April 9, 1904