| Cycling History: Museum Traces the France/Connecticut Connection By Hal Brown The bicycle didn't just appear, it was developed-and Connecticut played a part in it. The bicycle took off from Connecticut, with a definite French connection. Parisian Pierre Lallement made the first strides toward the bicycle in France, then immigrated to the United States. He mad the first bicycle ride, from his home in Ansonia to Derby in the fall of 1865 on an iron bicycle. He made the news the following spring after he rode his bicycle from Ansonia to New Haven and a journalist spotted him tooling around the town green. That led to Lallement's acquiring a partner and his receiving the first patent for a bicycle ever issued. The bicycle's Connecticut origin came as news to Zachary Studenroth, executive director of the Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum, and it set in motion a three-year process that led to the museum's summer exhibit "The Bicycle Takes Off 1865-1900." "It had simply never dawned on me that one person could be tracked down to be credited with such a thing," Studenroth said. "Somehow I thought the bicycle was like a chair. Was there one person in time that invented this thing? Obviously there is." Adding to the allure of a bicycle exhibition was the Victorian time period in which the bike was developed. The Victorian age is the museum's specialty, and the mansion was built the same year Lallement received his patent, 1868. As Studenroth began to organize the show, he found a curator with Boston writer David Herlihy. Herlihy said the show reflects ten years of research into the bicycle's origins. The history of the bicycle came to Herlihy's attention as the result of a story he was working on for a bicycle magazine on the history of the derailleur, the mechanism that moves the chain from cog to cog in a bike's gear train. A French historian told him about a controversy over who invented the bicycle, he found out that Lallement was buried in Boston, and the quest began. "I began to see that it was a very complicated story behind it all," he said. The exhibit at the museum contains artifacts from the draisine, a two-wheeled precursor, sans pedals, that was propelled by a person pushing the ground. It has exhibits on Lallement's bicycle, the "boneshaker," named because of its ride. The show documents the progression to the velocipide (the high-wheeled bicycle) and ultimately to the modern "safety" bike. The Olivier family in France were the developers of the bicycle, if not the inventor. Lallement worked for them briefly, before a falling-out sent him on his way to America. The Oliviers backed a Parisian blacksmith Ernest Michaux, who was honored with a monument in France in the 1890s as the bicycle's inventor. Herlihy says his research shows that Lallement was the inventor and the Oliviers the principal developers of the bicycle. Herlihy said some of the best pieces in the show come from the Oliviers, who items that have never before been exhibited "It's really fabulous stuff," he said, "like the oldest known drawing of a bicycle. There's a poster from 1869 which is unique. They've given us really wonderful things." The exhibit also includes the newspaper with the account of Lallement's ride to New Haven, and a number of draisines, boneshakers, high-wheelers and modern bikes. "One thing we do, that nobody else has done, was look in any depth into the original period, the boneshaker era," Herlihy said. "In almost any history it's written off as a small episode. We really go into (the boneshaker era) in detail. "I think it's important to understand, there are a lot of misconceptions in many bicycle histories," he said. "Some histories put a lot of emphasis on the draisine, which was the kick-propelled two wheeler, which was very important. Some histories suggest that that sort of evolved into the bike, but it didn't, as we show here. On the other side some people look at the high-wheeler as kind of the beginning and treat the boneshaker as kind of a failed experiment. "In fact the high-wheeler evolved directly out of [the boneshaker] in a matter of two or three years." The question of who to credit for the bicycle's invention led to many historians skipping Lallement and the boneshaker, Herlihy said. "I think there had been a tendency to embrace the history that underplays that whole thing," Herlihy said. "We've tracked that whole era. I'm not saying we got all the answers, but I think we have enough information to clarify a lot of the misconceptions." Herlihy says the mansion is a great place to mount the show. "One of the first people that got a velocipede was the Lockwood family," Herlihy said. "An (1869) article mentions that Mr. Lockwood and his friend are riding around town on velocipedes. He was very much the kind of person who would (own a velocipede). It took money to buy one, and they were very much into French culture." Studenroth has turned up a picture of a man on a velocipede in front of the mansion, Herlihy said. Herlihy said it's unclear if the man is a Lockwood. The exhibit remains at the Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum through September 16, then moves to the New York Hall of Science in New York City then to the Springfield Science Museum in Springfield, Mass. The show debuted in Lexington, Mass. in October. |
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