American Iron Magazine Presents 1001 Harley-Davidson Facts. Tyler Greenblatt
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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 that was painted dark blue with white numbers. “MASS. AUTOMOBILE REGISTER” was printed across the top and the plates differed in size to meet the necessary amount of characters. Approximately 500 motorcycles were in use in the state at the time of the first required plate, which were the same for both automobiles and motorcycles. The only difference was that motorcycle plates’ identification began with the letter Z. Most states required visible license plates by 1914.
88 Crystal Haydel was not just an employee at Harley-Davidson, she was a rider, too! In fact, she’s recognized as the first woman in Wisconsin to register a motorcycle for road use, which she did in 1911.
89 Part of the Harley-Davidson mystique surrounding the company throughout its 100-plus years involves the actual year of its first production and the year of the first commercial sale. Even though 1903 is the generally accepted first year of production, and the one reported by The Motor Company itself, varying evidence has come to light through the years that places the first motorcycle as early as 1901 and as late as 1905. To make matters even more confusing, Harley-Davidson never acknowledged its first year until the 1954 model line and, by then, none of the founders were still alive to discuss or confirm the company’s timeline. One of the most interesting pieces of evidence is an advertisement from the factory in 1910 that says “eight years ago we placed on the market the first model of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle.” This suggests that a motorcycle was built and sold in 1902, although it could also mean 1903.
90 Evidence also exists that puts Harley-Davidson’s first real motorcycle and sale at a later date; that’s C. H. Lang’s 1914 testimony as part of a patent infringement lawsuit. As you know, the accepted history is that C. H. Lang sold his first Harley-Davidson in 1903. However, in his testimony he says that he became familiar with the H-D motorcycle in the autumn of 1904 and became an official dealer in 1905. Most of the conspiracies regarding the first year of manufacture can be attributed to misspeak, or confusing and generalizing language that rounded up years rather than giving an exact time. As unlikely as any of the alternative start years might be, it’s still a fun and interesting debate.
91 Harley-Davidson produced its first advertisement in the January 1905 issue of Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal. That ad touted only the part of the bike that really makes a Harley-Davidson a Harley-Davidson: the engine. Although many motorcycles were being produced at the time, it was a far greater task to build an entire motorcycle (with the engine) than it was to build just an engine. Therefore, marketing the engine as a stand-alone product that included mounting equipment for a bicycle made good business sense, and it was a great start to promoting the company’s name. The ad showed a picture of the single-cylinder engine and advertised 3-1/4 bhp (brake horsepower). It also listed the company’s address at 315 37th Street in Milwaukee, the famous backyard shed.
92 The Enthusiast, first published in 1916, is often mistaken as The Motor Company’s first print publication. However, in 1912, the company began publishing Harley-Davidson Dealer, which was sent out to dealerships. Although the content was focused more on the business aspect of the company, the magazine contained good maintenance tips and H-D model information that just about any owner would find valuable. It’s likely that enough owners started asking for it, which led to the creation of The Enthusiast.
93 In the early years of motorcycling, hundreds of marques sprang up and then quickly disappeared. Many of them, including Milwaukee-based Merkel (later known as Flying Merkel), beat Harley-Davidson to its frame design and the use of a V-twin engine. However, Flying Merkel’s last motorcycle was built in 1915, after the company relocated to Ohio. During Harley-Davidson’s first decade, more than 75 American motorcycle companies went out of business; some only managed to build a handful of bikes.
94 In the earliest days of his motorcycle company, Bill Harley attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and studied engineering; his focus was internal combustion engines. Because