An Alternative History of Bicycles and Motorcycles: Two-Wheeled
Transportation and Material Culture accounts for the
nineteenth-century creation and development of two-wheeled
vehicles, both human-powered and motorized. Specifically, the book
focuses on the period from 1885 (which saw the appearance,
simultaneously, of the Safety bicycle and the Einspur, the first
motorcycle) to 1920, while exploring implications for later
bicycling and motorcycling. We argue that invention of these
vehicles, rather than the product of gifted individuals, should be
seen as the consequence of a number of historical, economic,
cultural and political forces that intersect so unpredictably that
the notion of a genius inventor is reductive. The common
evolutionary model of development from the bicycle to the
motorcycle oversimplifies both the technology and its origins.
Stripping the vehicles of all their material and cultural
associations, such a model fails to advance our understanding of
the devices, their creators, and their riders. Taking a
contemporary vehicle and tracing its lineage creates a false sense
of evolutionary necessity in its creation, and fails to account for
the many possible developmental paths that were, for whatever
reason, abandoned. By contrast, our book adopts a material culture
approach, a form of inquiry that stresses the connections between
artifacts and social relations. We consider not simply the bicycle
and motorcycle as material objects but focus also on the complex
socio-political and economic convergences that produced the
materials, materials that in turn themselves shaped the vehicles’
appearance, function, and adoption by riders.
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