Correction - chainless bicycle is not new

Last week we ran a story about the Dynacraft Dekra-D Drive bicycle which has a shaft drive shaft instead of a chain and hence offers less maintenance and greater safety. The problem is you see, that we said it was a new design and though several readers wrote to declare they’d seen such bikes previously, no-one actually proffered up a source until now. Reader Reggie Hill wrote to say that he’d seen a picture on ParisDailyPhoto blog and we looked and … to our enormous embarrassment, Parissienne blogger Eric Tenin had a picture of a bike built in 1899 with a very similar drive mechanism. We contacted Eric and he supplied us with detailed images of said bicycle, built by none other than the Peugeot Brothers, who went on to build an automotive empire of the same name. So thanks to Reggie, thanks to Eric and his great blog (if you can't be in Paris, you can at least check out the daily piccie), and ahem … sincerest apologies to the 174,304 visitors who have read the story in the last week and thought it was a new design.

We’ll try harder from now on.

: )