Originally Posted by
non-fixie
Up until the 1950's pretty much all bikes were painted black, so that doesn't give you much to go on. It could well be older.
Nice find, BTW.
I believe that he was talking about the parts that are normally chrome plated being black. That was a characteristic of World War II era bicycles.Eliminating the chrome reduced the reflectivity and consequently the visibility, while saving the chromium for the war effort. Of course, it could also be a case of repaint over rusty chrome.