xizangstan

As a pilot, I think more of Wilbur and Orville as being the first aviators in the USA who operated without FAA licenses. My new pilot's license is a laminated plastic card with their photos on it - but not my own!

Anyway, those two guys who changed history were also in the bicycle shop business. I have to assume they sold or contracted the business out to someone else when they went into the airplane business full time. Anyone know what eventually happened to the Wright Bicycle Shop? Is there someone around today, taking advantage of the name?

auchencrow

They moved their shop, lock stock and barrel to Michigan.

cycleheimer

The bicycle business of the Wright brothers, the Wright Cycle Company (originally the Wright Cycle Exchange) occupied five different locations in Dayton, Ohio. They also ran a printing shop on the second-floor of their rented brick building at 22 South Williams St., Dayton, Ohio, the only extant building that housed a Wright bicycle shop on its original foundation and in its original location. The 22 South Williams Street building, where the Wrights worked from 1895 to 1897, is part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
The Wrights used the profits from the Wright Cycle Company to finance their aviation experiments.
In 1901 they fitted a third bicycle wheel horizontally above the front wheel of one of their St. Claire bicycles and used the apparatus as a test platform to study airfoil design. From October to December that year, they conducted pioneering wind tunnel tests on the second floor of their bicycle shop at 1127 West Third St., the last location of their bicycle business.

Shop locations
With the exception of the West Second Street location, which is located near the Schuster Center on the other side of the river, all of the shops are located within about one block of each other.

• 1892 -- Wright Cycle Exchange at 1005 West Third Street.
• 1893 to 1894 -- Wright Cycle Exchange at 1034 West Third Street. The name later changed to Wright Cycle Co.
• 1895 to 1897 -- Wright Cycle Co. at two locations -- the main store at 22 South Williams Street, and a branch store in downtown Dayton at 23 West Second Street. The branch closed in 1896.
• 1897 to 1908 -- The Wright Cycle Co. at 1127 West Third Street.[2]

cycleheimer

The Wright Company was the commercial aviation business of the Wright Brothers, established by them in 1909 in conjunction with several prominent industrialists from New York and Detroit with the intention of capitalizing on their invention of the practical airplane. It maintained a headquarters office in New York City, but it built its factory in Dayton, Ohio. The two buildings designed by Dayton architect William Earl Russ and built by Rouzer Construction for the Wright Company in Dayton in 1910 and 1911 were the first edifices in the United States constructed specifically for an airplane factory and were included within the boundary of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park in 2009.[1]
The Wright Company concentrated its efforts on protecting the company's patent rights rather than on developing new aircraft or aircraft components, believing that innovations would hurt the company's efforts to obtain royalties from competing manufacturers or patent infringers. Wilbur Wright died in 1912, and on October 15, 1915, Orville Wright sold the company, which later merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company to form the Wright-Martin Company.
Many of the papers of the Wright Company are now in the collection of the Seattle Museum of Flight, while others are held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress also holds the papers of Grover Loening, the second Wright Company factory manager, while the papers of Frank H. Russell, the first plant manager, are at the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center.

Pompiere

That's the great thing about The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. The Wright Cycle Shop isn't just a reconstruction, it is the original building. That one and several others were set up under the direction of the original owners after Henry asked them to be in the museum. I thought the story of building the museum and aquiring the exhibits was as interesting as the contents.

Mr IGH

The old Wright Bros Bicycle Shop is one of the best parts of Greenfield Village. I had no idea it was there when I made my first visit, what a pleasant surprise!

RobbieTunes

I think they contracted their frames to a Japanese firm, and when the yen skyrocketed against the dollar, production was switched to Taiwan. Today, their bikes may well be built in mainland China and sold at WalMart.

Grillparzer

Don't know about the shop itself, but one of their five surviving bicycles is in the National Air and Space Museum not too far away from me. If they hadn't wasted all of their time making those damn fool flying machines I think they could have had a career building bicycles.

Lapdanceinlyrca

holy cow, that is sexy. id ride that every day!

Road Fan

In that case, I expect that as the Chinese standard of living continues to improve, production will return to the US, and Wrights frames will be built at Waterfords. Made of steel. Orville IV was recently spotted there buying Richard Schwinn a latte.

Andrew F

Is the stem in backwards in this photo? Between the "7" seatpost putting the saddle slightly ahead of the seattube and the bars behind the stem, it would have a very tight cockpit, no?

JJPistols

look how slack the bike is, the length of the top tube compared to the seat height, etc. - they were coming off the hi-wheelers - the overall fit might be closer to fine than you'd expect at first glance


or maybe it's awful


I don't know, there are no easy answers in life

rm -rf

To invent the airplane, they adapted the idea of a wind tunnel to study wing shapes, redesigned the typical flying machine from scratch, and also built their own gasoline engine.

From wikipedia:

jish1969

I heard their business really took off...

xizangstan

Isn't that a Brooks saddle? And do you suppose the Wright Brothers used Shimano hubs???

xizangstan

Call me crazy, but I'm thinking that airplanes have changed a lot more since the Wrights, than bicycles have.

DavidW56

Our house is in the Ford Homes Historic District of Dearborn, and we live literally just down the street from Greenfield Village. My wife and I buy an annual family membership at The Henry Ford, which is comprised of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village among other entities. I even worked at the museum as a historical presenter for a few months when I was unemployed long-term. I have seen the Wright Cycle Shop many times. Like xizangstan said, the bicycles in the shop window aren't much different than what we ride today.

cudak888 

Been there - quite a few years ago.

-Kurt

DavidW56

You might like to visit again. There have been made vast changes, updates and improvements.

Kip

Interesting!`I've been to Greenfield Village and saw the Wright brothers' shop about 15-20 years ago but was not aware of what remained in Dayton. Sounds like it's worth a visit.

The reference to Seattle's Museum of Flight reminded me that there are a number of places where you can go and view airplanes and research their history. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in DC is another example. But where do you go to learn about the history of bicycles and bicycling in the US? I'm sure the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History have collections of photographs and archival materials and I know that there have been several attempts to establish museums devoted to bicycles but I am not aware of any right now.

What are there the places - museums, historic sites or archives - that someone interested in bicycling history should go? Besides posting a question on BF C&V where do you find information? Of course there are private collectors out there, but are any public institutions actively bicycling history and culture.

Perhaps this should be a separate thread but I'm interested in what is out there.

cb400bill

https://www.bicyclemuseum.com/

DavidW56

Yes, my wife and I saw the billboard for the Bicycle Museum in Ohio on our way to Texas last winter, and my wife actually suggested we could spend a (romantic) weekend away from the kids with that museum as our destination sometime this fall. Wow!

noglider 

Speaking of bike museums (or is the plural "musea"?), on my honeymoon with my first wife, in 1986, we went to England and Scotland, and we stumbled upon a wonderful bicycle museum in Lincoln, England. I spent a lot of time there and had fun.