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| In The Beginning - The First Motorcycle |
| Motorcycles
are descended from the "safety" bicycle, bicycles
with front and rear wheels of the same size, with a pedal crank
mechanism to drive the rear wheel. Those bicycles, in turn were
descended from high-wheel bicycles. The high-wheelers were descended
from an early type of push-bike, without pedals, propelled by
the rider's feet pushing against the ground. These appeared
around 1800, used iron-banded wagon wheels, and were called
"bone-crushers," both for their jarring ride, and
their tendency to toss their riders. |
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| The
first motorbike was built in 1868.
It was not powered by a gasoline engine, but by a steam engine.
Its builder was Sylvester Howard Roper.
His steam-powered bike was demonstrated at fairs and circuses
in the eastern US in 1867 and did not catch on, but it anticipated
many modern motorbike features, including the twisting-handgrip
throttle control. There is an existing example of a Roper machine,
dated 1869. It's powered by a charcoal-fired two-cylinder engine,
whose connecting rods directly drive a crank on the rear wheel.
This machine predates the invention of the safety bicycle by
many years, so its chassis is also based on the "bone-crusher" bike. |
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| 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). Daimler
was an an assistant to Nicholaus Otto (who invented the Otto cycle, a kind of engine). In 1885, Daimler
added a gasoline motor to a wooden bicycle, replacing the pedals.
Daimler's motorbike was propelled by an engine, but it was not
the first motor-driven cycle as was previously thought. |
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