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James became known as the father of the British cycle industry. He was an engineering genius who began his working life making and mending sewing machines. In the mid 1860s James came to Coventry to work in a sewing machine factory.
In 1868 a Boneshaker or Velocipede was brought to the factory and James immediately saw the bicycle’s potential, and began to make improvements. For the next 10 years James worked in the cycle industry, patenting a number of improvements and creating numerous new cycle designs.
Perhaps James’ greatest achievement was the development of the differential gear on tricycles and quadricycles. In the 1870s multi-wheeled cycles had large wheels side by side on the same axle. This made cornering difficult, as the inside wheel has to revolve slower than the outside wheel when going around a bend. To compensate for this James fitted a differential gear to the axle which allowed the wheels to revolve at different speeds when cornering. Without this development motorcars would be unable to corner effectively as, until very recently, all cars had a differential fitted to their axles.
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