"Biggest Bicycle Ever Built"? DC Newspaper 1897

Sometimes I come across things in older newspapers that I can't figure out. In the 'Wheels and Riders' page for the February 6 1897 issue of the Washington newspaper the Evening Star in 1897 there is a line drawing captioned "Biggest Bicycle Ever Built" that seems to be set in Washington.


The illustration showing the "Biggest Bicycle Ever Built"

I spent some time reading the articles surrounding the illustration but they make no mention of this bicycle. In newspapers at this time there was a fair amount of "filler" such as short jokes or anecdotes that don't necessarily track with the rest of the nearby material. Is this some kind of filler? Or it is reference to something real?


Full page view, page 13 of the Evening Star in 1897

Washington, May, Cycling - in 1897

In the late 1890s, at the height of the "bicycle craze," some newspapers catered to their bicycle-mad readers by providing pages of dedicated cycling coverage on a regular basis. The Washington (DC) "Evening Star" had full page coverage of cycling, from local events and activities to races nearby and in other cities, as well as descriptions of new equipment - such pages over time were titled "Wheels & Riders" and "Wheels & Wheelmen."



A full page for cyclists in a Washington newspaper of 1897

The full page of articles from this May 22 issue, for example, covers the problem of crowds of riders on the weekend during good weather in May, and particularly police activities to control "scorchers."

According to the forecast of the weather slight rains are predicted for tomorrow. Last Sunday the weather was propitious in all respects for cycling. The light wind which prevailed the greater part of the day was just sufficient to keep the riders from becoming overheated. An unusually large number of cyclists were out on the roads. Maying parties were numerous and the hunt for the pretty wild flowers seemed to have particular fascination for the riders of the fair sex.

A "Maying party" was apparently just a picnic organized in May, according to "The Complete Hostess" of 1912.

. . . It is understood that the entire police cycle squad of the city have been ordered out on the Conduit road for duty tomorrow. They will endeavor to suppress the scorchers. and in this laudable undertaking they will have the support of the largest number of riders for pleasure purposes only. The arrest of a dozen or more scorchers would have a salutary effect, and doubtless put a stop to the practice for a week or so at least.

In this connection an amusing story is told of an occurrence that happened last Sunday. There were several tandems coming down the road at an eighteen-mile-an-hour gait, when one of the mounted members of the county police force called upon them to slacken their speed. Just as the scorchers passed by the policeman he heard one of the riders urge the others to keep on, telling them that the cop would never be able to catch them. In this the riders were sadly mistaken. The policeman quickly jumped on his horse, and in an instant was after the two tandem teams. With a l00 yards start of him the policeman caught the men inside of 300 yards, and fearing the result the riders of both tandems ran their machine over in a ditch, fortunately escaping injury. They were a very humble and penitent set, and, after considerable pleading, were allowed to go. According to the policeman's theory he can overtake any scorcher on the road. They can cover a mile in something like 2.50 says he, while he would not use a horse which could not run the distance in two minutes or under, for cases of emergency. The other members of the mounted county police force are equally well mounted.

A full page for cyclists from the Washington "Evening Star" in February 1897, in advance or the "cycling season"

These pages often give statistical information about the scale of cycling at the time, which is interesting up to the point where I realize I don't have much of a sense of the modern day equivalents. Also, in 1897 most of the bicycles that would have been purchased would have been used, while today most bicycles in America are in some version of long term storage most of the time. The page from which the graphic shown above was taken includes this:

With a basis of 40,000 wheelmen and wheel women in the city, the following would represent the aggregate cost of bicycles in the District of Columbia alone:

Cost of wheels $3,200,000
Cost of lamps $ 100,000
Cost of bells $ 10,000
Cost of oil and wicks $ 10,000
Cost of costumes and caps $ 600,000
Cost of shoes $ 100,000
Cost of stockings $ 40,000
Cost of repairs $ 120,000
Cost of incidentals $ 200,000
Total outlay for cycling $4,380,000

Finding Mrs. L.C. Boardman on Her Bike, 1895

Mrs. L.C. Boardman shown riding a bike, 1895, Library of Congress

Here is the Library of Congress record
Title: [Mrs. L.C. Bordman, full length portrait, on bicycle, facing left; wearing derby hat]
Date Created/Published: c1895.
Medium: 1 photographic print.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-63619 (b&w film copy neg.)
Call Number: LOT 13714, no. 100 (H) [P&P] Oversize Misc.,

I found this item in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog at the Library of Congress. I go into it from time to time to see if any new (old) bicycle photographs have been added or if I have missed something interesting by not looking close enough in the past.

In examining this photo from 1895 as presented by PPOC I have several comments:

* The person who put this online didn't look at the label on the photograph closely or made a keying error, thus the subject's name is recorded as "Bordman" not "Boardman."

* This digital reproduction was made not from the original print that was deposited at the Library of Congress on Copyright but from a negative that was made in order to satisfy a Photoduplication request some time much later. So this is a copy of a copy, which is one reason it may be somewhat less than sharp (although it is hard to tell).

* The 40 kb JPEG, which for some reason is only available on site at the Library of Congress although it is not really possible for it not to be in the public domain, isn't very good because the quality was greatly reduced in creating an image that loads quickly. Having just one JPEG derivative was more a common practice some years ago but isn't now.

* The TIFF image has some issues with the black areas on her dress, "blocking up," but otherwise the most detailed JPEG in my Flickr set shows details of the bicycle and her cycling attire otherwise. I produced an 850 kb JPEG from the TIFF on the LC site.

I like her derby hat.


Mr. L.C. Boardman, it turns out, was active in the "good roads" movement

Mrs. Boardman may have been photographed in 1895 on a bicycle but after the turn of the century, her husband was apparently active in trying to improve roads for automobiles. In the text above, he is described as giving a lecture to the Automobile Club of America. Oh well. . .

The "Philadelphia Story" of 1958 - Heavy on Cars, Not Bikes

Time to see what the newly available Digital Public Library of America has about bicycles.

They have some relatively new video materials from the National Archives, such as this move, The Philadelphia Story, that is credited to the State Department but was probably done for the then-United States Information Agency to show what a modern American city of 1958 was like. "Cycling" is given as a subject term for this item.

Here is the brief record

Creator: Department of State. Office of the Secretary. (09/1789 -)
Created Date: 1958
Provider: National Archives and Records Administration
Owning Institution: National Archives at College Park - Motion Pictures

Description: Men work in a plant and load cartons aboard a truck, automobiles fill the plant's parking lot, men service cars at gas stations, and girls bicycle along suburban streets. Shows a General Electric plant and its terracing, typical workers homes, modern office buildings, an American Trust Company office, a drive-in bank, and suburban shopping centers.


A parking lot for a company early in the film


A factory - main feature seems to be the parking


Drive-up banking as a sign of progress - in 1958


Busy gas station, of course


Gas only 33 1/3 cents a gallon


Arrival at the shopping mall in a convertible


Parking lot is pretty full!


A "typical" home? Perhaps not, but the owners leave by car - typical


Finally the 15 seconds of cycling shown


A separate scene of cycling, with an adult and a child - and oddly, a very small imported car

The whole film is about six minutes long (for some reason, it is contained in the video file twice). It shows an America heavily oriented on cars, which I suppose is not surprising. Perhaps the 15 or so seconds of cycling shown is generous. Other than people shown walking to and from cars, no one is shown walking.

National Bicycle Week in May, 1919

From the Ogden Standard (newspaper), May 03, 1919.


Don't you wish you had one?

Over four million bicycles are in daily use in the United States. Nearly a million more will come into daily use this year. This is National Bicycle Week-May 3 to 10. This is the week to buy a bicycle to get the greatest good from it this spring. RIDE A BICYCLE

"Complete Streets" in 1905??

On the local WashCycle blog, I recently bumped into this new item video. I was only a little surprised to find that in it, as an example of "complete streets" from over 100 years ago, they use video footage from an American Memory collection.


At about 22 seconds the American Memory footage from 1905 starts, ending at about 40 seconds

The piece is about a town in England where they are implementing a different kind of traffic control approach, in effect reducing barriers between different types of transportation modes, including motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. They support this approach (in small part) with American Memory footage taken from "A trip down Market Street before the fire". This is an unusual set of short films created while driving down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905, before the Great Fire of 1906. It is considered valuable documentation of what the street looked like at that time.


A number of bicycles are shown riding along with the cars, horses, street cars, and pedestrians

The annotation in the LC record and the statements in the video by the British urban planners reflect different analysis of the 1905 footage. In the annotated American Memory record it states that: "The near total lack of traffic control along Market Street emphasizes the newness of the automobile. Granite paving stripes in the street marking ignored pedestrian crosswalks, making the crossing of Market Street on foot a risky venture." The British urban planners, however, regard this as the "natural order" of things that has been ruined by stoplights and that stoplights (etc) only appeared "in the last 50 or 60 years" - in order to "segrate traffic from other aspects of life."

And, as I noted, they do not identify the source of their film clip, or that fact that it was clearly orchestrated (the cars, for example, have been observed to be the same cars over and over again, apparently driving around the block and getting back into view of the filming camera to make it appear there were more cars in the city than there actually were) and likely nothing like the natural state of SF traffic at the time. The kid on the bicycle shown above, for example, looks back to regard with interest the camera shooting the film that now includes him.


Full version of the film done in 1905, originally in three parts

Bicycles appear with some frequency; the riders seem fearless as they operate near the street car.

Capital Bikeshare Adds Shirlington (VA) Station Today

Not there this morning, there during evening commute

This is about a mile from my house, which is closer than I thought Bikeshare would be getting at this point. I haven't been able to think up a case where this would be helpful or useful but intuitively it seems like a good thing that there is one here. There is one right near my office on Capitol Hill. Who knows ~~~