Today in History: First motorcycle introduced to the world

I'm a motorcycle guy. I like them so much that the only bones I have ever broken in my life have come at the hands of one of them. I realize that they are very dangerous but still use them anyway. Well ok, that isn't entirely true: I haven't yet purchased one in Vietnam because the roads are so congested that I don't really think it would be a great deal of fun since you can likely never achieve a speed of anything higher than say 20 MPH.

There had been some forms of "motorcycles" that were introduced prior to this one, but the Reitwagen (riding car) was the first production vehicle that could be considered actually being functional

The year was 1885

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The inventors were Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach and I'm guessing that it was Daimler that did most of the legwork on this because he is considered the "father of the motorcycle."

Previous models had been made that ran on steam and of course there were belt driven bicycles that were developed years before this machine but since it used an internal combustion engine the likes of which are used in all manner of vehicles to this day, Daimler gets credit for getting there first.

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These days motorcycles are the most frequently vehicles in many parts of the world and this is particularly true in the part of the world that I have called home for the past 17 years. As a matter of fact, the country with the highest percentage of motorcycle ownership in the world (87% of households) is Thailand, where I lived for 16 years and the 2nd highest ownership in the world (86% of households) is Vietnam.

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If you spend any time in these places, it is easy to understand why someone would own one of these in lieu of a car. It is because cars are just as expensive here as they are anywhere else in the world and the population is relatively poor and also because the streets are so congested with traffic that you are almost certainly going to reach your destination faster on a motorbike than you are in a car since western notions of "traffic rules" aren't really observed over here.

Everyone makes maneuvers on the roads many times daily on a motorbike that would be considered illegal in the west such as driving between lanes, packing lanes, and even using sidewalks as shortcuts pretty regularly. Motorbikes are also considerably easier to park since apparently you can just put them anywhere you want including blocking the entire footpath in certain parts of town, which is annoying but that's just the way it is.

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I think it is relatively easy to presume that if Daimler hadn't invented this machine that someone else would have done so in the near future after him but someone got there first and it was him. Unfortunately the original was destroyed in a fire in 1909 but several replicas exist in Museums in Stuttgart, Munich, and somewhere in Tochigi, Japan.

This incredibly deadly machine accounts for thousands of road deaths in countries all over the world but this isn't the vehicles fault in most instances, it is because of the users. The same could probably be said for almost all vehicular deaths though as well.

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An Australian man named Phil Mumenthaler replicated the original design using only the tools that would have been available in the late 1800's and he said it took him about 850 man-hours and around US$100,000 to finish it. I would imagine that Daimler probably had a few people helping him on his own original.

The internal engine was of course very inefficient by today's standards and was only capable of reaching speeds of 12 km per hour. The fastest motorcycle in the world today, which is a ridiculous machine called the Dodge Tomahawk has a top speed of 420 MILES per hour.

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and it all began today, 135 years ago