“Among Michaux’s first customers were the leaders of the bicycle m0vement, about twenty in all, most with noble titles. “Struck with the importance of the idea,” explained one journalist, these “young men of leisure” aimed to establish the velocipede as a “common mode of locomotion.” Every evening they gathered to practice their strange art by the cascades in the Bois de Boulogne, the expansive park on the west side of Paris not far from the Michaux shop. From there, they invaded the fairgrounds of the ongoing Universal Exhibition, determined to show the world that a practical mechanical hor e was at last at hand. Le Sport described their evangelical spirit: “On your velocipe e! That is the rallying cry loudly repeated of late by a few intrepid Parisians, fanatics of this new means of locomotion…. [It will reach] every exhibitor booth and [from there] all corners of the earth.” (…) The bicycle movement quickly gained momentum as the year 1867 progressed. Although Michaux bicycles had not been formally admitted to the Universal Exhibition, under way since April, they were already in evidence at the fairgrounds that summer. Several foreign visitors purchased specimens and shipped them back to their homelands. By fall, a firm in Lyon and another near Grenoble had initiated production of the new-style two-wheeler. In September, La Vie Parisienne observed that “everyone is talking velocipedes.” In December, some one hundred riders, including several prominent
citizens, departed Paris en masse on their way to Versailles as part of a novel”tourist excursion.”
— Bicycle History
Recreations Mathematiques et physiques, 1696
Glider, 1900. Wright brothers
Dan Tate, at left, and Edward C. Huffaker, at right, launching the 1901 glider with either Wilbur or Orville piloting; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Wilbur and Orville assembling the 1903 machine in the new camp building at Kill Devil Hills. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
Glider turning, Wright brothers, 1902
512 × 456 - 4x5 dry-plate glass negative attributed to Orville Wright.
view large. The Wright Brothers’ Bicycle Shop
During the peak year of 1896, some three hundred firms in the United States alone produced more than a million bicycles, making it one of the country’s largest industries. The cycling trade not only launched the Good Roads Movement, culminating years later in a great national network of highways, it also provided the foundation for the automotive industry. In particular, the advanced techniques used to assemble millions of bicycles were readily adapted to automobile production. Even the vast nationwide network of bicycle repair shops evolved into the first gasoline stations. Literally and figuratively, the bicycle paved the way for the automobile.
The bicycle trade also produced the first motorized two-wheelers at the turn of the century, and for some time the two industries remained closely aligned. Many bicycles of the 1910s, in fact, sported head badges with motorcycle brands like Harley-Davidson and Indian. Bicycle mechanics likewise played an important role in early aviation. Wilbur and Orville Wright themselves operated a small bike repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. They used bicycles to conduct their first wind tunnel experiments, and they built the 1903 Wright Flyer in their workshop using familiar tools and materials. Glenn Curtiss was another former bicycle mechanic who developed some of the first successful airplanes.
Bicycle history, David V. Herlihy
“Todo lo que se muestra se vuelve, automáticamente, sospechoso” — Boris Groys
“La producción de lo nuevo es la exigencia a la que todo el mundo debe someterse para encontrar en la cultura el reconocimiento al que aspira: en caso contrario, no tiene ningún sentido ocuparse de los asuntos de la cultura (…) lo nuevo es insoslayable, inevitable, irrenunciable. No hay ningún camino que nos saque de lo nuevo, porque, si lo hubiera, sería un camino nuevo. No hay posibilidad alguna de romper las reglas de lo nuevo, porque esa ruptura es precisamente lo que esas reglas exigen. Y en este sentido, la exigencia de innovación es, si se quiere, la única realidad que resulta expresada en la cultura.” — Boris Groys. Sobre lo nuevo
“Estamos acostumbrados a que el tiempo del hombre se divida tajantemente entre trabajo y descanso. Todos los trabajadores tratan de dedicar el menor número de horas al trabajo y el mayor al descanso. La cuestión fundamental es la del cansancio, y el arte del futuro, depende de su justa solución. La justa solución del cansancio. Toda la cuestión consiste en regular los intervalos dedicados al descanso. El descanso se introduce en el proceso productivo en forma de intervalos, el arte asume una función vitalmente necesaria y no un mero pasatiempo, impone al actor el mismo ahorro de tiempo, y obtiene un número determinado de unidades temporales que deben utilizarse al máximo. El taylorismo del teatro deberá permitir representar en una hora todo lo que hoy somos capaces de representar en cuatro. Todo el cuerpo participa en cada uno de nuestros movimientos, las palabras en el teatro son solo bordados en la trama de los movimientos” — Meyerhold, conferencia sobre Biomecanica y actor del futuropronunciada en Junio de 1922.
