Local newspaper account of Museum bike exhibit. Chuck Schmidt, South Pasadena, CA
====================================================================== THE WHEELS OF A DREAM Museum exhibit highlights bike's role in history
By Emanuel Parker , Star News Staff Writer
PASADENA -- Think bicycles are just for recreation or children's toys?
"Wheels of Change,' a history of the bicycle at the Pasadena Museum of History opening today, highlights the amazing impact of a vehicle that was the world's first breakthrough in mass transportation and literally increased the speed at which life is lived.
Ardis Willwerth and Dennis Crowley, exhibit curators, said the humble bicycle led to women's liberation, road building, road signs and maps, urban sprawl, the inventions of the automobile and airplane, Einstein's theory of relativity and the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Pasadena and California played major roles in the history of bicycles, Willwerth said, and continue to do so. The BMX, or stunt bike, was born in Palms Park in Santa Monica, she said, while mountain bikes were invented in Marin County by a handful of bicycle enthusiasts.
At the peak of the bicycle craze in 1900, Pasadena had 15 bicycle shops to serve a population of 9,100, Crowley said.
"Pasadena had more bicycles per capita than any place in the world,' he said. Bicycle races then were the equivalent of NASCAR races today and competitors from across the country trained in Pasadena, he said.
"The Rose Parade originated as a bicycle parade,' Crowley said. "The 1900 parade had 350 bicycles and only a few horse- drawn carriages. After the parade bicycle races were held at a velodrome at Lincoln Avenue and Hammond Street.'
It was difficult for women in Victorian clothing to ride early bicycles or the high-wheel models; but once the safety bike was invented women took to riding and the new-found freedom fostered the women's liberation movement, Willwerth said, changed women's fashions and ended the age of the corset.
Bike mania fostered road building, road signs and maps, and the star system for rating hotels in the second half of the 19th century, she said. Urban sprawl appeared as people were freed to settle beyond walking distances. Early car makers such as Gottlieb Daimler, Carl Benz, Henry Ford and Charles and Frank Duryea started as bicycle mechanics, she said.
The Wright brothers' 1903 flyer, the first motorized airplane, was built in their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop, and Albert Einstein said the idea for his theory of relativity came to him as he rode his bicycle.
More than two dozen bikes will be displayed at the museum, including the "Draisine Running Machine,' a rare 1817 pedal-less machine made of wood, a Wright brother's bicycle with an early gear-shift mechanism, an 1895 Elliott lady's bicycle made mostly of wood to reduce weight, an 1860's velocipede (meaning "fast foot') made of iron that weighs 150 pounds, and an early bicycle that seated courting couples side-by-side.
Five-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong's 2001 yellow jersey is displayed, along with accounts of the exploits of Charles "Mile-a-Minute' Murphy, who reached speeds of 60 mph on a bike in 1899, and lectures about Major Taylor, the era's top bicycle racer who, to skirt laws banning African Americans from racing, said he was an American Indian.
The exhibit will run through Aug. 1.
The museum is at 470 W. Walnut St. For additional information call (626) 577-1660.
Emanuel Parker can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4475, or by e-mail at emanuel.parker@sgvn.com .
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