Monday answer
Galen steps forward for the gold star for his forehead. I'm surprised how quickly it went given that this answer is like herding cats. The answer for which I was searching is indeed rickshaw or jinrikisha. The place (important) was Yokahoma, Japan.
You will recall the question stated that the rickshaw was likely a reinvention. The Net shows a early 1700's painting "Les deux carrosses" by Claude Gillot shows two rickshaw-like carts were used in the streets of Paris in the 17th and 18th century. (author, Fresnault-Deruelle, 2005) Edwin Tunnis, book �Wheels�, shows a drawing of both an English and French brouette (vinaigrette). Tommy wanted a Handsome cab (I think), but it was horse drawn and also earlier around 1834. Other, some earlier, versions of that were chariots, bigas, birotum, cisium, rheda, hecca, gujerat, chaise, gig, shay, cabriolet, curricle, butcher�s cart, sulky and volante. All of those were horse or ox drawn however.
According to American Heritage magazine (Kirby J. Harrison, 1991) Rickshaws first appeared in JAPAN around 1868, at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. They soon became a popular mode of transportation, since they were faster than the previously used palanquins and litters who used four or six runners (in Japan at that time human labor was considerably cheaper than using horses). Still, one person was cheaper than two, four or six �runners�.
The identity of the inventor (if there was one) remains uncertain. Some American sources give the American blacksmith Albert Tolman, who is said to have invented the rickshaw around 1848 in Worcester, Massachusetts for a missionary; others claim that Jonathan Scobie or Jonathan Goble (Jonathan Goble of Japan Marine, Missionary, Maverick, by F. Calvin Parker), an American missionary to Japan, invented rickshaws around 1869 to transport his invalid wife through the streets of Yokohama. American Heritage favors the latter, owing to a source Andrew Wheeler, a grandson, who saw the wood patterns at a Frank Pollay�s shop in Keuka Lake, New York and iron castings from his blacksmith grandfather who worked on it, a friend of Pollay and also from that area. (Most American stories revolve around 1868, missionaries, Baptist, and invalid wife�who knows which is correct? Jonathan Goble of Japan Marine, Missionary, Maverick
by F. Calvin Parker, although full of missionary stuff, is a good story about a unique guy. Still others say the rickshaw was designed by an American Baptist minister in 1888. This is undoubtedly incorrect, as has been written in a 1877 article by a The New York Times correspondent in Tokyo who stated that the "jin-riki-sha, or man-power carriage" was in current popular use, and was probably invented by an American in 1869 or 1870.
In any case my answer was rickshaw, an unexpected American reintroduction that became a national icon for the country of Japan. By the way, Japan disputes the American invention story. The date is very close, but attributed to Japanese craftsman.