A motorcycle may be defined as a self-propelled, engine-powered, two-wheeled vehicle. A steam velocipede built by inventor Sylvester H. Roper may be the earliest known motorcycle…

Invention: Motorcycle, Steam Powered

Year: 1869

Patent: No Record.

Inventor: Sylvester Hayward Roper

Birth: 1823 in Francestown, Now Hampshire.

Death: 1896 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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     A steam velocipede built by inventor Sylvester H. Roper was exhibited and demonstrated at New England fairs and circuses by 1869.

     The motorcycle, built in 1884 by an Englishman named Edward Butler, looked pretty silly. It had three wheels, not two, and was really just a tricycle with a motor. Nevertheless, people were afraid of Butler’s motorcycle so afraid that they asked the government to pass laws against the new machine. One law said that there must always be three people on a motorcycle. Another said that a man with a red flag must run ahead of the motorcycle, waving the flag and yelling to warn people that a motorcycle was coming.

     At about the same time, a German named Gottlieb Daimler invented another kind of motorcycle. Nicholaus Otto, who invented the Otto Cycle, had an assistant, Gottlieb Daimler. Daimler left Otto to develop his own engine. Gottlieb Daimler (who later teamed up with Karl Benz to form the Daimler-Benz Corporation) is often credited with building the first motorcycle in 1885, one wheel in the front and one in the back, although it had a smaller spring-loaded outrigger wheel on each side. It was constructed mostly of wood, with the wheels being of the iron-banded wooden-spoked wagon-type, definitely a “bone-crusher” chassis.

     It was indeed powered by a single-cylinder Otto-cycle engine, and may have had a spray-type carburetor. (Daimler’s assistant, Wilhelm Maybach was working on the invention of the spray carburetor at the time). Paul Daimler, Gottlieb’s young son, was the first to give his dad’s motorcycle a test drive. His daughter is also said to have taken it for a spin, but cracked it up into a tree.

     He drove it with his engine instead of with a pedal arrangement. But there was a catch: Daimler’s motorcycle had two small stabilizing wheels like a kid’s training bike. It was actually a four-wheeled vehicle. Daimler soon went on to build early automobiles. He left it to bicycle builders to develop the two-wheeled motorcycle.

     The first really successful production two-wheeler though, was the Hildebrand & Wolfmueller, patented in Munich in 1894.

1894 ROPER STEAMER’S LAST RIDE

     When 73-year-ole Sylvester Roper showed up at a locak bicycle track in Boston aboard this machine—a steam-powered motorcycle he invented—the young bicycle racers just laughed.

     Here was this old man riding a strange contraption who wanted to race the local hotshots around the one-third-mile Charles River Park track. It wasn’t until the race was on that they realized the old man had come up with something truly amazing.

     On that day—June 1, 1896—Roper took three laps, covering distance in a little over two minutes for an average speed of about 30 mph. Then he tried to go even faster. After all, just a week earlier he had marked off a mile on Dorchester Avenue and completed that with an average speed of about 40 mph.

     The Boston Daily Globe reported the tragic events that followed: “The machine was cutting out a lively pace on the back stretch when the men seated near the training quarters noticed the bicycle was unsteady,” the paper said. “The forward wheel wobbled, and then suddenly, the cycle was deflected from its course and plunged off the track into the sand, throwing the rider and overturning.”

     “All rushed to the assistance of the inventor, who lay motionless beneath his wheel, but as soon as they touched him they perceived that like was extinct.” the paper added. “Dr Welcott was summoned and after an examination gave the opinion that Mr. Roper was dead before the machine left the track.”

     It was later determined that a heart attach killed Roper, who left behind a legacy of steam motorcycles that dated back nearly three decades. His first, on display at the Smithsonian Institution, was built in 1869, nearly 20 years before Gottlieb Daimler created the first internal-combustion motorcycle. About 10 other steam-powered vehicles followed, culminating in this machine, now owned by Robert Boudeman of Richland, Michigan, and on display at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame museum.

     In this final design, Roper’s engine consisted of a small boiler over a coal firebox that was good for about 7 miles on each stoking. As the inventor liked to say, “It would climb and hill and outrun and horse.”

     In 1897 a gasoline tricycle built by Louis S. Clarke of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is a remarkable modern-looking tricycle, converted to self-propulsion by the addition of a single-cylinder gasoline engine mounted just forward of the rear axle. In 1901, a bicycle racer Oscar Hedstrom designed a motorcycle for the Hendee Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, which later became the Indian Motorcycle Company.

     In 1903, 21-year old William S. Harley and 20-year old Arthur Davidson made available to the public the first production Harley-Davidson Motorcycle. The bike was built to be a racer, with a 3 1/8 inch bore and 3 ½ inch stroke. The factory in which they worked was a 10 x 15-foot wooden shed with the words “Harley-Davidson Motor Company” crudely scrawled on the door. The only American motorcycle manufacturer still in existence from the early days is the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, which celebrated its centennial in 2003.

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