Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry

by Bruce D. Epperson

Overview

This economic and technical history of the early American bicycle industry focuses on the crucial period from 1876 to the beginning of World War I. It looks particularly at the life and career of the industry's most significant personality during this era, Albert Augustus Pope. After becoming enamored with English high-wheeled bicycles during a visit to the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876, Pope soon started paying Hartford, Connecticut's Weed Sewing Machine Company to make his own brand of high-wheeler, the "Columbia," the first to be manufactured in America in significant numbers. A decade later, Pope bought out that company, and ten years after that, Hartford's Park River was lined with five of Pope's factories. This book tells the story of the Pope Manufacturing Company's meteoric rise and fall and the growth of an industry around it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786447800
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	07/15/2010
Series:	Transportation
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruce D. Epperson is a retired attorney who has written technical works on urban transportation planning (including bicycles) for the Federal Highway Administration, the Transportation Research Board and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He lives in Highland, New York.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments 1

Introduction: A Gala at the Allyn House 7

1 I Was Not a Bad Boy, Only Mischievous 13

2 Colonel Pope Goes to Hartford 24

3 The Great Patent Wars 35

4 Building the Mass Market 55

5 The Coming of the Safety Bicycle 74

6 Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic and Roads 89

7 The Great Bicycle Boom 105

8 The Motor Carriage 129

9 Troubled Times 149

10 The Bicycle Trust 171

11 Picking Up the Pieces 189

12 After Pope 207

13 All Gone to Their Account 229

14 The Long Road Home 235

Chapter Notes 247

Bibliography 277

Index 289

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Technology and Culture