The Times newspaper is running a poll to find Britain’s greatest invention of the past 250 years. And the bicycle is currently way out in front.

A first round of voting brought forward category winners in the fields of Medicine, “The Way We Live”, Industry and Transport. The bike saw off railways and the jet engine in the Transport category and is now up against vaccination, computers and the web, electricity and electric lights for the overall prize.

Voting closes midnight on Thursday and the winner will be announced in Saturday’s Times. Last time we mentioned a poll of this sort it was being run by the BBC’s Today programme, which got the right hump when bicycles won and phoned us up to accuse us of rigging the vote. We couldn’t quite see how it was our fault that fans of the cat’s eye were unable to mobilise sizable support, but let’s be scrupulously fair here – we’ll just say that the voting page is at www.timesonline.co.uk/greatinventions – the rest is up to you…

You can read more about the category winners on the Times website.