At 12:58 AM -0500 1/7/10, <Carb7008@cs.com> wrote:
>Jumping-in only perhaps tangentially due to my relative ignorance; it
>strikes me as odd or beyond simple coincidence that two of the premier houses,
>Singer and Herse, would practically share the same location? Was there
>friendly competition to build the "best" bikes or to woo-away customers, esp
>during the slow early days?
No friendly relations between those two builders! Competition, for sure, especially during the early days, which weren't slow at all. Herse produced a full custom bike a day in the 1940s - imagine: 350 custom bikes a year, all with hand-made stems that took 4 hours to file, among the other parts! They had 8 employees at the end of 1945, and they must have been working fast!
So when Herse came out with a bottom bracket with heavy Timken roller bearings, Singer made one with lighter SKF ball bearings. Then Herse made one, too. Herse had his brakes, so Singer made some, too. The customers noticed the details, and Daniel Rebour was there to point them out to his readers. So everybody tried to outdo the next in making the bikes better, more functional and more elegant.
When business slowed, there was less innovation. The shops survived by selling other things - sporting goods in the Singer case, Velosolex mopeds for Herse. There wasn't much need for innovation when bikes became almost a sideline. (Some years, Singer made less than 20 bikes.)
The location is easy to explain. Levallois-Perret was the manufacturing center of France for vehicles. All the race car builders, many car makers, etc., all were located there, or in adjacent suburbs: Citroen, Hispano-Suiza, Delage are just a few names that come to mind. When Bugatti set up a drawing and prototype shop during the two World Wars, he came to Levallois-Perret.
I know of several race car makers who started elsewhere in France, but soon relocated there, so they could get stuff made. The place was full of machine shops, foundries, chrome-platers, etc. And good workers were all over the place.
Perhaps the fact that Herse and Singer were in Levallois-Perret explains the level of custom parts they used. It wasn't difficult to get brakes cast, BB spindles machined, etc. The other Paris high-end builders weren't too far from there, either...
One thing that is harder to explain is that Herse and Singer used the same lug style. Few other builders used that style. Sure, it's a very elegant lug, but it's nonetheless interesting that both chose that pattern.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com