BRITAIN is a nation built on two wheels: Times readers have pushed aside the claims of electricity and vaccination to choose the bicycle as the country’s greatest invention of the past 250 years.

The bike rode comfortably but controversially to victory in the final round of our Great British Inventions poll with 62 per cent of the votes cast, amid claims of vote-rigging by well-marshalled cyclists.

Dozens of cycling websites have been cajoling enthusiasts to “vote bike” throughout the contest, which has been running for two weeks. The result was a striking triumph for pedal power, which garnered three times as many votes as electricity, its closest challenger.

It dismayed the panel of five experts convened by The Times to deliver their own verdict on Britain’s most significant technological breakthrough. They all agreed that the bicycle was the least deserving candidate on the final shortlist.

The judges — Lindsay Sharp of the National Museum of Science & Industry, Anjana Ahuja of The Times, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, the former Cabinet minister, Lord Broers, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Mandy Haberman, the inventor of the Anywayup Cup — chose electricity over vaccination by a narrow margin of three to two.

The other shortlisted entries were the computer (with the world wide web) and the electric light.

The bicycle’s popularity also caught the bookmakers by surprise: Sky Bet had it as a 66-1 outsider when the shortlist was announced a week ago, though it had slashed the odds to 1-2 when polls closed on Thursday.

Cycling fanatics have form for voting heavily for their favourite invention: a technology poll by the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 to celebrate 150 years of the Patent Office was also won by the bicycle.

Chipps Chippendale, editor of Singletrack, a mountain biking website and magazine, said he had urged his readers to vote, adding that dozens of round-robin e-mails had been circulating among enthusiasts.

“There is a huge community that loves the bike, and I think it’s a mark of the invention’s greatness that it inspires such affection and loyalty,” he said. “How many fan websites are there devoted to electricity or the light bulb?”

Word of the Times contest brought votes from cyclists all over the world, he said. “I heard about the poll from a cycling friend in Vancouver, and the American bike websites have been on the case.”

The Great British Inventions poll sought to find Britain’s most significant contribution to the modern world from a list of 20 candidates selected on the advice of experts from the NMSI, which includes the Science Museum in London, the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford and the National Railway Museum in York.

Dr Sharp said that the bicycle was a worthy winner, though his own first choice was the computer and world wide web. “It has to be a result of a well-organised campaign, but we should accept it nonetheless,” he said.

“There is something to be said for an invention that generates such passionate positive feeling. The bicycle is a very pure invention, the basic design has remained largely the same for more than a century, it is environmentally friendly, and it changed the face of mass transport.”

The particular version of the bike included in the poll was John Kemp Starley’s Rover Safety Bicycle of 1885, which turned cycling into a safe form of mass transport.

It allowed working men and women to travel cheaply, and the geneticist Steve Jones has even claimed that it had a direct effect on human evolution, by bringing to an end the inbreeding that was once endemic in village communities.

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