The accessibility and popularity of cycling around the world is largely due to john Kemp Starley’s paintings in the last 19th century. His Rover Safety motorcycle has revolutionized not only the motorcycle, but also the global one. The billions of motorcycles manufactured since the mid-1880s can hint at much of their ancestry until the third edition of their revolutionary machine, tested on a flat stretch of London Road on the outskirts of Coventry.
J. K. Starley developed his Rover Safety motorcycle, safer than the high-wheeled motorcycles that preceded it, while living in a space halfway up Gloucester Street near Coventry, the city centre.
According to The Cyclist, a recent magazine, the Rover Safety motorcycle “created fashion in the world,” prompting a global boom in bike ownership and use. Commenting in 1931, bicycle collector H. W. Bartleet wrote: “J.K. Starley lived to see his Rover motorcycle copied throughout the motorcycle trade, and a giant industry was created.
As Starley’s fortunes improved, he was able to move into a much larger house, which has since been demolished, but his home on Gloucester Street still exists. However, it is not marked with a blue plate, permanent panels installed in buildings in the UNITED Kingdom where once lived a traditionally known person.
Adam Tranter, Coventry’s “Bike Major,” is campaigning for the city to recognize the house.
He wrote to Coventry City Council asking for his “support for the installation of a blue plate in the space where John Kemp Starley lived when he invented the protective bike.”
In the letter, he noted, “Many residents, even potentially those who live on the street, will not be aware of the ancient importance of the assets and their former resident.”
On August 11, Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) announced plans for “a 500-mile cycling vision with active routes through the West Midlands Combined Authority to be called Red Starley.” More than 260 million pounds will be spent on this vision over the next few years, TfWM said.
West Midlands Mayor Andy Street said at the network launch that he was “delighted” to reveal Starley’s plans “and what better position to do so than in Coventry, Starley’s family and fashionable bicycle circle house,” he added. .
Tranter is also campaigning for a statue to be lifted at Starley in the city centre. This would be the statue of the moment for a member of the Starley family. John Kemp Starley’s uncle, James Starley, has had a statue in the city since 1884.
Known as the “father of the British cycling industry,” James Starley created the first Ferris wheel motorcycles at the device factory he had founded in Coventry with S.C. Salisbury, his American partner. By 1868, the company, known as Coventry Machinists, had won an order from France to manufacture 500 “shake-bone” velocipedes, new-evolving devices with wheels and pedals of almost equivalent length that propelled the front wheel.
Starley advanced the design, expanding the length of the propulsion wheel and, in 1871, presented the Ariel, nominated for “the cunning spirit” in Shakespeare’s Tempest. The Ariel’s steering wheel has been expanded into a motorcyclist. These High-Wheelers were the red Ferraris of the time: expensive, fast and possessed by young men, sporty and relaxed to impress.
“James was the smartest of the two,” says Mike Burrows, of Bicycle Design and designer of the Lotus 108 carbon fiber time trial motorcycle made through Lotus Cars for Chris Boardman, who won the gold medal in the 4000-meter track chase in 1992. Olympic Games in Barcelona.
“James the engineer; John Kemp, the marketing genius who took a lot of existing technologies and, with his MK3 machine, popularized the motorcycle as we know it.
J. K. Starley was born in Walthamstow, London, and moved to Coventry to stay with his uncle and circle of relatives in Upper Well Street, Coventry. J.K. Starley originally worked for his uncle’s company, Starley-Hillman, but later set up his own bicycle business.
Many new brands had tried to create a motorcycle type, compared to a motorcycle with Ferris wheels, that is. Starley’s first “ty” design was introduced in 1884, while his company, Starley and Sutton Co. Meteor Works, Coventry, still made tricycles.
The High Wheelers of the time, later called to distinguish them from the Safeties, and also known as Penny Farthings, were not only dangerous, but were basically suitable for tall and athletic men.
Writing in 1921, commercial journalist WF Grew said: “As enthusiastic as one could have been ordinary, and once I got excited about it, it is undeniable that this was only imaginable for relatively young and athletic men, and if this had remained the only motorcycle available, the pastime and utility of cycling would never have reached its current state of popularity.
Created through Starley and his friend William Sutton, the first Rover Safety, a bicycle with oblique steering, rear-wheel drive and chain drive, unlike the direct-drive Ferris wheel vehicle.
The first Rover Safety, with a 36-inch front wheel and cranks, not a sloping front fork, is far from the best and Starley, with the help of Sutton, changed the design, creating the Rover of the moment in 1885, a motorcycle with wheels of equivalent size to the maximum. and, most importantly, direct steering forks.
It was presented at the Stanley Cycle Show, Britain’s main annual bike show, held under a marquee at the Thames Embankment alongside Blackfriars Bridge in London between 28 January and 3 February 1885.
This motorcycle has the most of the classic features of a fashion machine. J.k. Starley said he was looking to “position the pilot at the right distance from the ground … to place the seat in the correct position for the Array pedals … to place the handles in a position relative to the seat that the rider can exert the greatest force on the pedals with the least fatigue.
High-wheeled riders despised these new protective features, literally and figuratively. They were called ‘dwarf machines’, ‘beetles’ and ‘exploration robots’. However, the 1885 Rover, with full tyres yet, showed more than just a robot when several of them broke the time record in a 100-mile promotional race on the macadam Great North Road between Norman Cross, near Peterborough, a mile beyond Twyford. Berkshire.
This race was organized through Starley and Sutton on September 25, 1885 and helped convince others that safety is fast, the critical promotion of the day.
By 1888, the registered Rover had evolved to the point that it was obviously recognizable as a fashionable machine: it had two wheels of equivalent length (26 inches, the same as a fashionable mountain bike) and a triangular diamond-shaped frame.
When equipped with John Boyd Dunlop tires, created in 1887, race-tested in 1889 and commercially available in 1890, the Rover Safety proved to be the best motorcycle and, in essence, the main features of the 1888 Starley device are still used on most motorcycles sold and repaired today.
Starley-Sutton Co. has become J.K. Starley and Co. in 1889 and in the last decade of 1890 it has become the Rover Cycle Company. After J.K. With Starley’s death, this company began manufacturing and selling Rover cars.
In 1888, J.K. Starley built the first British electric car, one of his company’s tricycles with an additional engine and battery.
J.k. Starley did not invent the protective motorcycle, call the category, nor did he propose the so-called Rover (his worker George Franks, a retired diamond trader). Serial entrepreneur Harry Lawson (later convicted of fraud) created his bike protection motorcycle in 1879 and is arguably the world’s first protective motorcycle.
It had no sloping forks or wheels of equivalent size, did not sell in large quantities and had a dead end design.
However, J.K. Starley adapted a number of existing technologies and, with its third edition of the protective motorcycle, created a device that captured the popular imagination. By skillfully marketing this motorcycle as a speed device, and by paying for advertisements in the specialized press of the time, he secured his position in the story.
A J.K. Conference. Starley gave the Society of Arts in London in 1898 the idea that he had invented the protective bike: “I felt it was time to solve the bicycle problem,” he said.
“My purpose was not only to make a protective bike,” he continued, “but to produce a device that deserved to be the true evolution of the bike, and the fact that so few adjustments have been made to the essential positions.” , which have been established through me in 1885, it turns out that I was not in the cardinal themes to embody this purpose.
The Rover Cycle Company began production of Rover cars in Coventry in 1904, 3 years after the death of J.K. Starley.
Tranter aims to replace that and thinks he recognizes J.K.’s old house. Starley can simply advertise cycling in general.
“A popularity committed to John Kemp Starley’s huge contribution to the city, and even the world, would be for Coventry’s profile and for the profile of local cycling,” he said.
I Transport Journalist of the Year 2018 in the Press Gazette. I’m also a historian: my most recent books include “Roads Weren’t Built for Cars” and “Bike Boom.”
Transport Journalist of the Year 2018 through Press Gazette. I’m also a historian: my most recent books include “Roads Were Not Built for Cars” and “Bike Boom,” published through Island Press, Washington, D.C.