I think it likely that the majority of 1870s factory made penny-farthing's were shipped worldwide to their customers via steam power.
Admittedly the transcontinental railroad took until about 1870 in the USA, then again the entire bicycle article is eurocentric. Which is also interesting, how come only Europeans ever got involved in bicycle invention? The rest of the world at least occasionally had two wheeled chariots and carts so ...
WRT the transcontinental railroad taking decades longer to cover the USA than it took to cover the UK, its worth considering that the state of Texas is about 4.5 "Irelands" wide, and we have 49 other states to cover, so covering the UK with nationwide rail service decades before the USA had transcontinental service is pretty easy. I'm told by a former native that no part of the UK is more than 75 miles from the sea.
Why? Isn't an automobile a superset of a bicycle in terms of parts? It has a frame, rubber tires, wheels with spokes, and gears (for the engine/transmission).
Cars can just burn more gas.
For example the "transmission" on my bicycle is this crazy open air greasy oil contraption that instantly gets covered in rust if not oiled or gets wet, alternatively gets covered in sandy grit if oiled and its a maintenance headache and parts are lucky if they last 10K miles.
On a car, you just burn more gas to haul heavy parts, and my car transmission has an external case that must weigh 100 pounds, but the fluid in it is continuously purified by filter and magnet and will last the life of the car maybe 250K miles with no maintenance required, generally.
Its kinda interesting you can tell how old a "Car Guy" is by how much maintenance he thinks a car transmission requires. In the REALLY old days transmissions were so unreliable there were dedicated transmission repair shops.
Another typical subsystem is brakes. Cars often have brakes often last over 50K miles, although those parts are very heavy and a bear to work on. On bikes, they have to be small and light, so maybe 1K miles average.
I know this isn’t where you’re going, but it would be awesome to have a system of bikes on rails with steel wheels.
About a quarter of the rolling resistance, but it is only ~11% of all resistance.
Braking and accelerating would become really fun, but wheels would last forever.
https://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/file.php?1,file=16349,filena...
A decent carpenter working with a decent blacksmith can produce and maintain a horse cart in a village with minimal external commerce; some iron ore imports would be nice, but can be worked around at great effort.
But composition rubber brake pads and steel cables to run the brakes and rubber pneumatic wheels and ball bearings everywhere will require at minimum a nationwide rail network. Even the very concept of national or world standardized screw sizes is a very modern phenonomena.
Also a pretty solid argument for a lack of destinations. For centuries if something was not sustainable with the population inside a walking radius, it would rapidly disappear. Today I can ride to a big box store, a shopping mall, a library... there was nowhere to go for the vast majority of the population in, perhaps 1021 AD. The next village over isn't all that more exciting than mine. Pre-pubescent kids seem to enjoy bicycle riding for no purpose other than the sensation of movement, although in 1021 AD a bicycle would be an unaffordable toy for a child.