Thomas Humber

Thomas Humber (1841 to 1910) was an English engineer and cycle manufacturer who developed and patented a safety bicycle in 1884, with a diamond-shaped frame and wheels of similar size, a pattern that later machines followed. About 1868 he founded Humber Cycles, the bicycle business at Beeston in Nottinghamshire, which was later owned by Humber and Company Limited. Born in Sheffield and trained as a blacksmith in Nottingham, he built his first velocipede after reading a description of the Paris machines, then moved on to the high-wheeled ordinary and formed the partnership Humber, Marriott and Cooper in 1875. In 1887 he and the promoter T. Harrison Lambert sold the business to investors who floated it as Humber and Company Limited, and he managed the enterprise until he retired in 1892. His emphasis on quality and reliability made Humber bicycles regarded as the aristocrat among cycles.