The blog

The Red Flag Run, motoring’s flagship event, was created by a bicycle builder

by carltonreid / on January 27, 2012 /

The famous Emanicipation Run of 1896, the drive from London to Brighton, now reenacted each year as one of the key events in British motoring history, was organised by a bicycle designer and bicycle company owner. Harry Lawson was the […]

icanhascheezburger, 1889

by carltonreid / on January 18, 2012 /

Long before there was icanhazcheezburger, cute boys with cats or cashcats.biz, there was a cat-themed advert for a thread company. J&P Coats Sewing Threads is still in existence. In the late 1880s the company advertised its threads with the technological […]

Advice to long distance bicyclists by a world champion, 1874

by carltonreid / on January 16, 2012 /

1. Before starting on a long journey, get a few hours’ sleep. 2. Knickerbockers are the best things to ride in, and thick boots are better than thin ones. 3. Bread and milk is one of the best things to […]

Ferrari, 1877

by carltonreid / on January 09, 2012 /

When high-wheel bicycles are seen at fêtes, or on telly, or on posters for TfL competitions, it’s ten to a penny (farthing) that the gents riding them will be prim, proper and of relatively advanced age. Top hat. Waistcoat. Long […]

Bicyclists: watch out for “stupid people”, 1878

by carltonreid / on January 09, 2012 /

From The Times, London, 5th September 1878 “The bicycle has come to the front, and is fighting for existence. Dimly prefigured in the mythical centaur…the bicycle has now surmounted the difficulties of construction, and adapted itself to human capabilities it […]

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.

The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.

'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.

Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.

To get notification of the paid-for and free publications subscribe to the (infrequent) email newsletter. See below or in the sidebars.

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MOTORISTS' FRONT OF JUDEA: Apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, car ads, and aviation, what have the cyclists ever done for us?

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