The History of Motorcycles

Throughout the centuries man has striven to expand his capabilities through the use of machines. His ever inventive mind has constantly devised ways to use tools to increase his abilities to explore the world around him, to go faster, deeper, higher and further than before. Coupled with his need to find new thrills, new adventures and new modes of transportation, the invention and refinement of the motorcycle seems an inevitable outcome.

For me, the early years of the development of the motorcycle are especially fascinating as they hold of some of mans most bizarre experimental machinery. Before we get started on the history of the motorcycle itself, I feel a short review of it's predecessor, namely the bicycle, is in order, an invention without which the motor bicycle, as they were first called, may well have never come about.

It would seem that Michelangelo conceived of the bicycle as early as the 14th century and his drawing shows a remarkable resemblance to the modern day bike. It had wheels of similar size and even pedals and a leather "chain", albeit without any apparent means of steering.

Though never built, it was a remarkably cleaver design, and early bicycle makers would have done well to study his concepts. There have, in fact, been 4 machines built based on his drawing, attesting to the viability of his design.

The first attempt at actually producing any sort of 2 wheeled conveyance fell on the shoulders of one Comte de Sivrac in the late 1791, though hardy a bicycle as we understand the meaning today. It was crude affair made entirely of wood with no pedals, brakes or even steering. This early machine was referred to as a hobbyhorse and was considered nothing more than a curiosity, or rich mans folly, an attitude that remained for a number of years, until the late 1800's. A person simply sat upon it and pushed it along with their feet in a sort of gliding walk.

Then in 1816-17 (depending on the source) Baron van Drais revised the concept to include a steerable front wheel, but his machine still lacked pedals or brakes, so was not much of an improvement.

Weighing some 50 pounds it was not much better than walking and I for one wouldn't have wanted to try it on any sort of hill, either going up or down! The lack of comfort and condition of the roads at the time gave rise to the term "boneshaker" which stuck with two wheeled vehicles for some time.

Then in 1869 some inventive person named William van Anden in New York added pedals directly to the front wheel, now at last we approach what can be called by modern terms, a bicycle. It also had free-wheeling pedals that allowed the wheel to turn while the pedals remained stationary and had a friction brake on the rear wheel operated by twisting one of the hand grips. Oddly enough these innovations did not appear on many other machines for quite some time.

It quickly became apparent however that the only way to increase speed or distance traveled per rotation of the pedals was to increase the size of the front wheel, leading to what became known as the High Wheeler.

Unfortunately because of the high center of gravity and forward position of the rider, not only was some skill required to mount and dismount this contraption, but should the front wheel suddenly stop, the rider was thrown forward on his head, thus giving rise to the term "Taking a Header".

To overcome this difficulty, the small wheel was moved to the front giving rise to the High Wheeled "Safety" bicycle.

Because of the difficulty in riding a high wheeler with the style of skirts worn by women at the turn of the century they were mostly confined to three wheelers specifically designed with them in mind.

It was not until the very late 1800's that the chain was invented and metallurgy became refined enough to allow the manufacture of one light enough for human powered machines. Along with brakes, pedals and air-filled tires this became the standard and the true safety bicycle came into being. As bicycling became more popular, women, as well as men, began to enjoy the sport more often and many historians credit this new sport with liberating women from the attire of the time, the full skirts, bustier and other such clothing, that limited their ability to enjoy this new form of transportation. It is also credited with the advent of the "bloomer", thus allowing women to ride without showing too much leg.

So now, after nearly 400 years, bicycles returned to the original configuration that Michelangelo had originally envisioned, with a few improvements along the way!

Now that we've looked at the precursor to the motorcycle lets turn our attention to the first motor bicycles.

Curiously enough the first attempts to motorize a two wheeled vehicle were made before the high wheeler had been replaced by the modern safety bicycle, thus explaining why the first motor bicycles had a much larger front wheel, with one exception. In 1818 an attempt was made to fit a steam engine to a Drasiane hobbyhorse (see above) which had two similar sized wheels. This however, did not succeed in capturing a market, as can well be imagined when looking at the picture below of the Vocipedraisiavaporianna, and I therefore only mention it in passing.

It wasn't until 1869 that the first serious attempts were made to produce motor driven bicycles. These very first were powered by steam, and driven by leather belts or as in the case of the Roper Steam Velocipede of 1869, by a system of levers attached to a crank on the driven wheel. At the same time these early two wheelers were being developed, three and four wheeled pedal powered vehicles were being modified to accept engines to create self-propelled vehicles. Although these 3 and 4 wheelers are not motorcycles in the true sense, they were directly involved in development of the motorcycle so I will include them here. All of these early attempts were based on vehicles currently available, with the exception of Ropers' steam driven design, to which motors of one kind or another were being attached. It wasn't until several years later that Gottlieb Daimler designed the Daimler and the first true motorcycle was produced, in that the entire machine, including frame, engine, and wheels, was built specifically for motorized use and was powered by an internal combustion engine. Although still made entirely of wood, and having small outrigger wheels, most motorcycle historian seem to be in agreement that this indeed was the first true motor bicycle.

Besides the need for a reliable power plant, frame geometry, (Stanley, 1886), pneumatic tires (Dunlop, 1888 and Michelin, 1895), roller chains, (Renold, 1880) were needed to be able to produce a fully functional motorcycle that could provide (relatively) reliable two wheeled transportation, be mass produced and sold to the public with some hope of success. The problem of the power plant was solved as early as 1876 by Nikolaus Otto, who based his design of an internal combustion engine by Alphonse Beau de Rochas from 1862. As these various aspects were being resolved almost simultaneously, the motorcycle was taking shape in numerous ingenious minds of the time both in the US and aboard. Keeping in mind that since the first attempts were made prior the advent of such inventions as mentioned above and given the condition of the roads of the time, these early machine were extremely uncomfortable to ride, thus perpetrating the name "bone shakers" as was often used to refer to early bicycles. Not only were some made of wood, but the wheels were solid wood or metal much like wagon wheels, and none had any sort of suspension system.

In order to better reconstruct the various attempts at building the first motor powered bicycles a timeline of the early machines seems appropriate here.

A TimeLine of motor cycles through 1900

Worlds first production motorcycle. It came with a 1428 cc water cooled four-stroke motor producing 2.5 bhp. and a top speed of 25 mph. The motor was parallel twin with one forward piston and one rearward with the connecting rods running to a crank mounted on the rear wheel. Instead of using a flywheel to store energy between firings, it used large elastic cords, one each outbound of the pistons. It was first made in France under license for one year under the name Petrolette and remained in production until 1997.

While there are many other machines that I could include here and no doubt many that were never recorded in the annals of history, I think we have arrived at a good stopping point for this first article in the series. In the next I plan on going into greater detail as regards the progress of early engine design, specifically the internal combustion engine. It was several years before the spray-carburetor and electric ignition was developed, the early attempts at providing fuel atomization and ignition are in themselves worthy of note, not to mention the intricacies of manual spark advance, hand operated transmissions (a few even had two gear cases and could be operated by either passenger or driver!), total loss lubrication systems, exposed valves and water-cooled and air cooled designs.

So until next time, keep the rubber side down and be thankful for all the advances in motorcycles we enjoy today!