Holes In the Memory
HOLES IN THE MEMORY
IGNITION
WANDERING EYE
IF IT AIN’T WRITTEN DOWN, HOW YOU GONNA KNOW?
PAUL D’ORLEANS
When Sylvester H. Roper attached a small steam engine to an iron-frame "boneshaker" bicycle near Boston in the late 1860s, he had no idea Guillaume Perreaux was fitting a micro-steamer to a pedal-velocipede at the same time in Paris. Kevin Cameron and I disagree on their species; he calls them “steam cycles,” but I think any motorized two-wheeler that delivers yeehaw is a motorcycle. That’s a scientific measure, the all-important Y factor. It’s what got both you and me and everyone else into bikes, even in the 1860s.
Roper regularly rode his “selfpropellers” around Boston, scorching the road between his home in Roxbury to the Boston Yacht Club, where he’d refuel and (presumably) have a beer. On June 1,1896, Roper was invited to demonstrate his steamer at the Charles River Speedway, a banked cement velodrome in Cambridge. He outpaced a peloton of bicyclists then steamed away from a top pro racer.
Track officials urged him to unleash the hissing beast, and after a few scorching laps timed at more than 40 mph, Roper wobbled, shut down, and collapsed. He was 72 years old and had a fatal heart attack during a major yeehaw moment.
Roper invented motorcycling; he was its first speed demon and its first martyr. He’s our patron saint and died for the same sin that stains 21st century bikers: the lust for speed. His steam cycle of 1869 sits in the Smithsonian, and the bike he died on sold for $500,000 two years ago. He’s pretty important to the history of our second-favorite pastime, and he’s a hero of mine. So while visiting Boston last year, I was keen to follow the Roper trail and asked Dave Roper (the first American to win an Isle of Man TT and a distant relative) if he knew the address of his namesake. He recalled 294 Eustis Street in Roxbury, but a visit in the company of photographer Bill Burke revealed a parking lot.
I hit the Boston State Library and found we were darn close—he lived at 299 Eustis Street, and the house still stands. I told every Bostonian I met about this exciting discovery and admit to crazy fantasies of buying the place because...Roper! If he’d created a cure for smallpox, or invented the automobile, or written famous novels in his day, you’d find a plaque by the front door, with the house listed in tourist guidebooks. But this is motorcycles, which is still a dirty word to some, so the house remains uncelebrated and overlooked, except now you know about it too.
There’s little published on Roper and certainly no proper biography—just a few columns in 1800s magazines and a lot of “web conjecture.” The first motorcycle books weren’t published until the early 1900s, and all were how-tos until Victor Pagé wrote a history of motorcycles in 1914. That might sound like the dawn of the industry, but Early Motorcycles and Sidecars, which is still in print, was published 45 years after Roper and Perreaux pioneered motoring on two wheels.
Many thousands of books about motorcycles were published in the next 100 years, from ADV travel in the late teens (it was all adventure then) to tellalls about i%er club misadventures, to hundreds of histories of makes, from long-dead Aermacchi to Yamaha. But there are still big holes in the literature, and a lot of important stuff is missing from moto-history. I’ve been approached to write books on two brands this year— Zenith and Motosacoche—which in their day held world land speed records, won championships, and made a dent in their world. Researching those stories is hard work, but it feels good, like cementing the foundation of the House of Motorcycles. Put a plaque on it!
BY THE NUMBERS
17 MOTORCYCLES IN THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
7,276 RESULTS FOR HARLEY-DAVIDSON BOOKS" ON AMAZON
$1,000,000 CASH BOND REQUIRED FORTHE SMITHSONIAN’S ROPER STEAMERTO STARINTHEARTOFTHE MOTORCYCLE EXHIBIT. THE CUCCENHEIM SAID “NO.”
