To escape the madness of Carnival in Düsseldorf on
Rosenmontag, I arranged an escape to the Netherlands with my friend Nick, who
brought the team car and a new GPS. Our
destination on this bitterly cold Monday was just across the Dutch border in
Nijmegen: Velorama, the National Fietsmuseum.
“Fiets” is, of course, Dutch for “bicycle”
and where better to look at two-wheelers than in the country famous for using
them?
27% of all trips made in the Netherlands are by bicycle and
59% of all urban trips, so bicycles represent a key element of the national
transportation system. To celebrate this
love affair, the Dutch have put together one of the finest bicycle museums in
the world, an astonishing collection that emphasizes the technology of this
seemingly-simple device. This is Velorama,
housed over three storeys in an attractive (and blindingly clean) warehouse
building overlooking the Waal, and showcasing bicycles in all conceivable, and
even a few incredible, variations from 1817 to 1960.
On this bitter and blustery weekday we were
amongst the first of a handful of visitors to arrive and were met by Mr.
Labrie, a curator who enthusiastically showed us around the truly amazing
collection.
The museum has its beginnings in the collection of Mr.
Gerdjan Moed, who was given an antique bicycle as a child and apparently has
never looked back. When people were
clearing out barns or attics and came across then-valueless old bicycles, he
was the person happy to accept their donations and gradually the numbers of
objects grew and grew. In 1981 the
museum was opened, and extensively renovated in 1998 but even still only can
display one-third of the collection.
The exhibition begins truly at the beginning with a replica
of the famous “Laufmaschine” of Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig Freiherr Drais
von Sauerbronn. Baron Dreis is credited
as inventor of the first steerable bicycle, generally called a “draisine.” Mr. Labrie sadly remarked that the museum did
not own one of the Baron’s original bicycles as these are extremely rare and
staggeringly expensive. With the exception
of the draisine replica, all machines in the museum are originals.
The Baron apparently took out patents for everywhere except
Britain (a bad business decision) and soon enough copies of his machine began
to appear throughout Europe. We walked
by a row of marvellous machines from this period. They were clumsy, heavy and rather crude and
really only suitable for riding on smooth park lanes rather than cobbled
streets but were often whimsical in design.
There simple backbone frames took on fanciful forms, including racehorses
or dragons. Most of the examples we saw
were produced in countries other than the Netherlands, which, surprisingly,
came rather slowly to bicycle design and innovation. But the so-called “hobbyhorse” or “dandy-horse”
era was fairly short-lived as the wooden machines were impractical and unwieldy
and they quickly faded away.
In addition to bicycles with two wheels there was a range of
weird configurations and these three and four wheel “pedomotive” or “manomotive”
are well-represented in the exhibition.
Mr. Labrie explained that they were used to test components that would
eventually be used in steam engines of various kinds including
locomotives. This was a period that saw
advances in metalworking skills and applications and these vehicles, as strange
as they appear to us, would have been cutting-edge technology for the time.
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| Mr. Labrie and some early early early bikes |
It would be several
decades before the next important development in bicycle technology came about:
the installation of pedals on the front axle of a two-wheeler. It has always struck me as strange that an
idea so simple and obvious took forty years to happen. We now moved into the part of the collection
that reflected the 1860s. Wood has now
been replaced with iron and then steel and the workmanship of the bicycles
improved dramatically.
The so-called “Boneshaker” era saw the introduction of
freewheels and ball bearings and the first completely metal bicycles were
fabricated in France. The front wheel
sized began to increase in pursuit of greater efficiency and people began to
utilize the bicycle, previously only really an entertainment device, to
actually go places. And the first bicycle
races occurred as well.
Circling past the museum’s Velocitas Café, we climbed the narrow steps to
the next floor and turning to our left we came into the wonderful High Wheel
Lounge, which offered a spectacular collection of the evocative bicycles that
were variously known as “Ordinaries,” “Penny Farthings,” or “Highwheelers.” By enlarging the front wheel of the
boneshaker it was now possible to reach impressive speeds, limited only by the
rider’s inseam and, well, courage. Many
very famous brands of bicycle were on display, including Star, Columbia and
Rover. They were predominantly British
or American, countries that had taken the lead from France in production and
innovation, and the companies that built them had experience constructing
precision machinery, such as sewing machines.
The crude era of the draisine banged out by blacksmiths was long gone.
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| Riding in comfort, with your chauffeur behind and invisible |
In addition to bicycles with two wheels there was a range of
configurations for people, particularly the elderly or women, who were unable
to ride the highwheeler, which was used primarily by athletic, well-off young
men. In addition, there were tricycles
and quadricycles and all manner of experimental things. The multi-wheelers offered stability and,
given their higher cost, status. And
they required technological advances as well: this is where the differential,
allowing the opposing wheels to turn at different speeds when cornering and an
important component of automobile drive systems, was developed.
The drawbacks of the highwheeler were obvious and inventive
British minds soon enough came up with the idea of the “safety bicycle,”
employing wheels of equal size and a chain drive to the back wheel. The first safety came to market in 1885 and
only a few years later the introduction of the pneumatic tire brought us to
essentially the modern configuration of a bicycle. It marked the death knell of the graceful
highwheeler, although there were attempts to keep it going using smaller front
wheels with geared chain drives but this
was a last gasp.
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| Very early solid-tired safety bicycle |
When visiting the Pedaling History Museum (no longer extant,
alas) in Buffalo, New York in 2008, I discovered the extraordinary Otto
Dicycle, which has two high wheels beside each other and the rider sits between
them, using the handlebars to balance. A
massive and complicated device, I was enchanted by it and its ridiculous
appearance. I learned that it was
particularly rare and valuable.
Expensive when built, only 953 were constructed and the safety bicycle’s
appearance shortly afterwards made it obsolete.
It takes up a lot of space, weighs 40 kg and is pretty vulnerable to
damage so only a half dozen or so still exist.
Remarkably, Velorama had three of them on display!
Another remarkable artifact is the rail bicycle used by
employees to get to the Star Bicycle Company factory in Smithville, New Jersey
across a swamp. 1.8 miles in length and
using an elevated monorail, it opened in 1892 and was subsequently exhibited at
the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago.
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| Suspension via rim-mounted springs! |
The safety bicycle brought with it a renewed push for
innovation and the museum illustrates this brilliantly with a remarkable number
of period pieces. Everything that we
think of new was tried at some point in the period from 1890 to 1910: bicycle
suspensions, puncture-proof tires, lightweight frames in odd materials (bamboo,
hickory), mudguards and lighting systems.
After admiring this evidence of industrial evolution, with
some ideas that admittedly went into a dead-end, we proceeded up the next
flight of stairs to the top floor of the museum. This is the "modern times” section, covering
the 20th Century, or at least the first six decades or so. In addition to the kind of bikes that would
not be out of place on our streets today, there are some novelties including
some early recumbents and a very fine selection of the peculiar Dursely-Pedersens,
with their complicated small-tubing frames and hammock-style seats. Built from 1897-c. 1912, they were very light
for the time and have actually gone back into production as they have a dedicated cult following still.
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| A late production Dursley-Pedersen |
The modern bicycles on display included some novel American
bicycles from the 1950s, such as a Schwinn Black Phantom and some Columbia
roadsters, as well as the goofy world-of-tomorrow Bowden Spacelander from 1960. The latter is back in production too, apparently! All of this is nicely displayed and includes
not only the bicycles themselves but displays devoted to components and it is
possible to try out different kinds of shifting systems that have been
developed over the years. Bicycle
racing, which is not extensively covered in what is on display, is represented with
a fine exhibit devoted to Wim van Est’s famous excursion over the side of the
side of the mountain after descending the Col d’Aubique in the 1951 Tour de
France. The day before he had become the
first Dutch rider to earn the Yellow Jersey.
His team rescued him using tiet-together tubular tires and the incident
became part of Tour legend. Wim died in 2003
aged 80 but his original and very battered bike from that race is part of the
display at Velorama.
The final area of interest is devoted to Dutch bicycles and
includes the kind of sit-up-and-beg indestructible bicycles for which the nation
is noted. Famous brands, including
Gazelle and Batavus, are represented and pride of place goes to a Fongers
tandem used by then-Princess (subsequently Queen) Juliana and Prince Bernhard
before their marriage. There are some
fine posters and the display, designed to look like a Dutch street scene, is
attractive and representative of the high quality of the displays.
We enjoyed a coffee in the café before taking our leave of
Mr. Labrie and the museum. In addition to the café in the museum, there is an adjoining
three star hotel in the same style, the Hotel Courage, which opened in 2004. A visit to Velorama is
highly recommended; this is almost certainly the best collection of antique
bicycles in existence. I hope that
someday space will be available so that the rest of the bicycles can be
displayed.
Information about the museum and details for planning a visit can be found here.
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