Peddling Bicycles to America - Book Review

Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry by Bruce D. Epperson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This seems to be one of those rare cases where the author's eagerness to include much of what he learned in his book diminishes the result. The author obviously knows an incredible amount about the subject - he documents this both in the preface and in the notes and bibliography, but what story is he trying to tell? Based on very last sentence, apparently his main point was to fit bicycle manufacturing history into its proper place between arms manufacturing and automobile mass production. If that's the case, then why did we need so many details about all the members of Albert Pope's extended family?

My review is just as bad as the book in this regard - it assumes you know who Albert Pope is. This in fact is probably the greatest weakness of this book, which is that it is really intended for a specialist audience which seems too bad, since there is so little written on this topic for a more general audience. I think it would have been possible to have the book serve both audiences reasonably well, but that isn't this book.

Epperson debunks various commonly held (in small circles) assumptions or understandings about bicycle production from the 1890s, such as the number of bicycles built and sold by the big companies - it wasn't so many, basically. This seems to be one of his big goals, to correct the record. The book is put forth as a technical and economic history, but I don't quite see how an economic history can spend so little time describing the customers' interests and the market for bicycles generally during this period. Again, it is the "book for specialists" problem. (If this is a problem.)

This is a very interesting book for someone who has already read about this period and knows some of the history but it isn't a very good book for anyone else. Alas.

View my GoodReads list of cycling books and review.

Unprecedented Kickstarter Bicycle Project?

Yeah, this isn't a current Kickstarter proposal but something from a bit over a year ago - but for some reason, I am only noticing it in my search results now. I love perusing Kickstarter projects involving bikes and trying to figure if or why they will or did get funded.



Here's what the project is about ~

We want to encourage people to ride bicycles in their everyday lives, so we invented Contrail.

Contrail turns your bicycle into a paintbrush leaving a temporary mark of your bicycle's path.

You attach it to your bike and as you ride, it leaves a colorful line behind you. When many people ride with Contrail, the result is a colorful path which illustrates where bicycles are riding. We envision artists, non-profits and community organizations using our product to create art, promote their events and celebrate shared spaces.

Contrail uses washable, non-toxic chalking fluid made from eco-friendly pigments. Like a jet's contrail, the lines on the road will fade with time and rain.

So, what they meant wasn't really "community tool" but rather a "community building tool" - by seeing that other bicycles have been out there with their contrails, we would feel community. The benefits are listed (in order or priority, presumably) as "create public art; make biking safer; and, encourage more bicyclists." I don't see how it does anything about the second one and as to the third, it seems more like it encourages existing cyclists, not new ones.

My impression from looking at Kickstarter proposals for bike-related projects is that the video has to make a compelling case and usually "fun" bike projects do better than ones heavily focused on safety. This is certainly a fun project but I am surprised that as many people found the video persuasive - the little chalk lines are hardly noticeable unless you have had 20+ bikes ride by with these units, and is that really going to happen? But the young presenters seem very likable and earnest.

Anyway, how did this work out once they got their money? Apparently it didn't. With Kickstarter, if your proposal is funded, Kickstarter gets the money from the supporters and then takes their cut and the proposal originators get the rest (something over 90 percent). The accountability to do whatever they proposed is apparently pretty minimal. In the comments a year after the funding was achieved, several people write wondering what ever happened, as one put it, "Wow no updates since November 2010?!!!! Did you enjoy the holiday we funded or what?"

They have their own separate web site that does not appear to have been touched since October 2010 when they got their funding.

At any rate, what I meant by "unprecedented" is that there aren't very many truly new ideas related to cycling - one can often find patent applications from over 100 years ago similar to what is supposed to be a new idea today. This does seem to have that going for it - it is a novel idea. Didn't seem to get done, however.

What is a Scorcher (of the 1890s)?

The question came up on another blog as to "what is a scorcher?" in reference to an 1896 pledge by a cyclist not to be one. A cyclist who was a scorcher was commonly understood to ride aggressively at high speeds outside of controlled races risking crashes with other riders, pedestrians, and others. The scorcher was also commonly criticized for his (or her) less than upright seat on the bicycle. (This posture, however, was perfectly OK during a race . . . ) Since the bicycles of the day either had no brakes at all or generally poor ones compared to what we are used to today, the potential for mayhem was that much greater.


A "scorcher" in costume in an 1896 parade in Washington DC

The phrase "scorcher" was well enough known that someone dressed as a devil riding a bike would be understood to be spoofing the idea of being one. This scorcher, however, is sitting up nicely. From the Washington DC Morning Times of July 15, 1896.



A woman could also be a scorcher

Note her aggressive position on the bicycle, not to mention her mannish attire, as portrayed in Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling.

And we have this poem from an 1896 issue of the L.A.W Bulletin and Good Roads.

THE INTROSPECTIVE SCORCHER.

I am the scorcher!
Please observe
The curve
That appertains unto my spine!
With head ducked low
I go
O'er man and beast, and woe
Unto the thing
That fails to scamper when I ting-a-ling!
Let people jaw
And go to law
To try to check my gate.
If that's their game!
I hate
To kill folks, but I'll do it just the same,
I guess,
Unless
They clear the track for me;
Because, you see,
I am the scorcher, full of zeal,
And just the thing I look like on the wheel!

The problem with this fellow is his less than upright posture

A rider's "incorrect position" as shown in The Bicycle: Its Selection, Riding and Care from 1892.

Yes, as much as anything, the problem with scorchers seems to have been their aggressive posture, although why it was OK for the race track but not OK on city streets is a mystery.

If You Ride the Wheel, You Have to Fix the Wheel

Title (apparently given to its by photographer) is "Paying for his fun"

Another photo (that seems to be the only other one digitized) by the mysterious 1890s photographer, F.T. Harmon, who took the two in yesterday's blog entry. I like his sleeve protectors keeping his shirt clean as he polishes up his spokes.

You can see the rear cog in on the wheel - chains were different at this time and there were only half as many teeth on a cog because the chain had a space for a tooth only between every other link.

From the Library of Congress.

1897 Photos Tell a Story

Something about these photos looks staged to me. Pretty surprising to have a fork stem break. Anyway, although probably posed, there he is with his broken bike.


From the Library of Congress

Now comes along this other fellow, but how he is supposed to help repair a problem like this is difficult to say.


From the Library of Congress

Taken by one F.T. Harmon in 1897.

Good Looking Classic

PerformanceBike has a nice looking all-weather traditional looking sort of steel frame road bike for only $999. The CroMo Tange steel frame is made in Taiwan and sold by the British company Charge Bikes. For $1,000 the component selection is excellent and it supposedly weights less (just) than 22 pounds with fenders. That's excellent.



A 2010 version of the same bike (with fenders removed)

Here's a typically laudatory review from the British cycling press.


Features good Shimano 105 and other components

About the only thing I don't find so attractive is that it isn't a lugged frame but that probably reduces the weight over my Bridgestone which in many respects is quite similar.

This is a more interesting bike than a lot of the stuff PerformanceBike carries.

Bicycle Parts Named, 1898 Version

Taken from The Modern Bicycle and its Accessories: A Complete Reference Book for Rider, Dealer and Maker. New York: Commercial Advertiser Association, 1898. Digitized version from Google, a rare example of a book digitized by Google from the Library of Congress General Collections.


Above, the title page

Note that Google only got the first part of the title correct ("The Modern Bicycle") and made part of the title into the author - "By Rider Dealer and Makerr". Oops.




A detailed listing of all the parts of the bike

If you click on the image you can get to a better version on Flickr. It is probably an artifact of Google's efforts that the text is straight but the image of the bicycle is not. Also, the poor image quality is another sign of Google digitization. I think this would have been done very early in their digitization efforts.



An amusing example of the most "up to date" model - a racing bike, presumably

Note the rather large front ring. This almost looks like a bike used with a lead bicycle (with three or four riders) that the rider of this bike would draft behind.