In 1877 John Starley and William Sutton formed a company to build bicycles. They realised that these bicycles would make it easy for people in common to rove around the countryside and from 1884 they named their bicycles "Rover".
In 1896 they renamed the company the Rover Cycle Company Limited

This tricycle from 1884 is the first vehicle sold with the Rover-name.

The Rover Safety Bicycle

I found this picture in London. It's an old collectors item. More then 50 years ago the cigarette-maker John Player & Sons made a series of 50 pictures of bicycles that came along with the cigarette-packs. One of these pictures was the Rover Safety Bicycle. (There was also a series of car-pictures, but I did not find a Rover-picture among the pictures I saw at the Portobello Road market. Anyone have such a picture you're welcome to donate it to the RCoS-pages!)
Here's the text from the back of the picture:
Prior to 1885 the name "Bicycle" meant the current machine, the old high bicycle. When the "Safety" was first developed, the bicycle was still the bigwheeled instrument, and its army of devotees looked down upon the few pioneers, calling them such names as "Crocodiles," Beetles," etc. Thus, until the Safety finally ousted the high machine during the early '90s, the latter was referred to as the ordinary bicycle to distinguish it from the new Safety. To-day the adjective "ordinary" has become the name for the old graceful high wheel. In 1885 the "Rover" Safety Bicycle with rear chain drive and direct steering established the design of the Bicycle very much as we know it to-day

Andreas Uddling in Sweden owns this old Rover bike which he is now restoring. He is keen to get any help he can get when it comes to date the bike and to what methods he should use

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