Template talk:Early motorcycles

Scope

For now I think this template should include motorcycles and inventors up to and including the year 1900, which is the last year of a notable steam cycle. Alternatively it could stop with the 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller, since that's the first production motorcycle, but that would mean leaving out the Geneva, Thomas, Orient, and De Dion-Bouton. --Dbratland (talk) 21:12, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

This appears to me to be very biased. There are no notable steam "cycles". The steam velocipedes didn't pioneer anything. There is NO backward line to any of them. The inventors of the modern bicycle did, but only that which is somewhat peripheral to motorcycles, not instrumental. Bicycle technology was not strong enough. The first machines made from bicycles all broke. This was occurring as late as 1922. Tricycles have no part in Motorcycle history. These machines had such poor handling they were abandoned quickly (De Dion-Bouton for example).

Micheaux was a bicycle pioneer, but his name does not appear on the patent which some claim is for the Micheaux-Perreaux steam velocipede. Only Perreaux's name appears. Singular prototypes that lead nowhere are NOT pioneers. Roper, Butler, are irrelevant except as anecdotes.

There was 1 steam motorcycle, the H&W of 1892. Two years later they produced their Otto engined motorcycle.

There is doubt that Copeland ever made a steam velocipede. There is a modern production, but there is no known original. The picture, is a drawing.

You've left out the really important pioneers, such as Roy C. Marks, Charles Metz (Orient-Aster) Hedstrom and Hendee, Laurin & Klement, the Werner brothers, Nikolaus Otto, who made Daimler's work possible based on Lenoir's engine. The first motorcycle factory was built in Germany in 1900, you missed the pioneer there too.

By stopping at 1900 you leave out dozens of brands. The ONLY US moto built prior to 1900 is the Marks, which morphed into the California almost six years later.

There are also Raleigh and Quadrant in the UK. And Motosacoche, Clement, (and others) in France. And if you go to 1901 you'll get the first Russian mc with the Rossiya.

Seems to me that you are just throwing in a lot of junk and aren't even putting in the real pioneers.

Intentional or not, this is a pretty weak history. Krontach (talk) 05:00, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The sources who deny that steam cycles are "true" motorcycles have been repeatedly cited, along with the opinions of those experts who say that Roper, Michaux, Perreaux, and the others were important parts of motorcycle history. It is a fact that experts do not agree on this question, and it does readers a valuable service to provide them with all the facts. Bias would be to take sides, and to only cite some opinions and delete others. Wikipedia has a policy of neutrality which demands that we cover the spectrum of significant opinions.

As far as missing articles, be bold. Gather quality sources, and write the articles. Everyone would welcome greater coverage if you can cite good sources to support it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:19, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course steam cycles, electric cycles, compressed air cycles, etc, are ALL motorcycles; they have two wheels and a motor. It is a distortion of history and a bias towards the Internal Combustion engine to dismiss these earliest experiments. Alternative power sources (electric, even steam) will become more common as we seek alternatives to the IC hegemony, and these first machines become all the more relevant. Vintagent (talk) 03:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Two vs Three

Please more identification of 2 vs 3 wheelers, thanks. A75 (talk) 15:23, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Have you read the sources on these motorcycles? They don't draw significant attention to whether they had two or three wheels. There is discussion about whether steam or petrol engines are a criterion to be a motorcycle, and the merits of frame geometry, and the Reitwagen is questioned because it had four wheels, but when you read the history of the early bikes, you do not see sources saying, "Here is the timeline of the two wheeled motorcycles, while over here, separately, we discuss the three wheelers." You are introducing a distinction that you personally are concerned with, but it isn't based on our sources.

Changing "pioneers" to "people" takes a specific term and makes it more vague. Why would we want to be less specific? Many sources refer to these people as "pioneers". That's where the word comes from. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2016 (UTC)