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By PeteG

Have you ever wondered who invented the motorbike? I went in search of the man who gave us as much fun as you can shake a stick at and wondered if he knew what he had created. The first thing to consider is - 'what is a motorcycle?' Technically it's a bicycle that is propelled by a motor or engine but as the story will show, some unorthodox engines and power sources where used, simply because the internal combustion engine had not been invented. Obviously I would have to include these machines but ultimately I was really looking for the man who first decided to fit an internal combustion engine into a bicycle.
 
My search began with the simple 'Velocipede', an invention that I remember being taught about in my early schooldays. (You see, not all my youth was misspent.)

Education is a fine thing

The velocipede was no more than an ironing board with wheels, being propelled by the riders legs, a kind of assisted walk but this could not be considered a self propelled vehicle.
The first Propelled vehicle came along when some clever chap decided to fit pedals but even this was not truly self propelled. That innovation came with the assistance of 'steam power' of all things. I can't imagine what it must have been like to wobble off down a less than perfect road or path with several gallons of boiling water and a roaring fire balanced on the crossbar. The first of these dangerous machines looked even more outlandish than it's unfeasibly long name, Vocipedraisiavaporianna, (sounds like the Latin name for a dinosaur) quite a mouthful and I guess quite a handful looking at the image. 

The Vocipedraisiavaporianna

 It failed to gain a market (I wonder why?) and so faded into the background where it belonged but it has to be considered that this was as long ago as 1818, just after the Napoleonic wars, a time when the horse was the only viable transport.
Most of the early development was taking place in the USA where the interest in cycles was immense and as early as 1884 a Philadelphia man named Copeland built 200 various steam powered bicycles and tricycles for customers. Not true mass production but it shows the interest in such machines at the time. In Europe there were many machines being tested too but for now we go back 15 years.
 
It wasn't until 1869 that the first serious attempts were made to produce motor driven bicycles. These were still powered by steam, and driven by leather belts or as in the case of at least one American machine by a system of levers attached to a crank on the driven wheel.
At the same time these early two wheelers were being developed, three and four wheeled pedal powered vehicles were being modified to accept engines to create self-propelled vehicles. Although these 3 and 4 wheelers are not motorcycles in the true sense, they were directly involved in development of the motorcycle so I need to include them to show the full evolution of the cycle. 
 

Some were just weird - note the paddock stand on the second machine.
 

All of these early attempts were based on vehicles currently available, that is, they were not specifically built as a motorcycle - with one exception. Ropers' steam driven design of 1869, this bike was built specifically for the job and even had the controls on the handlebars, including 'twist grips'. It was also used by other developers for other types of engine and to my mind this is the first machine to have similarities to the modern bike. It even looks quite good. 

The Roper - with twist grip controls

 
Still, it did not have the Internal Combustion engine we all covet. That had to wait several years until Gottlieb Daimler designed the 1877 Daimler - Maybach.
The entire machine, including frame, engine, and wheels, was built specifically for motorized use and was powered by an internal combustion engine, but it was still made entirely of wood, (except the engine of course) and looks so odd and ugly it has very little resemblance to the bikes that would come later. Having small outrigger wheels to assist stability it was limited by the laws of the time and had to have an assistant walking ahead with a red flag to warn of it's arrival.

The Daimler-Maybach

 A mention should be made of the laws of the day - one law stated that should a motor driven vehicle encounter a horse drawn carriage and spook the horse, the operator of said vehicle had to disassemble it to the point that the horse was no longer shy of it, allow the horse to proceed some yards past, and only then could he reassembly the vehicle, and we think the legislation surrounding motorcycles is draconian today!
 

An American steam machine from 1869 based on a 'Safety Cycle'

Most motorcycle historian seem to be in agreement that the Daimler-Maybach is the first true motor bicycle but I have reservations, agreed it has all the obvious signs of the motorcycle but it is very different in layout to the modern bike. We have to remember that the roads of the time where poor, the bikes were made of wood with no suspension and a great deal of work had to be applied to the machine to achieve even the briefest of runs. Even if movement was achieved, it was terribly uncomfortable and generally an unpleasant experience. We also have to remember that the Internal Combustion Engine was in it's infancy and many developers and inventers were trying out prototypes for use in cars, not bikes, therefore we have to understand that a cheap way of testing is to build a bike or a tricycle to test an engine. It's cheaper and easier to build, so what we see at this time is a plethora of 'testing' machines rather than true motorbikes, that said there seemed to be an acceptance that a two wheeled or three wheeled vehicle had possibilities.
 
What we need to see in our first bike is reliability, a flexible and efficient drive system, easy to use controls and effective suspension. It would also help if it was capable of being mass produced. Luck was on the side of the motorcycle and it's developers, most of the requirements of a successful machine came together almost simultaneously in the guise of frame geometry, (Stanley, 1886), pneumatic tyres (Dunlop, 1888 and Michelin, 1895), roller chains, (Renold, 1880)and a reliable power plant as early as 1876 by Nikolaus Otto, who based his design of an internal combustion engine by Alphonse Beau de Rochas from 1862.
 
It was all certainly coming together although there were still serious attempts continuing to use steam power and even one English invention in 1881, The Parkyns-Bateman Steam Tricycle, which featured a two cylinder double-acting steam engine attached to a Cheylesmore pedal tricycle. Since it was fired by petroleum, it could be considered as having the first "gasoline" fuelled engine, though it was not an internal combustion engine. Unfortunately English law prevented this machine becoming a financial success.
 

The Parkyns-Bateman Steam Tricycle, with after market cans.

 
So who invented the first true bike? I hear you ask. Okay I'm getting to it. England, 1884 and Edward Butler builds a 'Petrol-Cycle' with a patent. This could have claim to be the worlds first motorcycle but in true terms it was indeed a tricycle but it certainly had much about it that we would recognise on a modern bike. The first engine was two stroke but he later changed it to a four. Unfortunately he was hounded by the police due to the restrictive laws of the time (where have I heard that before?) and this monumental machine was broken up for scrap. Butler never lost his enthusiasm for the project though and continued research but he and his work was lost into oblivion when he died in 1940. It remains for us to consider how different things may have been if laws had allowed the machine to be used, would there have been a different history to motorcycles in the UK?
 
In 1889 Daimler produced a new machine which was likely to be a direct development of the earlier Daimler-Maybach machine. 

Considered by many to be the first true bike - The Daimler

 
It could be said it was the first to employ an internal combustion engine and was designed from the ground up to be motor powered. Designed by Gottlieb Daimler it was powered by an Otto-cycle engine producing about ½ horse power. Note this design again employed wooden wheels and Daimler dropped the twist grip controls from his 1877 design in favour of levers on the frame. Considered by many as the first true motorcycle or motor bicycle, I still have reservations about this. In some ways the machine had retrograde designs but I will admit that if we are looking for the man, then Gottlieb Daimler should be considered to be the grandfather of motorcycles. But to find the first true bike we have to move forward in time.
 
In 1892 a French machine, The five cylinder Millet, had as the name implies a five cylinder rotary engine mounted in the rear wheel. The cylinders turned along with the wheel while the crank was stationary. This was not the last time that such a motor was used in a motorcycle, although the next one to use this design had the motor mounted in the front wheel. 

The Millet - with a radial engine that would look more at home on a small aircraft

 
There are many advanced features on this bike and it looks more like a motorcycle than most that came before it but to my mind the first 'true' motorbike was also the worlds first true production motorcycle.
 
Just two years after the Millet came another French machine the Hilderbrand and Wolfmuller cycle. It came with a 1428 cc water cooled four-stroke motor producing 2.5 bhp. and a top speed of 25 mph. The motor was parallel twin with one forward piston and one rearward with the connecting rods running to a crank mounted on the rear wheel. Instead of using a flywheel to store energy between firings, it used large elastic cords, one each outbound of the pistons. It was first made in France under license for one year under the name Petrolette and around 1000 machines were built. Later production moved to Munich. 

Here's my contender - the Hilderbrand and Wolfmuller cycle of 1894.

 
You may not agree but if you consider the engine type and the overall look of the machine it is a bike we can all recognise. It was reliable, comfortable and easy to use. To me this is the first motorcycle all of us would understand and be able to ride without a degree in Motion Physics and Chemical Reactions. It was a beast of it's time, a time when the transport revolution had just begun, seven years before Indian and Harley-Davidson made their first machines. It was discontinued in 1897, mainly due to the primative braking system which was a large spoon that was pressed against the front tyre. For quicker braking, a bar was released from the rear which dug into the ground!
 
To these great pioneers and innovators - I bow to their flair, ingenuity, tenacity and vision and thank them posthumously for giving the world the motorbike.

Copyright of the author.  © 2007 Tricky Imp Productions