Here’s the Chapter Eleven from Roads Were Not Built For Cars. Every word has been retained from the paid-for book but the illustrations have been replaced with adverts. The print, Kindle and iPad versions of the book are now widely […]
Continue ReadingIn the July 1900 US edition of the mass-circulation Pearson’s Magazine, journalist W.L. Alden wrote of a grandiose plan to construct a long-distance “asphalt cycle track” between Damascus and a Red Sea port, possibly Aqaba. “An enterprising American engineer…proposes to […]
Continue ReadingHistory books have long said that Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during and three years after the First World War, was a huge fan of the automobile. “No more ardent motorist ever occupied the White House […]
Continue ReadingThe rosy cheeks may have been the result of imagined exertion along this improved, macadamised road in Detroit but the mascara and the lipstick seem to suggest the artist wanted to portray this fictional young rider as a confident, independent […]
Continue ReadingIn the 1890s, in both Britain and America, the bicycle was widely used in political campaigns. The League of American Wheelmen was a highly influential organisation at the time. It was non-partisan, bestowing its favours on whichever politicians would promise […]
Continue ReadingIn June 1905, a car carrying US president Theodore Roosevelt was stopped for speeding, by two policemen on bicycles. The car was a Columbia, made by the same company that, in 1877, had brought the first high wheel bicycle to […]
Continue ReadingOakley, the sportshade-to-softwear brand, was started in 1975 by Jim Jannard. He made handlebar grips for MX motorbikes. Five years later he created a pair of goggles which he called the O-frame. In 1984 the company’s fortunes were transformed by […]
Continue ReadingInflator. Check. Spare tube. Check. Pistol. Check. Bicycle magazines of the 1890s carried adverts for guns “designed especially for cyclists.” Sears Roebuck sold mail-order “bicycle rifles”. Round-the-world bicycle tourists carried guns for obvious reasons, ditto for members of the City […]
Continue ReadingOn September 20th, 1893, the Duryea Brothers road-tested the first gasoline-powered American-built automobile. Most people assume it was early cars such as these – and later ones from the likes of Ford and Buick – which paved America. In fact, […]
Continue ReadingThis is a puzzle. In more ways than one. It was published in a puzzle-book from 1914 but the dress and the subject matter don’t ring true for such a date. The League of American Wheelmen had morphed into the […]
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