CYCLE:
“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
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
