June 2018 -

29 Jun

Women’s Six Day Bicycle Races

I’m more and more convinced that my new heroine will be a bicycle racer, so I’ve been looking up about women’s racing at the end of the nineteenth century. There is, in fact, a book on the subject of women in six-day bicycle races — but it doesn’t come out until October 2018! I even sent an email to the author in hopes of snagging an early review copy, but no dice. He did email me a copy of an article he’s recently written for Michigan History magazine, which was helpful in that it explains the women’s races were sprints, compared to the men’s six-day races.

For male cyclists, the six-day race was just that: riding as long as you were awake for six days. It was an endurance event to the extreme. For the women, it was apparently an hour in the afternoon and two hours in the evening, which allowed their races to focus on speed and coincidentally be more exciting for spectators.

Understanding how the races worked is one part of the puzzle, but I’m still missing info. Namely, who was racing, when, and where? There’s a bit of a list at sixday.org and another at 6dayracing.ca, but the women’s information is scanty and earlier than I’m looking for. So I’m combing through the Library of Congress’s online newspaper database and making a similar list of women in six day races. And if I’m doing the work already, I might as well share it.

I started by searching for Tillie Anderson, easily the era’s most famous female racer (she’s even earned herself a children’s book) and then doing secondary searches on her named competitors. I got to about forty races and over fifty named competitors. Because the races last for so long, it’s hard to tell quickly if a news report is talking about a new race or is a slightly delayed account of a previous race. The list may therefore contract as well as expand. It’s a Google spreadsheet, so you can click here to view it. I’ve added in some notes as I found interesting tidbits in the new articles that were longer than just race results: dogs on the track, riots, and wardrobe malfunctions are a few of the newsworthy mishaps!

17 Jun

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle Motor

While I’m working out the plot for my new book, I’m also trying to figure out what exactly the machine my heroine’s father has invented looks like. I have in mind for it to be an early motorcycle, but my knowledge of motorcycles and motors past and present is minimal. Fortunately my reliable friends at Google have scanned in volume 1 of The Horseless Age, a publication for the nascent automotive industry in 1895. There are a great many bicycle, tricycle and carriage motors described, from steam-powered to gasoline, and spring-motors, which were coiled by a hand-crank and then powered a bicycle for 15 miles. I was briefly excited by the description of an ether-motor–more efficient and powerful than using water for steam–until I looked a little further and learned that ether is extremely explosive, which is why we don’t see it used as a propellant in many engines these days. There will be some mishaps in the novel, but not the explosion and full-body burns sort of disaster.

Right now the leading contender for me to base my fictional motorcycle off of is a kerosene motor, a lightweight option which could be attached to a regular bicycle frame. It doesn’t seem to have caught on, as the only mention I can find is this description on page 19 of Vol. 1, No. 1 of The Horseless Age, printed in November 1895.

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle

C.C. Riotte, of the Riotte & Hadden Mfg. Co., 462 East 136th St., New York, has invented a kerosene motor for bicycles which is extremely simple, light and inexpensive. It can be attached to any ordinary bicycle, detached at a moment’s notice, and is started and stopped by a small handle at the oil tank. It consists of two small valves, a cylinder, piston and igniter.

The operation of the motor it [sic] as follows: When the piston descends, a cylinder full of air mixed with a small quantity of kerosene oil is compressed into the explosive chamber and there ignited by an electric spark which is generated from a small battery weighing one half pound. This battery never polarizes or requires recharging.

The air in the cylinder being highly heated from the combustion of oil drives forward the piston which is connected through a crank with the rear wheel as seen in the illustration. The operation continues on, almost noiseless and without smell, with every turn of the rear wheel. A speed of twenty five miles per hour has been attained with it on level ground and a pretty good speed maintained on grades of about four or five per cent.

The weight of the motor including tank full of oil is nine and one half pounds. The tank holds enough oil to carry a person 75 miles and when the oil gives out a quart of kerosene or any kind of petroleum lamp oil can be bought at any country store or of any farmer.

Mr. Riotte has been experimenting in gas and oil engines all his life, and has had a good deal to do with stationary and marine engines of all descriptions.

The principle of this bicycle motor is the same as that of his new improved stationary oil engines except that heavy weights and the fly wheel are dispensed with.

The firm is also constructing a carriage, which is propelled by a kerosene motor the same in principle as their stationary motors. The operating gear will have but one lever to start, stop, reverse, or go at any speed from 2 to 25 miles per hour. They expect to form a company to manufacture bicycle and carriage motors on a large scale.

As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty plausible option, especially with the option to buy fuel on the road. One of the things I’ve realized about the development of motor vehicles is that they were initially hampered by the lack of infrastructure. To be successfully used for long distance travel, they needed to have good roads for all the wheeled vehicles, and for the fueled vehicles, they needed places to buy fuel. I’ve pretty much taken the existence of gas stations for granted, but now I assume that part of what made or broke the different motor options described in The Horseless Age was the availability of their required fuel, whether it was kerosene, ether, or gasoline. It may also explain the interest in the spring motors!

06 Jun

Victorian women learning to ride a bike

More on women’s cycling from old books and journals. There are two popular topics regarding women and bikes: method of riding and choice of dress. Throughout the 1890s the debate rages on skirts vs bloomers/knickerbockers, what sort of cut to the skirts, bifurcated or not, how to keep your skirt out of the wheels, best bikes with skirtguards… There’s a lot of concern about looking unladylike while riding a bicycle. For the lady who did want to ride, how would she get through the awkward phase of learning to ride gracefully without embarrassing herself publicly? By attending a cycling school or academy, where a (presumably male) teacher would assist her with balance behind sheltering walls. As you might expect, there were still writers ready to make fun of the female student of the bike, as in the poem below, which I found in a magazine for Locomotive Engineers. I’m considering making my heroine a female bicycle instructor, as she could surely provide a more friendly experience than that described in this poem!

At the Bicycle Academy

‘Twas at the female cycling school,
Where bloomer costumes arc the rule;
And fairy forms in trousers hid,
Essay the bike as she is rid.

A rare and radiant vision she!
A dream! a song! a rhapsody!
To whom none other there was like,
Came forth to tame the festive bike!

She cast about a bashful glance,
Gazed at her wiry steed askance;
Then eyed her bifurcated skirt,
And wondered if a tumble hurt.

Then at the master’s stern command,
She grasped her steed with trembling hand;
A gasp, a sigh with anguish pent,
A bounce, a boost, and up she went.

Prate not to me of dire alarm,
Of fire and floods and martial arms;
For depth of woe there’s nothing like
A frightened female on a bike!

She stuck, she strained, she vainly strove
To make that pesky pedal move;
She pumped, she pushed, turned ghastly white;
And worked both feet with all her might!

And now she starts, she seems to feel
A thrill of life along her wheel!
But, oh! a bump! a zigzag slump!
Girl, bike, spokes, legs, all in a lump!

Reprinted from the New York Evening Sun in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal, Vol XXIX No 3, March, 1895.