Sylvester Howard Roper of Boston, USA was born this day in 1823. Depending on who you ask (not literally, everyone from the 1800’s is dead) he invented a steam motorcycle somewhere between 1867-1869.
The Daimler Reitwagen is usually claimed to be the first motorcycle because it had an internal combustion engine that begat all others (apart from the electric ones). Steam motorcycles were a dead-end, technologically, so Roper’s velocipede, though an earlier machine, isn’t considered to be a motorcycle. Of course, you could argue that the Flying Scotsman isn’t a train with that logic.
Not a train…
Then there’s the complication of whether Michaux-Perreaux’s steam velocipede was made before Roper’s. Nobody’s really sure.
Roper made another version of his velocipede in1884 and developed it further in 1896 with a frame supplied by Colonel Albert Pope, owner of Pope Columbia Motorcycles, that has some chacteristics of a motorcycle recognisable today, such as steering geometry with rake and trail. Something the Reitwagen didn’t entertain.
The ‘motor cycle’ would run for 7 miles before it needed refuelling and could get up to 40mph.
