The Need For Speed: How Bicycle Racing Brought the First Motorcycle to America

  It's hard to understand the history of any one thing, or moment in time, without taking a step back to look at the bigger picture. History is like a spiderweb, each strand that you try to focus on intersects with countless others. To understand the birth of the modern motorcycle, we need to understand excitement fueling the late 1800s. What was it that inspired men to continue strapping an engine to their two-wheeled contraptions and defy death? There was undoubtedly safer and more reliable modes of transportation. 

  The world was still feeling the high from the Industrial Revolution. It was a new age with new technology being unveiled practically every day. Edison perfected the light bulb and Bell made his famous first telephone call. The world was becoming modern and civilized. America's Civil War was won, the South was being rebuilt, and the wild west was tamed. It was the Victorian Age and cities were bustling with energy. The whole world was on the move and a new mode of transportation was gaining popularity. 

  A Scottish blacksmith is said to have been the first to build a pedal driven bicycle in 1839. It had iron-hooped wheels and wooden spokes. In 1869 the "high wheel" bicycle was developed in Paris. It used wire spoked wheels that weighed much less. The pedals were attached directly to the front wheel's axle. The larger the front wheel, the farther the distance traveled for each revolution. The oversized front wheel alowed for increased speeds and comfort over rough surfaces. (Note the front brake in the photo of the same design used on Hildebrand and Wolfmüller's Motorrad)

  The daredevils of the world found a new pastime. The thrill of speeding around on two wheels soon led to speed contests and formal racing. The drawback of the high wheel design was the seating position high above the front wheel. It made for a substantial fall to the ground in the event of a spill. A "header" over the front end often proved fatal. 

  In 1880 the "roller chain" was invented. This paved the way for the development of the "safety bicycle" in 1885. The safety bicycle used a sprocket and chain assembly to drive the rear wheel. This allowed for a lower and more rearward seating position and tires of equal size. The rider sitting closer to the ground, resulted in less chance of serious injuries as result of a fall. Varying the sprocket sizes for different drive ratios allowed for speeds even greater than the high wheel design.

   Soon there were multiple manufacturers turning out countless variations of the safety bicycle. Racing events began to be held across America and manufacturers sponsored racing teams to compete on the tracks. People filled the stands to watch the excitement and put their money down to own a bike like the champions rode.

  Charles Herman Metz was an engineer and bicycle racer, winning the New York state championship in 1885 on a high wheel bicycle. In 1893 he convinced a group of business men to back him in the founding of the Waltham Manufacturing Company of Waltham Massachusetts. It  manufactured and sold a variety of machines under the names Orient, Waltham, and Waltham-Orient. The company was well known for it's racing bicycles and it's winning riders. 

  Charles Metz was soon looking for a better way to train his racing team and to build their speed. Among it's other ventures, the Waltham Co. also imported and distributed small internal combustion engines of French design, the Aster and the De Dion-Bouton. Luckily for us, Metz soon put two and two together, realizing that he could fasten one of these engines to a frame similar to the safety bicycles his company was building. He could then use this machine to run ahead of his bicycle racing team to set the pace. 

  The idea was a great success. Using a tandem design, his first "pacer" had a pilot mounted in front to steer and a passenger in the rear to operate the engine. The bicycle racers chased it around the track, working to keep up and maintain a steady pace. Soon the Waltham racing team was one of the winningest in the country and the Waltham Co. had a new product to market, listing their single seat pace machine as the "Orient Motor-Cycle" in it's 1899 catalog. Practically instantly, other bicycle enthusiasts began to build similar machines. The American motorcycle industry was born.