An Alternative History of Bicycles and Motorcycles
Two-Wheeled Transportation and Material Culture
By (author) Steven E. Alford, Suzanne Ferriss
Not available to order
Publication date:
06 April 2016Length of book:
200 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498528801
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.
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.
In An Alternative History of Bicycles and Motorcycles, Suzanne Ferriss and Steven E. Alford convincingly lay to rest the idea that there was a simple evolution between the bike’s and the motorcycle’s design and development. By meticulously exploring the materials and roads that shaped their production, along with the riders who were attracted to two-wheeled transportation, they not only uncover the social, cultural and political contingencies that shaped these technologies but also highlight a number of contemporary examples about design and function to understand advances in technology and their limits. A wide range of scholars will find their book useful and insightful, as well as anyone interested in bikes, motorcycles, and the larger and complex ways in which they shaped one another and our ideas about mobility, style, and freedom.