Single Ad for Cycle Shop & "Metadata"

In searching the many websites that provide digitized materials from the 1890s (of particular interest to me) I can say that the amount of "metadata" provided by different organizations for digitized "content" (stuff from their collections) can vary widely. In particular as to whether there is anything relevant to cycling history.


From Путеводитель по Киеву и его окрестностям с адресным отделом, планом и фототипическими видами Киева (Guide to Kiev and its environs . . . 1890)

Thanks to extensive annotations, the World Digital Library generally has more searchable target terms available than many sites. Here is the "description" of the digitized Guide to Kiev and Its Environs, Including an Address Section, Map and Phototype Views of Kiev (1890)

This 1890 guidebook provides comprehensive information for visitors to Kiev. It includes a history of the city and details of places of interest, such as Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the cathedrals and other churches, historical monuments, public gardens and wooded areas, public and administrative buildings, and bridges over the Dnieper River. Included is useful information for travelers, such as timetables for trains, steamships, and other passenger transport and a directory for hotels, restaurants, doctors, banks, stores, baths, libraries, clubs, and city and church authorities. The guide anticipates by 24 years Baedeker’s guide to Russia and is much more detailed. Also included are maps showing key attractions and local streets. The guide was published at the time when Kiev was becoming a significant industrial center, which is reflected in the directory and advertising section. Pages of advertisements are devoted to various agricultural machines, equipment for steam and water mills, pipes, steel for building railroads and bridges, steam engines and boilers, and other industrial products. More personal items on offer include fabrics, bicycles, hats, wine, fruit trees, furniture, and teas.

I was hoping to find several such ads, but it turned out there was just the one ad for a bicycle shop, B. Kaul'fus (as rendered in Cyrillic, here transliterated). Although Ukraine became the center of bicycle production in the Soviet Union, the bicycles for sale at this time in Kiev are said to be imports from Germany and England. This was very early in the days of "safety bicycles," that is bicycles with two equal sized wheels and use of a chain to transmit power from pedals to rear wheel rather than a "penny farthing" high wheel bicycle. It is somewhat remarkable that for a single ad bicycles are mentioned in the annotation.

Of course there are costs to everything - with its lengthy detailed annotations in seven languages, there are only somewhere just over 8,000 items in the World Digital Library. Few have anything to do with cycling history. But what there is can it seems be found.

Peter Akmatow-Dombrowski, Russian Racer of 1896

From The Referee and Cycle Trade Journal issue for March 26, 1896.

RUSSIA'S FUTURE CHAMPION - Peter Akmatow-Dombrowski and His Many Brilliant Performances.

Peter Akmatow-Dombrowski, the subject of this sketch, will, it is safe to predict, play a leading role on Russian race tracks the coming season; in fact, there is little doubt that he is the best man on the track in Russia to day. He is a native of Kiew and twenty-one years of age. Although active at racing since his fifteenth year, he was not prominent until 1895, when at Moscow he came within a fraction of an inch of winning the Russian mile championship from Djakow.



This being the first time he had met the faster men of his country, his performance caused intense surprise. All previous minor events in which he started were won by him, this being his first defeat. He holds the Eussian unpaced records for the quarter, eighth, and half verst, and the quarter English mile.

Coverage of foreign cyclists and particularly outside of western Europe at this time was quite unusual.

Bicycle Crime in Ukraine

I found this news item online, in Russian, about a bicycle theft in Ukraine. The following is my edited translation. (I started with the Google version . . . )

In Kharkiv two drunken women robbed a pensioner

December 16, 2011

According to the correspondent of the Kharkiv Press Service of the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (that is, the police) in the Kharkiv region, the incident happened in the village Kochetovka Zachepilovskii area.

That evening the two women were at a party. They eventually tried to go home when the buses were no longer running. They did not have money for a taxi. They decided to "borrow" the money or any transportation from a 72-year-old local resident.

Knowing that the pensioner lived alone, the women boldly opened the gate to his yard and began banging on the windows of the house. They called the man into the yard and asked him to give them money or a bike to ride home. The surprised man opened the gate and tried to drive the drunk women out of the yard, explaining that he did not know them and did not plan to give them anything. Then they pushed the owner, went into the hallway and found the keys to the shed where there was a bicycle, and left. The man called the police - the suspects were arrested for the the crime and spent a few days in jail. The women again came to the pensioner's home and they took metal materials from his yard in order to sell them for scrap. "They have been detained [again] as criminals," - the press service says.

This is now a criminal case under Article 186 (robbery) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

A bicycle in this part of the world

Incidentally, the main factory for sports bicycles in the former Soviet Union was not far away, the Khar'kov Bicycle Factory - here is one of their catalogs.