Motorcycling 1: Development
and Early Racing
Gottlieb Daimler is almost universally credited with inventing the motorcycle, but there should be an asterisk there.
Daimler did indeed attach an internal combustion engine to a two-wheeled vehicle in 1885, but the vehicle was nothing more than a mobile test bench for the engine. When the testing was done, Daimler moved on to four-wheeled automobiles, as he'd always intended, and further development of the motorcycle was left to others.
Actually, if a steam-powered two-wheeler is considered a motorcycle, Sylvester Howard Roper of Roxbury, Massachusetts, beat Daimler by nearly 30 years. Roper began demonstrating his steam velocipede at fairs as early as 1867. The ingenious design used a charcoal-fired boiler with reciprocating cylinders to drive a crank on the rear wheel. Roper was still promoting his invention in 1896, when he died of a heart attack at the age of 73 while racing his steam-cycle on a 1/3-mile board track.
It could be argued that the first real motorcycle was the "motocyclette," designed by Felix Millet of France in 1892. The vehicle was based on a safety bicycle with pneumatic tires, powered by a five-cylinder rotary engine built into the rear wheel. Millet patented the engine, but not the vehicle itself.
Then came the Hildebrand & Wolfmueller, introduced in Munich in 1894. The first production motorcycle, it had a 2.5-horsepower, two-cylinder, four-stroke engine. About 200 of the machines were manufactured.
A French company, DeDion-Buton, in 1895 began producing a motorized tricycle powered by a ½-horsepower, four-cycle engine that was both light in weight and able to produce high RPM. Copied and adapted by other companies, this engine became the power plant for most of the motorcycles that were developed during the next decade.
America's first production motorcycle was the Orient-Aster, introduced in 1898 by the Metz Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, which was powered by a copy of the DeDion-Buton engine connected by a drive belt to the rear wheel.
The same basic engine was used by Oscar Hedstrom for a motorbike he built as a pace vehicle for bicycle racers, but Hedstrom added a very reliable carburetor that he'd designed. A bicycle manufacturer, George Hendee, was impressed by Hedstrom's machine and asked him to build a prototype for a motorized bicycle that could be mass produced at Hendee's plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. The two men soon formed a partnership, the Indian Motocycle Company, founded in 1902. (The "r" wasn't added to the word until some years later.)
In the years before World War I, the Indian was the world's best-selling motorcycle. The company reached its peak in 1913, when the Springfield factory turned out 32,000 motorcycles. Harley-Davidson, the company whose name was to become synonymous with the American motorcycle, was founded in 1903 by William Harley and the three Davidson brothers, Arthur, Walter and William. The original Harleys also used a version of the DeDion-Buton engine.
Indian and Harley-Davidson were by no means alone. Because the motorcycle was widely seen as a much cheaper alternative to the automobile, more than 100 companies manufactured motorcycles in North America at one time or another between 1900 and 1920. Henry Ford's inexpensive and reliable Model T changed that, though. After World War I, the automobile became supreme, motorcycle sales dropped severely, and most of those companies went out business. By 1930, only Indian and Harley-Davidson remained.
Many of the early automobile races had classes for two- or three-wheeled vehicles. The first recorded race for motorcycles only took place on November 29, 1897, at Richmond, England. Charles Jarrot won the 1-mile race in 2 minutes, 8 seconds. A 10-mile race at a horse track in Los Angeles in May of 1901 drew four entries. The winner was Ralph Hamlin in 18 minutes, 30 seconds. Just about a year later, America's first road race for motorcycles was held between Irvington and Milburn, New Jersey.
As in auto racing, motorcycle racing took different shapes in Europe and North America. The European emphasis on was on road racing, especially city-to-city races patterned after those that had been established for automobile races.
The Fédération Internationale des Clubs Motocyclistes (FICM) was founded on December 21, 1904, at the Car and Bike Show in Paris. About a year and half later, it staged the first European Grand Prix in Patzau, Austro-Hungary. The race was patterned after the grand prix races that had already been established for automobiles. Ironically, the FICM collapsed shortly after that race, but it was put back together in November of 1912 and had 30 member countries by 1914.
The first race of true international importance was the Tourist Trophy, inaugurated in 1907 on the Isle of Man, off England's west coast. Originally run over a relatively flat 15.8-mile course, the race was moved to a 37.75-mile mountain circuit in 1911, when the American-made Indian swept the top three places. The winning Indian model was one of the first motorcycles to use a chain drive instead of belt drize, and it was also among the first to have a countershaft gearbox.