William Lewis Sachtleben

Born on March 29, 1866, William Lewis Sachtleben was an American journalist, lecturer, and travel writer remembered for pushing the limits of long-distance cycling in the bicycle's early years. He is most closely associated with the ambitious trip he made with Thomas Gaskell Allen Jr., a journey that took them around the world and made them widely noted as pioneering globe-circling bicyclists.

Sachtleben is best known to readers today as the co-author of Across Asia on a Bicycle (1894), which grew out of that expedition. The book follows the pair's ride from Constantinople to Peking and blends travel narrative with firsthand detail about landscapes, roads, and encounters across a huge stretch of Asia.

He died on December 13, 1953. Though not a household name now, Sachtleben remains an appealing figure from the age of early modern travel: part reporter, part adventurer, and part witness to a world seen at ground level from the saddle of a bicycle.