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 ReadingTo the New Year. BY A BICYCLER. All hail, O first of Jan.! thou greatest day (For swearing off) of all the merry year; When whiskey topers drop to lager bier, And beardless youths demand a “raise” in pay. When […]
Continue ReadingPity.* They look cute. But maybe you need the waxed ‘tache to truly make the look work for you? The 25 cent cotton caps – and the more expensive silk ones beneath – were advertised for sale in an 1889 […]
Continue ReadingThe cartoonist in the League of American Wheelman’s weekly magazine didn’t pull any punches, in 1889, when he imagined the punishment that ought be meted out to those horse-and-carriage drivers who were less than kind to cyclists. They should be […]
Continue ReadingColonel John Jacob Astor was an interesting chap. Stinking rich, too. He was one of the wealthiest men of America’s Gilded Age. Educated at Harvard, he thought highly enough of his own literary talents to write a science fiction novel. […]
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 ReadingSo popular was cycling in the 1890s that American church leaders feared that congregations would be dangerously depleted by those who preferred to ride rather than attend church. An 1890s clergyman in New Haven, who probably didn’t know that the […]
Continue ReadingThirty miles of protected bike lanes have been opened in Chicago, part of a planned, 645-mile network of joined-up on-street bikeways. This is impressive, but it’s not new. Chicago was once certifiably bicycle-mad. For a few brief years in the […]
Continue ReadingAutomobiles existed in the 1890s but they were crude, dirty, expensive, hard to drive, and prone to mechanical breakdowns. The transportation revolution of the age was the bicycle. Eleven years after the introduction of JK Starley’s Rover Safety bicycle and […]
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