Authors: Tom D. Crouch
“We had a good rain Tuesday,” Wilbur told Katharine in his same letter of September 18, “and the roads were good for bicycling.” That Thursday, unable to resist temptation any longer, they locked up the print shop at four-fifteen in the afternoon and rode south out of town on the Cincinnati Pike, bound for the great Indian mound at Miamisburg, 25 miles away. In no particular hurry, they indulged in several quick laps around the dirt track at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
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By five o’clock they were back on the Pike, struggling up a hill that seemed to go on forever. “We climbed and then we ‘dumb’ and then we climbed again,” as Wilbur put it. He asked a farmer mowing hay in a neighboring field if they were not “getting nearly to the top of the world.” The man responded by pointing to the summit of a “mountain” three quarters of a mile farther on. “Centerville,” he told them, “is the highest point in the county.”
Riding into Centerville, the Wrights confronted a bit of their own heritage—the lovely two-story brick dwelling where their great-uncle Asahel had run a store from 1816 until 1826. By the time they reached the mound and started for home, “it was so dark we could hardly see the road.” Undeterred, they raced along through the night, “more by feeling than seeing,” following the two light streaks on the road where wagon wheels had rolled the gravel smooth. Disaster was narrowly averted when a loaded farm cart suddenly appeared in their path. “This experience set Orville’s imagination (always active, as you know) to work,” commented Wilbur. “Pretty soon he clapped on brakes and nearly threw himself from his ‘bike’ to keep himself from running down a hill into a wagon just crossing a little bridge. When he came to the place he found no hill, no bridge, and no wagon, only a little damp place in the road which showed up black in the night.”
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By 1892, the “merry wheel” had become a national craze. Journalists touted the bicycle as a “boon to all mankind,” a “national necessity,” and a “force that has within it almost the power of a social revolution.” The Smithsonian scientist WJ McGee, assessing “Fifty Years of American Science” for the readers of
The Atlantic Monthly
in 1896, termed the bicycle “one of the world’s great inventions.” The Detroit
Tribune
went a step further, predicting history would prove that “the invention of the bicycle was the greatest event of the nineteenth century.”
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And the authorities who prepared the Census of 1890 insisted: “Few articles created by man have created so great a revolution in social conditions.”
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The invention that was to exercise such influence on American society and technology was launched as a business in 1878, when Colonel Albert Pope began producing high-wheel “ordinaries” in the corner of a Hartford, Connecticut, sewing-machine factory. Sales were encouraging, but the appeal of such cycles was limited to athletic young men willing to risk life and limb in erratic flight through crowded city streets and down rutted country lanes. Wilbur had owned such a machine when he was in high school back in Richmond.
The introduction of the “safety” bicycle to the American market in 1887 marked the beginning of the genuine cycle era. With its two wheels of equal size, sturdy triangular frame, and trustworthy chain-drive system, the safety enabled an entire nation to taste the freedom of the road.
The industry enjoyed phenomenal growth. The number of manufacturers in the field climbed from 27 to 312 in only seven years; total production, estimated at 40,000 machines a year in 1890, reached a peak of 1.2 million by 1895. As the historian David Hounshell has noted, these figures add new meaning to the term “mass production.”
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The bicycle bridged the gap between the age of the horse and that of the automobile. It marked the first convergence of technologies crucial to automobile production, ranging from electrical welding and work on ball-bearings to experience with chain and shaft transmission systems, metal-stamping technology, and the manufacture of rubber tires.
The millions of bicycles pouring out of American factories created an insatiable appetite for personal transportation. A young fellow could ride his bicycle back and forth to work six days a week quicker than the horse cars could carry him, then peddle out into the countryside
for a Sunday outing with his best girl. He went where and when he pleased, under his own power and at his own speed.
The sheer exhilaration of cycling captivated a generation of Americans accustomed to the restraint of high, tight collars, ankle-length skirts, and corsets. Nothing in their experience could compare with the thrill of racing down a steep hill into the wind, and the newfound sense of personal independence was irresistible.
The bicycle craze swept through West Dayton in the fall of 1892. Ed Sines and some other neighborhood men bought the stock of a bicycle manufacturer who was going out of business. They organized a local cycle club, held races, and sponsored group excursions. Most of them also joined the YMCA Wheelmen, one of the great national cycling associations that sanctioned local races.
Wilbur preferred long country rides to track racing, but Orville fancied himself something of a “scorcher.” He won at least three races during this period; in later years, however, he would admit that his racing career had been less than spectacular. “You’ll never know how I used to envy you and some of the other fellows in those days,” he once said to his old friend and rival Peter Klinger. Why, Klinger asked, should the inventor of the airplane envy anyone? “If you’d eaten as much dust as I did,” Orville responded, “you’d know!”
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Wilbur and Orville were much better known as bicycle mechanics than as racers. The two young men who had constructed printing presses from scratch were already legendary mechanics on the West Side. Now they found themselves besieged by friends in need of bicycle repairs. The second business for which they had been searching was literally thrust upon them.
Milton always believed that the cycle business was Wilbur’s idea. Perhaps so. Wilbur was certainly the one who broached the subject soon after his father’s return to Dayton on October 25, 1892. They would begin on a small scale, he explained, with a rented storefront that would serve as both showroom and repair shop. With the continued assistance of Ed Sines, they could cover both the new bike store and the print shop without any additional help. The bishop approved of the plan—there was obviously money to be made in the bicycle trade.
The brothers’ bright dreams of business expansion were almost dashed on November 6. Milton left home late that afternoon to meet the train bringing Katharine back from Kansas City. When the two of them arrived at the house, they found Wilbur doubled up in pain.
The bishop immediately summoned Dr. Spitler, the physician who had nursed Susan through her final illness.
Wilbur, suffering from appendicitis, was in far greater danger than he had been at the time of the hockey accident. Dr. Spitler was a fine diagnostician who kept up on the latest advances. Appendicitis had been identified, described, and named by Reginald Heber Fitz, a Boston pathologist, only six years before.
An appendectomy was the indicated treatment in acute cases—as one surgeon noted, the idea was to “get in quick and get out quicker.” But it was still a very new and dangerous operation, and Dayton was far from the mainstream of surgical advance. St. Elizabeth’s, the first real hospital in the city, was only twelve years old. Anesthesia was primitive and, while the need for antisepsis in the operating room was well known, death as a result of postoperative infection was still common. Dr. Spitler chose not to risk sending his patient under the knife. He prescribed rest, a bland diet, and the avoidance of cold. It worked, though Wilbur was still suffering from recurring pain in mid-December.
As his health improved, the brothers took the first steps toward establishing the bicycle shop. In December 1892 they rented a storefront at 1005 West Third Street, and began laying in a stock of parts for the opening of the Wright Cycle Exchange the following spring. The repair business would be their bread and butter, but they would also sell new bicycles and offer a complete line of parts and accessories. Anxious to build a reputation as scrupulous businessmen, they refused to push the cycling geegaws that flooded the market. They regarded cycle dealers who urged local city councils to require the use of bells and lights as little more than thieves.
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The Wrights took a similar approach to the sale of bicycles. A cycle, they realized, was a major investment. Between 1890 and 1900, the mean annual wage of the American worker (total wages paid divided by the average total number of wage earners) hovered around $440. A good boy’s bicycle cost from $40 to $50; adult bikes began at $50, with the finest machines priced at $100 and up. At those prices, the brothers were careful to emphasize the quality of the products they sold.
Over the years, they would carry at least eight brands of cycle: Coventry, Cross, Duchess, Envoy, Fleetwing, Halladay-Temple, Smalley, and Warwick. These were the best machines on the market. Like other dealers, they developed time-payment plans, and accepted
trade-ins as a means of enabling their customers to afford a higher-quality cycle for their hard-earned dollars.
Some trade-ins represented a pure loss; they refused to resell the cheap safety bicycles accepted in trade. Orville gave one such machine, a Viking, to his friend Paul Dunbar. A pair of high-wheel models turned in for new safety bikes did provide some amusement: they produced a gigantic bicycle-built-for-two using a pair of the large four-foot front wheels. No one who watched Wilbur and Orville peddling their monster along the streets of the West Side would ever forget the sight.
Trade boomed during spring and summer of that first year. By the fall of 1893 the bicycle shop was their primary business. When the volume of work became heavy at the print shop, they hired Lorin to give Ed Sines a hand.
The Wrights moved to larger quarters at 1034 West Third that year, and renamed their enterprise the Wright Cycle Company. But competition was growing stiffer. In 1891, there had been only four bicycle shops and one repair facility in the city; by 1892–93, the number had grown to fourteen, including the Wrights.
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Small-scale operators had a difficult time of it. Business flourished in the spring and summer, when bike and accessory sales and the repair trade were all at a peak. In the fall and winter, however, there were so few customers that it scarcely seemed worthwhile to remain open. Wilbur discussed these difficulties in a business report to his father in the fall of 1894:
The bicycle business is fair. Selling new wheels is about done for this year, but the repairing business is good and we are getting about $20 a month from the rent of three wheels. We get $8.00 a month for one, $6.50 for another and the third we rent by the hour or day. We have done so well renting them that we have held on to them instead of disposing of them at once, although we really need the money invested in them.
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He went on to request a $150 loan, to which Milton agreed, but the brothers continued to face financial difficulties. Two weeks later Wilbur wrote again to tell his father they had decided to close the store at 1034 West Third and consolidate their two firms at the print shop. “There is hardly enough business to justify us in keeping so expensive a room any longer.”
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Beset with business problems, Wilbur was reassessing the decisions that had brought him to this point in life. He admitted his basic
discontent and remarked that he was once again thinking of taking a college course.
I have thought about it more or less for a number of years but my health has been such that I was afraid that it might be time and money wasted to do so, but I have felt so much better for a year or so that I have thought more seriously of it and have decided to see what you think of it and would advise.
I do not think I am specially fitted for success in any commercial pursuit even if I had the proper personal and business references to assist me…. I have always thought I would like to be a teacher. Although there is no hope of attaining such financial success as might be attained in some of the other professions or in commercial pursuits, yet it is an honorable pursuit, the pay is sufficient to live comfortably and happily, and is less subject to uncertainties than almost any other occupation. It would be congenial to my tastes and I think with proper training I could be reasonably successful.
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The problem, Wilbur noted, was money. He would need $600 to $800 to get through college. He could earn most of that, “or at least enough to help along quite a bit,” by continuing to work in the bike shop. Still, he would have a difficult time without a loan from his father. Milton agreed that “a commercial life” would not suit him well, and offered to help with “what I can in a collegiate course.”
There the matter rested. Wilbur did not pursue his father’s offer, nor, so far as we know, did he ever raise the issue of college again. He may have felt that he was too old. He would certainly have been reluctant to ask Orville to accept full responsibility for their joint enterprises. Whatever the reason, he decided to redouble his efforts to make the bicycle shop a success.
In the spring of 1895 the Wrights attempted to expand beyond an exclusively West Side market. They opened not one but two bike shops that season, centralizing the printing and bicycle repair business in a rented building at 22 South Williams Street, just around the block from 7 Hawthorn, and opening a downtown bicycle showroom at 23 West Second Street.
They were also experimenting with imaginative advertising, and tried particularly to attract the high school crowd. When rumors circulated that a copy of an upcoming test had been stolen from a teacher, the Wrights immediately printed up advertising flyers resembling a standardized Central High test sheet, then hired a student to distribute them between classes. Each question and answer extolled the virtues of the Wright Cycle Company.