From Bicycling Magazine,
"Before 1878, the US didn’t have a domestic bicycle manufacturing industry. Inspired by imported Ariels— English penny farthings with tangent spokes and steps that made them easier to mount—Colonel Albert Augustus Pope sought to create an all-American high-wheeler and mass-produce it by the thousand.
Pope’s bicycle, the Columbia, was similar in design to European penny farthings, but his monopoly on bicycle patents, move toward mass production, and keen advertising strategy allowed his business to take off.
By 1900, Pope Manufacturing Company had transformed cycling in the US, selling thousands of bicycles a year and inspiring organized racing."