engage and disengage the clutch with his or her left hand using a lever attached to the clutch pedal linkage. The rider kept the left foot on the ground to stabilize the bike with the right foot on the pedal brake. Then he (or she) used the throttle with the right hand as usual while releasing the clutch with the left hand. Off and away!
72 Although readers of this book probably like to argue that Harley-Davidson built (and still builds) the best motorcycle engine available, it wasn’t the first. All early motorcycle engines stemmed from a single design created by Frenchmen Albert de Dion and Georges Bouton in the 1890s. Every other IOE motorcycle engine produced at the time, whether by Indian, Harley-Davidson, or Merkel used a nearly identical design as the de Dion-Bouton engine. This is important to The Motor Company’s history because without the de Dion-Bouton, motorcycling might have gotten off to a later and less successful start.
73 If you measure the rear belt drive pulley on a modern Harley, you’ll find it’s about 9 inches in diameter and, as you already know, supplies a solid mix of off-the-line acceleration and on-highway cruising performance. In Harley-Davidson’s early days, before transmissions and when belt-drives were still a leather strap with no teeth, the rear wheel pulley measured 20 inches in diameter. It provided enough force to get the single-cylinder machine moving. As with many drive belts today, the original leather belt was 1.25 inches wide on the singles and 1.75 inches wide on the twins.
74 Today’s spark plugs are so small and inexpensive that many riders opt to keep a spare set in their tool kit at all times. But when the first Harley-Davidson was built, spark plugs were much larger (like a doorknob), and much more expensive. The first motorcycle used a spark plug that took up much of the cylinder head, and cost $3, or approximately $80 in today’s money. Considering that the earliest machines sold for about $200, that single spark plug was nearly 2 percent of the cost!
75 Some folks may wonder exactly how the early atmospheric valve system worked on the early Harleys. Keep in mind that the IOE design positioned the intake valve at the very top of the engine and the exhaust valve on the side. A camshaft and pushrod operated the exhaust valve, but the early H-D engines had no such pairing for the intake valve. Instead, as the piston went down in the cylinder on the intake stroke, that vacuum caused the valve to be pulled down into the cylinder head, allowing air and fuel to enter. Then, on the compression stroke, the upward motion of the piston forced the valve shut. The explosion on the power stroke created enough pressure to keep the valve closed; on the exhaust stroke, the piston forced pressure back up again.
76 Janet Davidson, the older sister of the brothers, was responsible for the famous hand-painted “HARLEY-DAVIDSON MOTOR CO.” on the front door of the famous backyard woodshed where the first motorcycles were built. She’s also responsible for the lettering and pinstriping on the early motorcycles. In the very early days, their other sister, Elisabeth, was in charge of the company’s bookkeeping.
77 Although the first Harley-Davidsons were painted black, Henry Ford quickly laid claim to that color, and the founders wanted their machines to stand apart from other machines. Renault Gray was chosen as their official color because it blended in so easily with the streets and surroundings of the early 1900s. Black was still available until 1910. And most riders, especially H-D’s target customer (the working man), didn’t want anything flashy or showy. Early Harleys also had the reputation of running more quietly than other brands, which furthered its practicality because it didn’t startle horses, pedestrians, or wake the neighbors. These attributes earned it the nickname of The Silent Gray Fellow, a name that stuck until World War I, when gray ceased to be used.
78 Dudley Perkins opened his Harley-Davidson dealership in San Francisco in 1914. Today, it’s the oldest dealership in the world still owned by the original family. However, the oldest continuously operating dealership is A. D. Farrow Co. Harley-Davidson in downtown Columbus, Ohio, which began operations in 1912.
79 Harley-Davidson didn’t introduce its V-twin engine to the public until 1909, when only 28 were sold. However, one appeared mysteriously in 1908 at the Algonquin, Illinois, hillclimb races. Harvey Bernard rode his Harley-Davidson V-twin, stuffed into a single-cylinder frame with 1908-style gas/oil tanks, to victory in July 1908. No other information on this strange phenomenon exists, and The Motor Company has denied any involvement with Mr. Bernard. The most likely scenario is that Bernard added a second cylinder onto a single, which is essentially what The Motor Company did to achieve its first twin.
80 Crystal Haydel was Harley-Davidson’s first full-time female employee. Hired in 1907, she was the only office employee at the time and eventually became the office manager. In 1925, she was promoted to assistant secretary of the company, and also filled the role of assistant treasurer. She worked as Walter Davidson’s right-hand woman, and the two even shared an office. She was a shareholder in the company and was involved in nearly every aspect of running the business.
81 1903 was a big year in the United States for transportation inventors. On June 6, one of Harley-Davidson’s biggest competitors, Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, incorporated. On December 7, a whole new future of human transportation dawned when Orville and Wilbur Wright flew their first motorized aircraft across Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
82 Many Harley-Davidson historians credit the Davidson boys’ sister Janet with designing the first Bar & Shield logo. She proved to be not only to be a good artist, but a remarkable designer. Her design ranks with brands such as Chevrolet, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. It wasn’t until 1922, however, that the color scheme was changed to the orange on black that we’re familiar with today.
83 In 1915, Harley-Davidson published Theodore J. Werle’s Camping Hints when Touring with a Motorcycle. This 24-page book provided tips from nature-lover Werle on the best ways to break free from society and live in the wilderness. He wrote, “Touring on a motorcycle and living by the way is a glorious sport. If one finds pleasure living close to nature, if one wishes to go about in a rugged, manly way, let him pack his tent aboard a motorcycle and live in the open.”
84 Early motorcycle pioneer Della Crewe left her home in Waco, Texas, astride a Harley-Davidson with sidecar on July 24, 1914, in search of adventure. She got it, too; her trip covered 5,378 miles. Originally from Racine, Wisconsin, she made her way north to Milwaukee and then east to New York City. She arrived in New York in mid-December and had to wear four layers of clothing just to stay warm. As she traveled, she stopped at Harley-Davidson dealerships along the way and stayed with locals at their farmhouses wherever she could. She recorded her journeys aboard her Silent Grey Fellow in a series of articles, each one touting the durability and effectiveness of a Harley-Davidson with sidecar and the friendly people she met at dealerships. Della Crewe didn’t travel alone, though, her dog, Trouble, tagged along in the sidecar!
85 After the concrete work was completed on the renovation of the factory in the summer of 1912, workers hoisted a Christmas tree to the top of the construction elevator, signaling that their part of the project was finished. According to company lore, they finished exactly 15 minutes before the deadline, which meant that they had earned free beer. Supposedly, Walter Davidson obliged, and provided beer for the workers.
86 Harley-Davidson’s massive use of electricity was a great marketing campaign for the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company. It placed a massive lit sign on top of its building that read “Electric Power Is Best – Ask Harley Davidson,” with a 70-foot-long arrow pointing to the Juneau Avenue factory. The sign itself was 68 feet long and 40 feet high. Historic photography shows it standing in 1913; it was likely there in 1912 as well.
87 Massachusetts was the first state to require a visible registration tag on both cars and motorcycles in 1903 in the form of what we now call a “license plate.” Massachusetts’ plates were made of iron and covered with enamel porcelain
