When bikes became available to more people in the late 1800s, they offered a way of getting around for lots of people who couldn’t afford a horse. While cars have grown in popularity over the years, bikes continue to be used for recreation, sport, and travel.
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On the Move
– Sergio Gonzlez: Hey, Kacie!
– Kacie Lucchini Butcher: Hey, Sergio!
– Did you get Nick’s message?
– I was just looking at it.
He said to meet here, to bring a helmet, and that we were going on some type of Wisconsin history adventure.
– What does that even mean?
– Nick Hoffman: Hey, Kacie, hey, Sergio.
You wanna go learn some state history, enjoy the outdoors, and get a little bit of exercise?
– That sounds like a lot of things.
– Not if you’re going on a bike ride.
– Oh, a bike ride.
– That’s why I said to bring your helmet.
– I brought mine.
– I may have misunderstood.
– Don’t worry, I brought extras.
[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [television static] – What is this place?
– It kinda looks like an office building and not a very historic one.
– Well, it is full of some amazing history, and for two historians, you’re gonna love it.
So let’s roll on inside and check it out.
– All right.
[upbeat music] – Wow, are you thinking what I’m thinking?
– In unison: Holy history!
– That’s the only way to describe it.
– This place is amazing, Nick.
– Nick: Yeah, welcome to the State Archive Preservation Facility.
It’s where the Wisconsin Historical Society and other agencies keep all of their historical records, their archives, their film, their artifacts, and their bikes.
– Kacie: There’s so much to look at, I don’t even know where to look, where to begin.
I wanna run around.
– It goes on and on, thousands of items, multiple floors.
It just keeps going on and on.
– And, let me get this right, Nick, you collected all of this yourself?
– Ah, not myself personally, my colleagues, but they do so much great work to collect and preserve all of this history.
– Can we go take a look at some bikes?
– Yeah, absolutely, we got a couple right down here.
– So Nick, what do we have here?
– This is the Trek 2500, an incredibly important bike in the history of cycling.
– Really?
‘Cause it just kind of looks like a bike.
– It may just look like a bike, but there’s some cool little features that make you know that it’s meant for the road and for gaining a lot of speed.
For one, it’s got these really thin tires.
It’s got a drop bar handle, so you can kind of lean over for a little extra speed.
But what’s really important and what makes the Trek 2500 so special is that these bars are actually carbon.
– People have used lots of different materials to make bikes ever since they were first invented.
In the 1800s, some bike makers even used bamboo and wood.
Why so much experimentation?
Well, ideally you want a bike that is light and strong.
A lighter bike means it can be fast and easier to get moving, and strength means it can support the rider at high speeds.
– Steel was a pretty common material for bicycles throughout the 20th century.
In the 1980s, Trek and other companies were also starting to use aluminum to make bikes.
– Narrator: Presenting aluminum.
– Aluminum is a metal that’s much lighter than steel, but still strong enough for something like a bicycle frame.
The 2500 is mostly made of aluminum, but there’s also a new material in some of the pieces.
– Carbon fiber.
Carbon fiber is a type of reinforced plastic.
It can be very strong, even stronger than steel, but can also be lighter than aluminum.
It’s so light and strong that it’s also used on airplanes.
2500 might not be ready to take to the skies, but it was an important step in the quest for lighter and stronger bicycles.
– So, Trek, I think that’s a Wisconsin company, right?
– It is a Wisconsin company that has gone national because of products like this.
And their origin story is classically Wisconsin.
Trek is a company that makes and sells bicycles.
It was founded right here in Waterloo, Wisconsin.
The company’s founders chose the name Trek, which usually means a long, difficult journey, to call to mind the spirit of adventure.
When Trek first opened in 1976, it was a pretty small company, just five full-time employees, but this was a good time to get into the bike business.
The 1970s saw a sharp rise in gas prices, which made driving a car more expensive.
Commuting by bicycle was a much cheaper option.
More people were also biking for fun, and many Americans wanted an American-made bike.
All this helped Trek become a global company by the late 1980s when this bike was first being made.
– What about all of these?
Are these other examples of Wisconsin bikes?
– Oh, yeah, these are great examples, and they all add up to the story of this bike.
– Can we take a look?
– Nick: Let’s do it.
– Nick, I’m guessing this one isn’t made out of carbon fiber.
– This is not carbon fiber; this is steel.
So this would’ve been made around 1899 or 1900 by the American Bicycle Company in Kenosha.
It’s a really important bike though in the history of cycling, especially for women.
– Ooh, now I’m kind of curious.
Why is this bike important for women?
– In the 1890s, we had what was called the first big bike boom.
It was thousands and thousands of riders in cities all across the United States were starting to bike.
And that’s really driven because there was finally a bicycle model that was made for women.
This is a women’s safeties bike, and it has this really interesting drop bar, and a lot of people today still have that on their bikes.
They use it to step through, it’s easier access to get up on the seat, but originally, that was to accommodate a woman’s skirt hanging down because they expected that women would still wear skirts when they were riding, and that’s what the rear netting is for too.
So this is added, so when a woman’s skirt starts to blow back when they’re riding, it doesn’t get tangled up in the gears and cause an accident.
– By the late 1800s, when bicycles became safer and more affordable, they offered a way of getting around for lots of people who couldn’t afford a horse.
Women in particular benefited from the increased freedom a bicycle provided.
Owning a bike meant they didn’t have to rely on men for getting around.
The rise of cars in the 1900s meant a shift away from biking culture.
But bikes continue to be used for recreation, sport, and travel.
– This bike is huge!
– Gigantic.
This would’ve been the bike that was more common in the mid to early 1880s and it was expensive.
There’s not a lot of people manufacturing them across the United States.
– I have to ask, Nick, why is this wheel so big?
– It’s all about the need for speed.
This helps you go much faster.
So this is a really incredible bike, but we have one even older, and let’s go check that one out.
– Can we ride this over?
– I don’t think they’ll let us do that.
I don’t think we wanna do that, but we can walk over.
– Biking is still a huge part of Wisconsin culture.
The state has tons of bike trails and people of all ages continue to use bicycles for commuting, for recreation, and for sport.
Not only is it fun to ride a bicycle, but it’s a great way to stay active and do something good for the environment.
Getting people to use less gas by biking instead of driving a car and encouraging the government to make Wisconsin cities and towns more bike-friendly is one way we can all help to fight climate change.
This bike looks old, like, Ancient Rome old.
– Yeah, this one almost goes back to the American Civil War, 1869.
– I’m guessing the way we’re looking at it is not the way it was in 1869?
– No, it would’ve had a couple different things, like a better seat and a lot of wild paint schemes.
This one looks like it maybe was red.
They were really bright machines even back then.
But yeah, this still though, is in its basic form of what bikes would’ve looked like when they first came to the state.
You would just sit here, steer as best as you could on this unbelievable heavy front, and pedal away.
– Kacie: Was there brakes on this bike?
– There are no brakes at all on this bike, so luckily it’s low enough that you would sort of skid to a halt and… – Luckily.
– Luckily it’s low enough that you won’t just totally crash.
So we saw a lot of cool bicycles.
What did you think?
– So many bicycles over 150 years old; I had no idea.
– I really like the women’s bike.
I thought the idea with the skirt and the netting so that your skirt doesn’t get tied up, I thought that was cool; I might need to steal that.
– It was a cool innovation and a huge part of understanding history at that time period.
Biking is a huge part of Wisconsin’s history.
Making sure Wisconsin stays a bike-friendly state is now our job.
The best thing to do if you have a bike is to ride it.
Take advantage of the state’s trails and bike paths and explore with your friends and family.
Getting people on bikes is a great way to do something good for the state’s economy, health, and environment, and it’s a lot of fun.
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