When the poet Thomas Grey wrote “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” he must have been within spittin’ distance of a tiny stained glass window that is of interest to bicyclists all over the world. The window panel, only nine square inches, depicts an imaginary gnome -- naked of course -- astride a heavy wooden frame to which wheels are attached front and back.

In the summer of 1972, I leaned on my 15-speed, Peugeot PX-10 as I stared at what is probably the world’s first representation of a bicycle.

Gnomes are small, human-like, mythic characters who were thought to have a sort of occult knowledge of the earth because they dwelled deep inside it. This one is riding on his imaginary two-wheeler, rolling along on a cloud tooting a horn. His flying bike is suspended in space by a rope that is tied from the back of the frame to a heavy wooden “sky hook.”

The other end of the rope is loosely attached high to the blazing sun! This colorful window is on the graveyard side of the peaceful old church where Grey wrote. We located it at a village called Stoke Poges, west of London and north of Slough. The gnome is in the center panel of a rectangular window that was moved from an old church in Italy in about 1590.

That nine-inch panel seemed so insignificant at first, as I stood leaning on my Peugeot PX-10 looking up at it. “Nice color,” I thought. Gradually I asked myself “Why is it in this place? ~Does it relate to religion? Solar power? Who made it? Who’s concept was it? Why is the gnome tooting a long slender horn?” It’s probably just the figment of some 16th century Italian’s creative imagination. Was he or she an inventor? Scientist? Mechanic? Engineer? Astronomer? Will we ever know?

Two hundred years after the window was known to be in Italy, a Frenchman -- decked out in top hat and tails -- rode a heavy wooden plank with two wheels. He and his “stick horse” were the laughingstock of strollers in Palais-Royal Garden in Paris. However, by “thumping the ground with his feet in long strides,” Comte de Sivrac attained unbelievable speeds on this “toy.”

Nevertheless, the idea spread rapidly as a pastime for the adult male aristocracy! Baron Von Drais, a forester, used his stick horse over rough, hilly ground so he added a padded seat, an arm rest and, most importantly, a mechanism for steering the front wheel. The puzzling question about bicycle history is still “Who had the 16th century gnome concept?”

Irish author Seamus McGonagle suggests that “Italian artists and inventors were practically leading the field in new discoveries. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci was so busy designing various amazing machines at the time that it is just possible that he stumbled onto the idea of the bicycle.”

Leonardo’s thousands of pages of sketches, some only doodles, relate to astronomy, the mechanics of flight, experimental science, meteorology and mechanical toys. As art historians continue to study his notes and sketches, the first concept of the bicycle may be credited to this great master of science and art, Could a sketch of this window with “nice color” be one of Leonardo’s doodles? Maybe not, but bicycling was someone’s great idea neverthel~ess.