A Columbia Folding Bike--From England?

I came of age as a cyclist during the '70's Bike Boom of North America.  Ten-speeds were the bikes of choice.  Of US bike manufacturers, only Schwinn had been producing derailleur-equipped bikes in the years before the boom.  Other manufacturers--such as Columbia, Murray and AMF--began to offer "lightweight" bikes made of flash-welded gaspipe tubing with derailleurs and hand brakes.  To be fair, Schwinn's "lightweights"--with the exceptions of the Paramount and Superior--were also tanks with derailleurs fitted to them.  

AMF Hercules three-speed, made in England

A similar scenario played out during the 1950s and 1960s.  While the number of adult cyclists--and the demand for adult bicycles--were nowhere near as great as that of the 1970s, both increased gradually during those two decades.  And American bike manufacturers were not ready to produce the bike requested by adults:  three speed "English racers".  None--not even Schwinn--had ever made such a bike.

Schwinn responded in the way they would to the demand for ten-speeds in the 1970s:  they fitted their heavy frames with Sturmey-Archer three-speed hubs and called those bikes "lightweights".  On the other hand, other American bike companies did something that would have, in an earlier decade, seemed unthinkable:  they imported bikes and re-badged them.  

So, English three-speed bikes were sold under the brands of AMF (Hercules), Huffy and other American companies.  Strip away their decals and they are indistinguishable from Raleigh, Rudge or other English three-speed bikes of the time.

Columbia was another American manufacturer who imported English three-speeds.  That fact leads me to believe that this Columbia might also have been made by one of those British manufacturers:

The tell-tale signs of a Raleigh folding bike are there:  the brakes, the Sturmey-Archer hub, the cottered crank (at least in the style seen on that bike).  But the frame doesn't look like any of the folding or "shopper" bikes Raleigh was making at the time.  The frames of most such machines had, in essence, a down tube but no top tube.  The reverse is true on the Columbia in the photos. I wonder how that affects the ride.

I watched the bike on eBay a few months ago. No, I didn't buy it!  I admit, I was tempted: It would have been an interesting project.  Apparently, not many of those bikes were made, and from what I could find, Columbia offered them in only one year:  1966.

Fifty years later, no bike like it--or, for that matter, the old English three-speed--is made today.  And, of the bike brands mentioned in this post, only two exist today:  Schwinn and Raleigh.  Both are owned by conglomerates and their bikes are made for them in China or Taiwan.  Which means, of course, that it's unlikely that any bike like the Columbia folder will be made any time soon.

The Bike Lane Follies Never End

Sometimes I feel as if I could devote an entire blog to bike lanes that are poorly conceived, constructed, simply useless or bad in any number of other ways.

I've seen some doozies here in New York.  But the worst I've seen in The Big Apple is, apparently, sane compared to some that have been constructed in other parts of the US and world.

Some of the lanes I hear about are almost comically bad because it's simply impossible to understand how they can be imagined even by someone who has never seen a bike in his or her life.  When I'm in a charitable mood, I tell myself that the designers of such lanes assume that bicycles and cyclists possess extraordinary powers that mortal drivers and cars can't even dream of.

I mean, some are built as if we can pedal through steel columns or even stronger stuff.  As an example, check out this gem posted on the blog of Bike Shop Hub in Tucson, Arizona:

 

 Unfortunately, there's more where that came from--or, at least, where I found that gem.  Scroll down the page I've linked and check out, in particular, the ones posted by Marlo Stimpson and David Common.

Electric Light Races

It has been argued that the modern world began on 4 September 1882. 

At 3 o'clock that afternoon, Thomas Edison switched on his generating station's electrical power distribution system, located on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan.  It provided 110 volts of direct current (DC) electricity to 59 customers near the plant.

While Edison's plant wasn't the first attempt to light streets, businesses or homes by electricity, it was the first facility to make electricity available to large numbers of customers at a price that could compete with the price of gas. Previously, only individual homes and businesses--as well as a block of l'Avenue de l'Opera in Paris--were illuminated by electric light.  And those buildings and streets were powered by individual, self-contained generators.  

Edison, in short, created the world's first central power plant.  It was also the world's first co-generation plant, as the steam engines used to create electricity created a thermal byproduct, which Edison would use to heat nearby homes.
  

Edison's power-generating plant at 255-57 Pearl Street in New York City

In those days, people were even more fascinated with technological innovations than we are now.  In the case of electricity, it's easy to understand why:  Having such a readily-available power source for artificial lighting freed people (in the cities, anyway) from the cycles of daylight and darkness.  Activities that previously ceased at sundown could continue in the light of the moon and stars--and Edison's electrical lamps.

Le Velodrome by Paul Signac, 1899

Bicycle races were no exception.  In particular, night races on the track became feasible.  One of the first such races took place in Riverton, New Jersey--just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia--on 25 September 1894.

 

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 September 1894

Apparently, that race was a "hit" with the public, as this report from the Trenton Evening Times of the following day attests:

Now, 4000 spectators may not sound like a lot.  But Riverton's track was a 1/4 mile (400 meter) circuit, which wouldn't have allowed for a large seating capacity--if the track had a grandstand.  Plus, the borough of Riverton had, at the time, a population of around 1200. (In 2015, it could claim 2748 residents.)  Any event that can attract more than three times as many people as live in the community that's hosting it sounds like a success to me.

Sketch of the Riverton velodrome. From the New York Times, 9 June 1895

Anyway, "electric light races" became popular all over the US and Europe.   Soon enough, Edison's development would make it possible not only to hold night races outdoors, but also to stage indoor races--and other sporting events--at any time of day or night.