In the
Beginning
... it would
only be fair to comment that men only dreamed of making a
vehicle that was powered by an internal combustion engine
and many had tried to make their dreams a reality.
History of
the motorcycle reveals..."The craze had begun in Europe in
1885, when two Germans, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz,
working independently within sixty miles of each other
joined forces with the Cologne engineer Nikolaus Otto.
Daimler's
Einspur ("single-track") two wheeler is considered the first
motorcycle; Benz's little three-wheeler is credited with
being a primitive automobile. This trio--Otto, Benz, and
Daimler, in the company with Wilhelm Maybach (who, with
Daimler, developed the basis of modern
carburetion)--launched civilization into the era of powered
automobiles, boats, and aircrafts."
Amongst a
handful of brilliant minds, the turn of the century was the
beginning of a taste of technology that was yet to come.
"The Safety
bicycle, developed by the English Rover company in Coventry
in 1885 had offered enormous impetus to modern
transportation. Chain driven, with equal-sized wheels fore
and after, and employing the all-metal construction and
wire-spoke wheels first seen on the Ariel bicycle fifteen
years earlier, the Safety bicycle was a major hit. By the
early 1890s, four million Americans, men and women alike,
were astride bicycles, and the industry, led by
Massachusetts industrialist Albert Pope, was generating
revenues of $60 million a year."
In the
spring of 1903 a young Harley and Davidson produced their
first motorcycle taking the world by storm but their glory
was to be over-shadowed by a pair of bicycle mechanics,
Wilbur and Orville Wright from Daytona, Ohio who took some
of that limelight with a crude machine named 'Flyer 1'. This
machine was "powered by a twelve-horsepower engine that
would leave the ground for 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina."
"In
Detroit, a few hundred miles east of Milwaukee, across Lake
Michigan, Henry Ford, following a series of false starts,
incorporated the Ford Motor Company and began production of
a small eight-horsepower Model A two seater that would be
sold to 658 customers within the first twelve months. The
age of the gasoline engine was about to accelerate to
maximum speed."
For a
person to imagine that almost simultaneously at the turn of
the century, in three different locations, the motorcycle,
airplane and car was born. It was going to be a new world
of gasoline powered transportation and William Harley and
the Davidson brothers were right there and saw a vision that
would make them a household name.
It all
begun with Harley and Arthur Davidson who worked at "Barth
Manufacturing, a small Milwaukee machine shop, when, in the
late 1890s, a German draftsman named Emil Kruger showed them
drawings of French single-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine
based on the Otto principle. The pair then began creating
their own patterns for a small engine , not for a motorcycle
but to power a small boat. Arthur Davidson had some patterns
for neighbor Ole Evinrude, who is credited with creating the
first outboard motor, and the connection is logical,
although within a year the young pair had transferred their
energies to building an engine to serve as auxiliary power
for a bicycle."
They were
logically convinced that "motorized bicycles, or
"motorcycles," could serve as reliable transportation for
the masses.", but they weren't the only brilliant minds that
saw the same vision.
"A pair of
Springfield, Massachusetts, businessmen named George Hendee
and Oscar Hedstrom, who in 1901 teamed up to build Indian
motorcycles--and were destined to become archrivals of the
Milwaukee trio."
The race was
on and the "English manufacturers were entering the
motorcycle business, including such brands as Excelsior
(1896), Matchless (1899), Ariel and Norton (1902), and J.A.P.
(1903), all whom would endure to struggle with
Harley-Davidson for market share in the decades to come."
The trio might
not have had a "particular design or mechanical ingenuity.
They were uneducated technically, had little or no financial
resources and no reputation in the business world. Beyond
being intelligent young men with a bent for mechanics, they
were virtually interchangeable with literally thousands of
workaday Americans dreaming of glory in the burgeoning
business of motorized transport."
1903-1907
Harley and Davidson knew their American dream could be
realized and they were bent on succeeding.
Footnote: Harley-Davidson and the search for the American
Soul, by Brock Yates.
(Little, Brown and Company Boston New York London) 1999.
