It’s a device that can be made fancy and beautiful that serves as a weapon when needed, and is an assistive device for the disabled. We’re talking 1914, so it’s not the most disabled the men of the western world have been, but four years later will be.
And even without the war, you’re in a time where there’s no joint replacement, and there’s a lot of people with injuries from industrial accidents and people who’ve had diseases of industrialization. You have the beginnings of recreational sport (a good way to get injured if you don’t know how to prevent it) and not much other exercise except walking places. The newfangled “safety bicycle” is still a death trap by modern standards but compared to a pennyfarthing without pneumatic wheels it earns its name. Also there’s no antibiotics so you’ve got a lot more people sporting a single leg than in modern times, especially if you’re in America where veterans of the Civil war are still around at the time.
It’s a device that can be made fancy and beautiful that serves as a weapon when needed, and is an assistive device for the disabled. We’re talking 1914, so it’s not the most disabled the men of the western world have been, but four years later will be.
And even without the war, you’re in a time where there’s no joint replacement, and there’s a lot of people with injuries from industrial accidents and people who’ve had diseases of industrialization. You have the beginnings of recreational sport (a good way to get injured if you don’t know how to prevent it) and not much other exercise except walking places. The newfangled “safety bicycle” is still a death trap by modern standards but compared to a pennyfarthing without pneumatic wheels it earns its name. Also there’s no antibiotics so you’ve got a lot more people sporting a single leg than in modern times, especially if you’re in America where veterans of the Civil war are still around at the time.