Richard Schwinn, the great grandson of Ignaz and grandson of Frank W., purchased the Waterford, WI, facility where Paramounts were made before the 1993 bankruptcy, and continues to build beautiful bicycles there under the "Waterford" and "Gunnar" brands. He has several pages of Paramount history from the first bikes by Emil Wastyn in the late thirties until the 1993 bankruptcy on the Waterford website at http://www.waterfordbikes.com/2005/d...ount/index.php.

It's all here: when the switch from Chrome-Molybdenum to Reynolds 531 tubing was made, when the Nervex lugs first appeared, the aborted attempt to use Prugnat lugs, the curved seatmast "short-coupled" frame, the switch to Reynolds 753 tubeset, the move from "the cage" in the Chicago Schwinn factory to the new facility in Waterford, WI, building the "Elite" Paramounts and the change from Reynolds to Columbus SL and SP and eventually SLX tubing, the change to the OS tubeset with the 1 1/4" downtube, the move to importing Paramount-branded bikes from Asia, the incorporation of Reynolds 753 version of the OS tubeset, and the development of the "Series" Paramounts (including the Series 9C composite models built by Kestrel).

The history on the Waterford site also describes the colorful characters who played important roles in the Paramount story. It's definitely the most complete and authoritative narrative on the Paramount I've seen anywhere, and represents thirteen single-spaced size 10 font pages without any of the illustrations.

After 1993-94, the new Schwinn owners wisely chose to keep the Paramount name, but I know very little about the post-bankruptcy Paramounts.