Tuesday Congressional Bike Ride

During the summer, several times on my commute to work on Tuesday mornings I would see groups like this of riders escorted by U.S. Capitol Police on their mountain bikes escorting folks who are presumably members of Congress and staff members (or other guests). The numbers varied. This was on Tuesday September 10.


Terrible cell phone photo

On this occasion they and I were sitting on opposite sites of the street waiting for the light. Apparently this is a good weather Tuesday morning regular thing for those who are interested. In this case, you have three riders escorted (accompanied?) by five police on bikes. The Suburban SUV behind them is apparently their SAG wagon.


A high level U.S. diplomat commuting to work in 1914

It isn't clear to me when members of Congress might have taken an interest in cycling - that would require some research, I suppose. I do know of this fellow (shown above), Alvey Adee, was one of the highest government officials of the early 20th century who was known for his cycling prowess, riding to and from work into his 70s. He also took trips to Europe where the purpose was to cycle through France and the like.

Cycling & the Law, 1890s

I was reminded that JSTOR now makes available U.S. journal articles published before 1923 that are in the public domain -- I searched on "bicycle." I was very surprised by the number of articles retrieved in legal journals about bicycle cases. I also found a review of the book The Road Rights and Liabilities of Wheelmen, (by George B. Clementson, of the Wisconsin Bar. Price 5o cents. Chicago: Callaghan & Co., 1895). The review states, "The bicycle as a means of locomotion has evidently come to stay. This essay is therefore opportunely published to define the status of the wheel and to give information to riders of their rights and duties in respect to the public highway. Mr. Clementson has made a successful and exhaustive collection and digest of the decided cases and where there are none upon important points he has ably reasoned from analogy. We commend the book to every wheelman."


This bucolic view of cycling doesn't represent all the potential legal ramifications . . .

It is possible to see the full book that has been digitized from the University of Michigan in Hathitrust.
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001611925

The road rights and liabilities of wheelmen, with table of contents and list of cases.

Preface - The bicycle as a practical vehicle is comparatively recent. Only within the last decade has this means of locomotion and travel assumed an importance which justifies the statement that it is to-day one of the principal agents of passenger transportation. Its comparative novelty of course precludes the wheel from very extensive notice, as yet, by the courts. Yet bicycle law is not lacking, and is constantly receiving accessions. Many important questions in regard to the rights and liabilities of bicyclers are daily arising, and a solution of these is frequently sought by resort to the judicial tribunals. Few of these suits ever reach the courts of last resort; and in consequence the reported cases are not rich in bicycle law, though they contain enough upon the subject to pretty clearly define the status of the wheelman.

Notwithstanding the absence of much case law, the book runs on for 200 pages. The amount of discussion of which roads are available to riders and why alone makes one feel like perhaps the problems we have now aren't so bad.

Human Powered Flying Glider-Bicycle

Pre-WWI French "Aviette", from the Library of Congress

It can be amusing to look through the Flickr Commons doing searches for keywords (like bicycle!) to see what is available. People often add more searchable tags so that photos with bicycles in the background will be part of the search result that otherwise would be missed.


Photo in Flickr Commons identified as having a bicycle in it - but pretty hard to find!

What to Avoid in Cycling - 1895 Article

An 1895 article concludes regular cyclists may suffer from a general vibratory condition which is mischievous and may develop an intoxication of movement among other problems. . .

The usually fee-based JSTOR has articles that are in the public domain loaded in the Internet Archive text section which is nice but they aren't particularly searchable, other than minimal metadata such as journal title, article title and author.

For example, I bumped into the article "What to avoid in cycling" from the North American Review, published in 1895. For whatever reason, the Internet Archive only gives the volume number (161) that tells you this was published in the 161st year that this journal was published, but not what year that was - then I realized you can go to the same article in JSTOR where there is better metadata.

The author Richardson is a medical doctor but his observations are a little broader than what one might expect. He also uses a somewhat extreme version of the kind of prose you meet if you read much from this time period.

From the first my impressions have been always in favor of cycling, and, to some extent, the expression of that favor on certain public occasions has, I think, helped to popularize the movement. I believe the exercise has been of the greatest service to large numbers of people. It has made them use their limbs; it has called out good mental qualities, and it has taken away from close rooms, courts and streets, hundreds of thousands of persons who would otherwise never have had the opportunity of getting into the fresh air and seeing the verdant fields and woods, the lakes and rivers, and the splendid scenery that adorn our land.

So far so good, assuming one can live with this sort of writing style. He soon transitions from positive comments about cycling, however . . .

There are dangers from cycling. The first is the danger of teaching the practice to subjects who are too young. Properly, cycling should not be carried on with any ardor while the body is undergoing its development — while the skeleton, that is to say, is as yet imperfectly developed. The skeleton is not completely matured until twenty-one years of life have been given to it.
. . . . .
We see these errors particularly well marked in the young, now that the cross-bar system of the cycle has come so generally into use. The tendency in riding is for the body to bend forward so as to bring itself almost into the curve of the front wheel, and in this position many riders hold themselves for hours, and the spine more or less permanently assumes the bent position. In plain words, the column becomes distorted, and through the whole life affects the movements of the body.

This rider from the 1890s looks like she could be exposing herself to health risks of various kinds, according to Dr. Richardson

But wait! It gets better - I particularly like this . . .

There is often developed in the cyclist a general vibratory condition of the body which is mischievous and is shown in various acts of movement and thought. There are certain unconscious or semi-unconscious movements of the body which become sensible to the subject himself at particular moments when great steadiness is called for, as, for instance, when sitting for a photograph. There is also shown an over desire for rapidity of motion, as if it were necessary at every moment to overcome time and curtail distance by labor of an extreme degree. Lastly, there is developed a kind of intoxication of movement which grows on the mind by what it feeds on and keeps the heart under the impression that it is always requiring the stimulation of the exercise.

New Video Player to Embed from Library of Congress

Title Stanford University, California

Created/Published United States : Edison Manufacturing Co., 1897. Format Film, Video Dates 1897 Location California, Palo Alto Language English Subjects Bicycles, California, College Buildings, College Students, Cyclists, Palo Alto, Palo Alto (Calif.), Stanford University, Stanford, Leland, Universities and Colleges From the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/item/00694307

From F.Z. Maguire catalogue: Taken at the above University, noted the world over, being the personal gift of the late Senator Leland Stanford. The view shows an immense arch in the background through which are seen coming groups of students, some walking, others on bicycles. The figures show life size, clear and distinct. The ivy covered walls of the building form the background to a pleasing picture.

The video doesn't have much cycling action, but the whole thing (not including the LoC "bumpers" (ie, branding) doesn't last a full minute. There are two cyclists seen at the beginning, casually riding with those on foot, and one just barely visible at the end.

This player has "embed" code available directly from the LoC site, which is nice. I guess. But it isn't a player that works with an iPad, so I am actually not so crazy with it, particularly since the same video is available on the LoC YouTube channel and can be more easily embedded from there and plays on an iPad.

Same video but from YouTube

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.

75,000 Pageviews

This is for 433 published blog posts starting in May 2007.

When I started this blog, my main interest was in acquiring some firsthand experience using Blogger and Flickr to present interesting (hopefully) historical information I would find related to cycling in the 1890s in online digitized collections at the Library of Congress and similar institutions, sometimes making comparisons to present day cycling. As it has worked out, I have sometimes blogged about present day cycling with no reference to historical aspects of cycling and have also blogged about periods other than the 1890s. But other than this (and one other) 'meta' blog post that is about blogging (but blogging that is about cycling) my posts are all about cycling, at least.


As of this morning, this blog has had 75,000 pageviews (says Blogger)

I don't really understand my traffic over time. My pageview numbers were increasing fairly steadily until early 2011, and then the growth stopped and in fact the numbers fell off quite a bit. On some level of course it doesn't matter - I don't have any advertising. But I was still pleased that more people were looking at the stuff I had assembled. (The numbers were not and have never been influenced for this blog by "referer spam" overall - from time to time one of those sites will appear briefly in my stats, then disappear after a few days. The falloff can't be attributed to that.)

This blog is a little different than most because on a typical day I get most of the traffic from Google searches - that was true at the pageview high point and is true now. People are mostly not visiting because the are regular visitors of this blog but because they did a Google search on "Conan Doyle bicycle" and came to the blog post I did on his statement about the benefits of cycling. (My main contribution is that I extracted from the Scientific American article everything he said and not just the line usually quoted plus I show you the page as published.)

For a while I would try to be clever and come up with blog posts that I thought would be appealing for some other "bike bloggers" who are vastly more popular to link to - as a result, the Washcycle blog appears in my "all time" stats - but the decrease in the traffic can't be (much) attributed to my not doing that any more, either.

I find it hard to believe that the amount of searching for bicycle related topics that brought traffic to this blog has fallen off - my observation would be that the appearance of certain search terms in my "stats" has been remarkably consistent - so I have to wonder if my not taking up the many (insistent, pesky) offers from Blogger to use Google Plus to support my blog has a negative effect in that those bloggers who do use it get a higher page rank in Google search. I suppose I could have been aggressive about trying to connect with people through Google Plus but it seemed pointless for a blog that relies on search.

In the end, I can't know what the reasons are for this. I still blog at least once a week and I still find things to blog about that seem to attract enough pageviews over time to motivate me to keep at it. I still learn about cycling history and about the resources available on the Internet. And I continue to be pleased to see a fair amount of traffic from many other countries.

Cheers.