Picture Sundays: Early Folding Bike?

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No information on this 1920s era photo from the Library of Congress other than the title, “New Bicycle Helps Solve Transit Problems .” Some sort of folding bike? Any guess?

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6 Comments

  1. It doesn’t look like a folder, just maybe there were so many bikes on the road that it was bike congestion? How different the 405 would be. Looks like it would also store much easier once you got to work. Maybe it was designed to fit inside a standard employee locker of the time.

    • Thanks Reppas–that’s it alright! A quote from the inventor, touting the compactness of his invention: “I did not have to leave the wheel at the curb and invite you down to the street to see it. I brought the machine up with me, not in the freight lift, but in a crowded passenger elevator, and neither the starter or the operator offered the slightest objection.”

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  3. Charles Haskell Clark filed a patent for this bike in 1919 and was granted it in 1921. It was a portable bike rather than a folder but its geometry is similar to a modern Strida which is a folding bike.

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