Bicycling
Although most Americans in the twentieth century associate bicycles and bicycling with children, Europeans, or fitness buffs, a bicycle craze among adults swept the United States in the late 1880s and 1890s that stimulated much excitement and new ways of thinking about transportation. Capitalists created a thriving and valuable bicycle manufacturing industry and a well-developed trade press, as leaders of substantial influence emerged and the industry made rapid advances in design and technology. Major pioneers in aviation (the Wright brothers) and the automobile industry (Henry Ford) got their start as bicycle designers and mechanics, applying their expertise to new motorized forms of transportation.
The early industry gained its footing in the late 1870s when Colonel Albert Pope, a successful Boston industrialist, converted an old sewing machine factory into a bicycle plant. Pope set about building an empire, hiring skilled machinists and die makers to craft interchangeable parts, enabling him to make his high-wheel bicycles for a mass market. Pope also founded the leading bicycle publication, Outing, in 1882. The industry became embroiled in a series of bitter legal battles over patent rights in the mid-1880s, but in 1886 everything changed with a major innovation in bicycle design from Europe: the "safety" bicycle. The new style introduced chain-driven gearing, allowing inventors to replace the dangerous high-wheel design with two equally sized wheels and the now-standard diamond frame. These changes significantly increased the safety of bicycles without sacrificing speed, thus creating a much larger market for bicycles. After 1886 prices fell, democratizing what had once been an elite sport. Bicycle clubs sprouted, and the nation developed bicycle fever. Sales soared as comfort and speed improved, reaching a peak in 1897 when about three thousand American manufacturers sold an estimated two million bicycles.
The popularity of bicycles in the 1890s engendered heated debates over the decency of the fashionable machines. Advocates catalogued their benefits: economic growth, the freedom of the open road, a push for improved roads, increased contact with the outdoors, and the leveling influence of providing cheap transportation for the workingman. Critics, however, attacked bicycles as dangerous (be-cause they upset horses), detrimental to the nervous system (because riding required concentration), and antithetical to religion (because so many people rode on Sundays). In addition, many critics questioned the propriety of women riding bicycles. Particularly scandalous to the skeptics was the tendency of women cyclists to discard their corsets and don bloomers in place of long skirts, but censors also reprimanded courting couples for using bicycles to get away from parental supervision and criticized women's rights advocates for emphasizing the emancipatory qualities of their machines.
By the turn of the century the bicycle craze abated and, despite an urban indoor track racing subculture that persisted until World War II using European imports, bicycles survived for a number of decadesprimarily as children's toys. The quality of bicycles, which found their major retail outlets between 1900 and 1930 in department stores, deteriorated substantially. Then, in 1931, the Schwinn bicycle company sparked a minor revolution in the industry by introducing the balloon tire, an innovation from motorcycle technology that replacedone-piece inflatable tires with an outside tire coupled with a separate inner tube. The strength and comfort of these new tires could accommodate much heavier, sturdier frames, which could better withstand the use (and abuse) of children riders. Taking a cue from the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, a showcase for Art Deco styling, Schwinn inspired more than a decade of streamlined bicycles—and innumerable suburban childhood dreams of freedom and exhilaration—with its 1934 Aerocycle. Bicycle design changed again slightly in the mid-1940s when manufacturers began to capitalize on the baby boom market. Following the practice of the automobile industry, bicycle designers created their own version of planned obsolescence by styling bicycles differently to appeal to different age groups.
Beginning in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, bicycles again became popular among adults, this time as a healthy form of exercise and recreation. A turning point came in September of 1955, when President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. His personal physician, Dr. Paul Dudley White, happened to be an avid cyclist who believed that bicycling provided significant cardiovascular benefits. When he prescribed an exercise regimen featuring a stationary bicycle for the president, the ensuing publicity generated a real, if small, increase in bicycling among adults. Small local racing clubs in California kept the idea of cycling as adult recreation alive through the 1950s, but not until the exercise chic of the 1960s spread from the West Coast to other parts of the country did adult bicycles become a significant proportion of all sales. Bicycle manufacturers responded by introducing European-style ten-speed gearing, focusing on racing, touring, and fitness in their marketing. The popularity of bicycling made modest gains through the 1970s and 1980s as racing and touring clubs gained membership and local bicycle competitions became more common around the country, including races called triathlons that mixed running, bicycling, and swimming.
Beginning in the early 1980s, a new breed of bicycles called "mountain bikes"—sturdy bicycles designed with fat, knobby tires and greater ground clearance for off-road riding—overtook the adult market with astonishing rapidity. The new breed of bicycles first reached a mass market in 1981, and by 1993 sales approached 8.5 million bicycles, capturing the large majority of the United States market. Earning substantial profits from booming sales, designers made rapid improvements in frame design and components that made new bicycles appreciably lighter and more reliable than older designs. Off-road races grew in number to rival the popularity of road racing, and professional races gained corporate sponsorship through the 1980s and 1990s. Somewhat ironically, however, only a small percentage of mountain bike owners take their bicycles off-road. Buyers seem to prefer their more comfortable, upright style compared to road racing machines, but use them almost exclusively on paved roads for exercise and eco-friendly short-distance transportation.
Further Reading:
Pridmore, Jay, and Jim Hurd. The American Bicycle. Osceola, Wisconsin, Motorbooks International Publishers, 1995.
Smith, Robert A. A Social History of the Bicycle: Its Early Life and Times in America. New York, American Heritage Press, 1972.
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