The Invention and Evolution of the Motorcycle
The invention of the motorcycle is often credited to American innovator Sylvester Roper who, in 1867, produced a “velocipede” or “steam-cycle,” a motorized bicycle with a two-cylinder, coal-powered steam engine and twist-grip controls on the handlebars.
Tragically, but appropriately, Roper died in the seat of one of his steam-cycles in 1896 at the age of 73. Having worked to improve the design and function of his “Roper Steam-Cycle” for over twenty years, Roper, who lived and worked in the Boston area, decided to demonstrate its capabilities on the Charles River bicycle racetrack. Roper reportedly met with disbelief and amusement when he claimed that his new-fangled contraption could outrace the bicyclists present. However, in the race that followed, Roper won handily, achieving speeds of about thirty miles an hour and completing a mile in two minutes, twelve seconds. Unfortunately, after the race, while Roper was trying to make the steam-cycle go even faster, the front wheel began to loosen, and Roper was thrown off the track. When spectators ran to his aid, they discovered that he was dead, although he had apparently expired as a result of a heart attack rather than crash-related injuries.
Although Roper probably developed the first steam-cycle, he was not the only inventor to come up with the idea for such a vehicle. The Frenchman Louis-Guillaume Perraux patented a similar motorized bicycle that operated on steam power in 1868, one year after Roper came out with his design.
Roper’s steam-cycle paved the way for many future innovations in motorcycle design and development, but some consider the motorized bicycle invented by German engineer Gottlieb Daimler in 1885 with the assistance of Wilhelm Maybach to be the first “true” motorcycle. Even if it was technically not the first motorcycle ever produced, Daimler’s “Reitwagen” has the distinction of being the first gasoline-powered motorcycle. In overall design, Daimler’s vehicle was rudimentary; although Daimler designed the frame specifically to accommodate the demands of motorization, it was essentially a standard wooden bicycle with an engine mounted at its center. However, that engine was truly innovative. Unlike the Rube-Goldberg-esque steam engines that powered the earlier “steam-cycles” with complicated systems of levers, cranks, and leather belts, Daimler’s motorcycle ran on a single-cylinder, four-stroke internal combustion engine known as an “Otto-Cycle engine,” which had been patented by Nikolaus Otto, for whom Daimler once worked. The design of the Reitwagen’s frame was based on the “safety bicycle,” which had front and back wheels of equal size and used a pedal crank to steer the back wheel.
After pioneering the gas-powered motorcycle, Daimler moved on to work on automobiles, and it was up to the innovative engineers who became the first motorcycle manufacturers to push forward the evolution of this new type of motorized vehicle. The first motorcycle produced for sale to the public was the Hildebrand & Wolmuller, which appeared in Munich, Germany in 1894. The Hildebrand model included the innovation of a water-cooled engine with a radiator. In 1895, E.J. Pennington from Milwaukee, Wisconsin demonstrated a gas-powered motorcycle, claiming that it could reach a top speed of nearly sixty miles an hour. Pennington is believed to be the inventor who officially introduced the term “motorcycle” into the lexicon. Also in 1895, in France, a small, light, four-stroke engine, known as the “DeDion-Buton engine” was introduced. The DeDion-Buton engine made possible the eventual mass production of motorcycles for public use. The first American-produced motorcycle for general public sale was the Orient Aster, which appeared in 1898 in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In 1903, three young and brilliant engineers—William Harley and the brother Arthur and Walter Davidson—partnered to form the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Their plan was to market the motorcycle as a new form of convenient motorized transportation, but their machines boasted such high-quality engines that they became popular racing vehicles as well. In 1913, Harley Davidson designed the BTR, which, with an eight-valve engine, became one of the earliest motorcycles used in circuit racing. Harley-Davidson went on to become arguably the most innovative and influential motorcycle manufacturer of the twentieth century. Around the same time that Harley-Davidson was forming, engineers Carl Hedstrom and George M. Hendee founded the Hendee Manufacturing Company, which later changed its name to Indian. Under the Indian name, Hedstrom and Hendee’s company became the best-selling motorcycle manufacturer and continued to occupy that position until the onset of World War I, when Harley-Davidson began to outpace Indian in sales. Although Harley-Davidson has long since ceded its market dominance to Honda and other Japanese motorcycle manufacturers, it is the only early American motorcycle manufacturer from this era still in existence, and, even today, its name conveys a certain degree of prestige and mystique among motorcycle lovers.
Motorcycle racing emerged as a phenomenon in the late 1890s and became institutionalized after the turn of the twentieth century. The first official American motorcycle race took place on a horse-track in Los Angeles in 1901. A year later, the first American motorcycle road race took place in New Jersey. In 1906, the first European Grand Prix was held in what was then Austro-Hungary.
By the early twentieth century, a number of motorcycles were available for purchase and use by the public. These early motorcycles had low-power engines and low top speeds, compared to machines of today. The frames were made of wood and the wheels had no suspension system. The vibration of the engine often made the vehicles difficult and uncomfortable to ride. These early models were often referred to as “bone-shakers.”
The Evolution of the Motorcycle Through the Twentieth Century:
1922-1929: In the years following World War I, Harley-Davidson Motor Company ascended to the position of the world’s most innovative and influential motorcycle manufacturer. By 1920, Harley-Davidson had become the largest seller of motorcycles in the world, a title it would enjoy until the end of the decade. Throughout the 1920s, the motorcycle increased steadily in visibility and popularity and began to occupy a permanent, fixed place in a motorized culture that was falling more and more in love with technology and machines, particularly motorized vehicles of all sorts. In terms of the motorcycle’s evolution, the decade was characterized by rapid technological innovations and improvements, and Harley-Davidson led the way. However, one of the most influential motorcycle designs of the 1920s was not a Harley-Davidson at all but a BMW, the 1923 R32, characterized by a transverse, opposed double-cylinder engine and a design aesthetic influenced by the Bauhaus school of art and architecture then prevalent in Germany.
1930-1944: Up until the 1930s, which saw the Great Depression and America’s entry into World War II, the manufacture and sale of motorcycles had been on the rise as had the pursuit of motorcycle riding as a form of transport and entertainment and motorcycle racing as a sport. The momentum behind this trajectory began to level off with the economic crisis of the early thirties and, especially, the war, during which many of the young, adventurous men for whom motorcycles held the greatest attraction entered the armed forces and fought overseas against the Axis Powers. Only the biggest and best of the American motorcycle companies then in existence survived. Two that came through with flying colors were Harley-Davidson and Indian. In 1940, as the effects of the depression were waning, Indian came out with one of the first “luxury bikes,” the revamped Indian Chief, an improvement on a 1920s model which featured large, curvy fenders, a powerful engine, and an impressive (for the time) top speed of 85 mph. The Indian Chief was the prototype for the cruiser, a motorcycle model that would become particularly popular with baby boomers in the 1980s.
1946-1958: In the years following World War II, interest in motorcycles surged. Men returned from the war with an urge to experience the freedom of the road. The motorcycle offered just the right antidote for post-combat restlessness. In the 1950s, as post-war society homogenized, America’s paranoia over communism reached a feverish peak, and “settling down in a nice house” in one of America’s shiny new suburbs became the new middle-class ideal, the motorcycle came to symbolize of the societal outsider. The wanderlust of the motorcycle rider and the recklessness of the motorcycle racer were now seemed antithetical to mainstream American values. However, there was still something in the American spirit that envied the outsider-motorcyclist. The motorcycle still represented freedom and escape, and while the motorcyclist was viewed as a bit of a “ne’er-do-well” or daredevil, there was still something intriguing about the idea of a solitary adventurer who traveled light and cared more for the lure of the road than for material comforts. The motorcycle came to be associated with beatnik literature, and motorcycle riders epitomized a certain sense of “coolness” in youth culture. In the movies, motorcycle culture was represented by such films as 1953’s “The Wild Ones.”
1960-1969: Motorcycles became more popular than ever before as the baby-boomers, the children of post-World-War-II era, entered their late teens in the 1960s. Japanese motorcycle manufacturers broke into the American market and began setting the foundation for a dominance that has still not eroded, even today. The mainstreaming of the motorcycle owes much to Honda, which, in 1962, blanketed America with the first large-scale motorcycle marketing campaign, based on the slogan “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.” In 1958, there were some 500,000 motorcycles registered in the United States. By 1965, that number had almost tripled, and, in 1970, there were an astounding 2.8 million motorcycles registered in the United States. Even as motorcycles became more mainstream, they also came to symbolize the societal outsider even more intensely in the American mind as epitomized by the 1970 film “Easy Rider.” Motorcycles became a central icon of the 1960s counterculture movement, associated with the new youth music known as “rock and roll” and with anti-war and other political street protests. As crime surged in the United States, the image of the motorcyclist took on a darker tone. The motorcyclist was now not only a “bad boy;” he was dangerous, menacing, a leather-jacketed “hood.” The concept of the motorcyclist as criminal was reinforced by the emergence in the popular consciousness of the concept of “motorcycle gangs.”
1969-1978: The 1970s saw the ascendancy of the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers. By the mid-1970s, Honda had taken the title of world’s biggest selling motorcycle maker, and it has held that position consistently ever since. Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki were not far behind. Honda continued to appeal to the masses with the development of CB750 Four which introduced the electric starter and front disk brakes. Along with the other Japanese manufacturers, Honda specialized in smaller, less intimidating motorcycles that anyone, even a grandmother, could ride. Until Honda came on the scene and began designing motorcycles that were truly vehicles for the masses, the “roughness” of the motorcycle ride was part of its cachet. The more noise and vibration, the better for the beatnik and counterculture motorcyclists of the 1950s and 1960s. That all changed when Honda began mass-producing motorcycles with quiet four-cylinder turbine engines that offered smooth and comfortable rides. Motorcycle ridership reached unprecedented highs in the 1970s, but by the end of the decade, motorcycle sales had slumped drastically. The baby boomers responsible for the explosion of motorcycle culture in the early 1960s began having families and settling into middle-age and a sense of societal normalcy. As sales plummeted, motorcycle manufacturers developed new models, including the cruiser, the tourer, and the sport bike, in order to appeal to certain attractive sub-markets. However, these efforts were, initially, unavailing.
1982-1989: After hitting a trough in the late 1970s, motorcycle sales began it rise again throughout the 1980s. By the late 1980s, the motorcycle business was booming again as baby boomers returned to the motorcycle to recapture their youth and introduced the joys of motorcycling to their children. As a culture of materialism and consumerism rose throughout the 1980s, the motorcycle became a status symbol and a standard acquisition for those looking to spend their stock-market gains. For men in their late thirties, forties, and fifties, the motorcycle had replaced the little red sports car as the vehicle of choice for men suffering through mid-life crises. By the close of the decade, motorcycles began to capture the imaginations of young people as well. A renewed interest in the culture of earlier decades, especially the 1950s and 1960s, and the growing trendiness of the “retro” style made motorcycles a hot item among the children of the baby boomers, many of whom were just about to come into their own as consumers.
1993-1998: The 1990s saw an interest in motorcycles as fashion and art. Motorcycle designers such as Massimo Tamurini of Ducati and Eric Buell contributed to the emergence of “designer motorcycles,” pricey models customized for the individual and prized as much for their aesthetics as their functionality and technological performance.
At the same time, the new motorcycle models produced in the 1990s were incredibly complex from a mechanical point of view. Some of the stand-out models of the decade from a technological standpoint include the MV Agusta 4 and the Britten V1000.
Still, motorcycles were as much a cultural artifact as a technological marvel in the 1990s. As the millennium approached, a new academic and artistic interest in the cultural meaning of motorcycles emerged. This interest in the motorcycle as art and fashion found its culmination in an exhibition on motorcycles that appeared at the Guggenheim Art Museum in October 2001.
Present: As the turn of the twentieth-century has renewed concerns about the environment and non-renewable resources, attention has turned from the aesthetics of the motorcycle to its basic practicality. Motorcycle riding is on the increase throughout the world simply because motorcycles are cheaper to fuel, operate, and maintain, and they use less fuel. Today’s motorcycle designers are focusing less on creating aesthetically attractive machines and more on making vehicles that can cope with the grim environmental realities of global climate change in the new millennium. Honda has developed a hybrid motorcycle, the Honda Insight, that gets seventy miles to the gallon. Meanwhile, the military is using a Kawasaki model that runs entirely on diesel and gets 120 miles to the gallon, and a prototypical electric motorcycle has been developed. At present, these innovative models occupy only a small corner of motorcycle manufacturing, but, as time goes by, motorcycle models that draw upon these innovations are almost certain to become more widely available, and more attractive, to the general public.
