Huffy.
Huffy bicycles, for the longest time, were made in the U.S.A., but after 2004 they shut down their U.S. factory. In fact, the factory in Celina Ohio is now a facory for Crown forklifts. Today, Huffy bicycles are made in China.
Over 9000
Older Atala bicycles were made in Italy, but the new ones (like most new bicycles) are made primarily in China and assembled in Italy, I believe.
The Schwinn Apple Crate, Lemon Peeler, and Orange Crate bicycle's were new in 1968. But Invented? Who knows. The first one I saw was back in the 1960's The kid across the street from me's dad was a machinist that build choppers on the weekends, and he built the coolest ever chopper bike out of a Schwinn Stingray for his son.
The 1st number and 5th number combined together is the year. The 2nd through 4th numbers are the day of the year it was made. Huffy is the manufacturer. 26 is the wheel size. Last three numbers are the model. 80517huffy26434 translates to a 1987 Huffy Good Vibrations made on February 20th. Got info from Huffy customer service 1-800-872-2453.
No
Bicycles are often - but not always - made of metal because its strong enough, light enough and cheap enough.
When bicycles were invented wood was the only material which could be use to built such a vehicle.At the beginning bicycles were very simple without much of the mechanisms that we can find in today`s bicycles so they could be made from wood from top to bottom.
Mostly steel
steel
One year was 1973 not sure on how many year of models were made.