Ever seen an "antique" electric bicycle?

[MetroMPG]

I happened across a web page describing an old hardware store in the town where I'm living.

There's a photo from an 1896 booklet about the town of "Lunenburg by the Sea" (Nova Scotia), showing the business of "Frank Powers: Sanitary and Hot Water Engineer, and manufacturer of The Celebrated 'Electric Bicycle'"

Hmm, interesting! How celebrated is that electric bicycle?

So celebrated that I'm coming up with zilch on Google trying to find anything more.

You can see what looks like a pair of bikes with white balloon tires in this pic:



And you can also see that he liked his stoves. STOVES! STOVES! STOVES! STOVES!

Source: Lunenburg by the Sea - Archives - Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management

[Frank Lee]

I came across this a couple weeks ago and thought about posting it, but didn't. Now's my chance!



Info and a few other groovy old bikes here:

Unusual Motorcycles.

[MetroMPG]

Nice find.

I didn't think it'd be called a "motorcycle".... but makes sense. The earliest ICE motorcycles were little more than motorized bicycles too.

[meanjoegreen]

ELECTRIC BICYCLE FORUM • View topic - 1947 Electric Bike

[Bicycle Bob]

The 1898 Humber was built for "paced" bicycle racing on board tracks. The rear rider is more upright, the better to shelter a following, unassisted rider. Formerly, more pacing riders were used. Later, single pacing riders sitting well back on powerful motorcycles, wearing something resembling a leather zoot suit superceded these natty Edwardians.