That visit led to Bowden replacing Ellis as the partnership’s principal investor, though Bowden did not become the outright owner of the firm.
Woodhead and Angois, the originators and makers of the Raleigh ″ It is clear from Frank Bowden’s own account that, although he bought a Raleigh ‘Safety’ in 1887, he did not visit the Raleigh workshop until autumn 1888. In the autumn of the latter year, happening to pass through Nottingham, and with the idea of, if possible, getting a still more up-to-date machine, I called upon Messrs. Its patent changeable gear and other special features struck me as superior to all the others I had seen, and I purchased one upon which I toured extensively through France, Italy and England during 18. Bowden described how this led to him visiting the Raleigh works: ″In the early part of 1887, while looking for a good specimen of the then new safety bicycle, I came across a Raleigh in London. It was one of 15 bicycle manufacturers based in Nottingham at that time., a recent convert to cycling who on medical advice had toured extensively on a tricycle, first saw a Raleigh bicycle in a shop window in, about the time that William Ellis’s investment in the cycle workshop was beginning to take effect. Bear in mind that owners often updated their bicycles over the years though we might like our bike to match its catalogue description, updated parts are also a valid part of its history and provenance. It’s possible to date Sturmey-Archer hubs, so if the rear hub is original to the bike that often helps. Also, though we now consider a catalogue description to be an accurate guide to a bicycle’s specification, despite catalogue options listed a customer could choose any option whatsoever, even components sold by a competing company. A catalogue description is a good guide, though we rarely have a manufacturer’s catalogue for every year, so may not know for how many years a model was current. It’s a nightmare trying to make sense of it a hundred years later. Few published their true production figures. There were also a lot of ‘dodgy practices’ within the bicycle trade, with companies regularly liquidating and starting up again and spurious production claims often made for advertising purposes and to inflate a company’s worth. Now we must depend on those who gleaned that first-hand knowledge from them these chaps were the ‘youngsters’ then, but now they’re getting older themselves, most in their late sixties and seventies. The key point here is that the elders who were around while our favourite vintage machines were still on the road are no longer with us, the last of them having passed on in the past twenty years or so. Similarly, to learn about vintage bicycles, we ask questions of our elders in the hobby. Thus, for example, an apprentice mechanic was handed down an invaluable unwritten guide to repairing vehicles that could not be learned at college nor from books, because, as well as specific information about various models, it helped a youngster understand the way they were designed and built. In the ‘old days’ (a time which seems to have ended in the past twenty five years or so), a youngster became an apprentice in a chosen field and learned its history from the older employees. My purpose for creating these databases is simple. Insomnia is my saving grace, otherwise there would be no time for any of this.
#Elgin bicycle serial number chart free#
Not only do I have a full-time job (I run my own business restoring and selling vintage vehicles) and am a hands-on parent of a young child, but I spend a minimum 30 hours every week building, updating and maintaining these free websites to help you do your own research. To sift through information to try and find similar pictures to your unidentified bicycle would take me months, and I’m already doing similar research on my own bikes. I’m not being callous about this. With an estimated 15,000 bicycle manufacturers, the odds are stacked against me recognizing yours in any case, I do not claim to be an expert, just an assiduous recorder of information. FRAME NUMBER BICYCLE DATING GUIDE HOW OLD IS MY BICYCLE? ‘How old is my bicycle?’ is a question I get asked a lot, nearly as much as: ‘I have a bicycle that looks like one of yours if I send you pictures please can you identify it for me?’ The answer, in short, is that I do not have time to tell you either.
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