Why "motocycle"?

[c.o.]

I was a little puzzled when this topic came up and that must have been due to the literature I've collected over the years. I was always under the impression that they started out with Motocycle. Here's the cover page from their 1902 catalog and a page from the back featuring the "new" bike. There is also a letter from Feb.13, 1902.

[rwm]

french motocyclette

[fillibuster]

Phil,

Thanks for the page # and the exact quote. I looked in Sucher's book, but missed that.

Yes, Pennington was trying to sue Indian just before his death, but that was in early 1911. He was dead over 10 years before Indian officially made the name change.

No disrespect to Mr. Sucher, but I find his work to be wildly unreliable. Yes, he says "according to company records" and "board's action" but did he actually see those records? Just because he says it, it's not certain to be true. Too many other cases of untrue claims in his work to risk believing it without some other source to verify it.

Besides, the logic of that action escapes me. By the 1920s "motorcycle" and "motor cycle" were used universally as a general term for two-wheeled motor vehicles. Plus the word itself would have nothing to do with "patent suits." As far as I know, you can't patent a word!

Again, no disrespect to Mr. Sucher, but this does not strike me as being the real reason unless we can document it with actual records or something that Indian actually said that backs it up.

So far my hunch that it's a mystery still holds. Very interesting in light of something that I'm working on right now.

Herb, if you hadn't mentioned 1923 I wouldn't have caught it either. And as with Cory, I'd recalled reading of that spelling since Sucher's account began, and in the ads he posted. But Sucher's book didn't explain the spelling until 1923 (by my tired eyes, anyway).

Re Sucher: In 1990, seventeen years after I acquired my basket case Chief, I began the rebuild, and was encouraged to buy "The Iron Redskin" by a local mechanic named Kenny Trimbo. I read the book cover to cover several times, usually over the Christmas holiday season. Before I bought Hatfield's "Buyer's Guide", Sucher's book was my only historical reference on Indian's past. I've known that it can't be 100% accurate, and perhaps his other books, most probably his accounting of Harley Davidson yielded the inaccuracies that lessen his credibility in your mind. You have made reference to his claim of the Ricardo influence on HD's 8-valves (?) as being prominently in error, a prime example. But I'm especially curious now, as it seems you know of a number of other un-qualified claims or prognostications by Mr Sucher. I'm interested in your take on these. .. . I'm hoping Sucher's work is correct on the equipment details on model/year specifics. .. I like to buy the RIGHT parts, the first time.

[Chris Haynes]

Harry was famous for his Sucherizms. He would get an idea and preach it as gospel as if he had been there when it happened.

[T. Cotten]

I'm still proud to have met the man, and listened to ramblings.

....Cotten

[HarleyCreation]

" Indian further distinguished itself by not using the term "motorcycle" in its company name. Rather, it was "the Indian Motocycle Company" droppnig the "r" in the word "motorcycle". "Motocycle" was an archaic word that had appeared in the late nineteenth century to describe the new motor-driven vehicles that were also called "horseless carriages." Although "Indian Motocycle Company" was used for marketing and promotional purposes frm the outset, it was not until 1923 that the corporation formally changed its name from the Hendee Manufacturing Company to the Indian Motocycle Company."

Reference: A Century of Indian, Ed Youngblood. Pg. 13



I believe I have also seen similiar reference in the book "Harley Indian Wars" if anyone has that handy. (Mine is at work.) Basically, he just like the way it sounded.

This would make for an excellent article in the magazine.

Stayed tuned. There is a super story in the works. This aspect is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak...

Hmm...I looked thru A Century of Indian too and missed the quote. These books need better indexes or I need better eyes....most likely both!

[HarleyCreation]

Is there any possibility that a french/european variation on the name was being attempted here just to be different?

une "Moto" is the common term in french for a motorbike or motorcycle.

Howard

Yes, it comes from the Latin.

motor, mid-15c., from L. motor, lit. "mover," from movere "to move" (see move). From 15c. as "controller, prime mover" (in reference to God); sense of "agent or force that produces mechanical motion" is first recorded 1660s; that of "machine that supplies motive power" is from 1856. With explosive use 20c. as a comb. form of motor-car (1895). Motor-boat is from 1902. First record of slang motor-mouth "fast-talking person" is from 1971.

[Scott Parker]

Roper Motocycle seems to have used it first. http://stanleymotorcarriage.com/Stea...Bike/index.htm

[HarleyCreation]

Roper Motocycle seems to have used it first. http://stanleymotorcarriage.com/Stea...Bike/index.htm

Thanks. Roper is also part of the story.

[HarleyCreation]

Herb, if you hadn't mentioned 1923 I wouldn't have caught it either. And as with Cory, I'd recalled reading of that spelling since Sucher's account began, and in the ads he posted. But Sucher's book didn't explain the spelling until 1923 (by my tired eyes, anyway).

Re Sucher: In 1990, seventeen years after I acquired my basket case Chief, I began the rebuild, and was encouraged to buy "The Iron Redskin" by a local mechanic named Kenny Trimbo. I read the book cover to cover several times, usually over the Christmas holiday season. Before I bought Hatfield's "Buyer's Guide", Sucher's book was my only historical reference on Indian's past. I've known that it can't be 100% accurate, and perhaps his other books, most probably his accounting of Harley Davidson yielded the inaccuracies that lessen his credibility in your mind. You have made reference to his claim of the Ricardo influence on HD's 8-valves (?) as being prominently in error, a prime example. But I'm especially curious now, as it seems you know of a number of other un-qualified claims or prognostications by Mr Sucher. I'm interested in your take on these. .. . I'm hoping Sucher's work is correct on the equipment details on model/year specifics. .. I like to buy the RIGHT parts, the first time.

Phil, I can't address much about the Iron Redskin book because I'm no Indian expert as this thread demonstrates. But from these postings it's clear to me that the 1923 formal adoption of "motocycle" by Indian doesn't have much significance. The term as varient spelling had been used since the beginning of Indian's existence as Cory has neatly documented, and probably had nothing to do with potential patent lawsuits or much of anything else.

No offense to anyone, but this demonstrates the problem with Mr. Sucker's work. He includes things that you won't find anywhere else and sometimes the things may be true, but just as often they are not true, or at least suspect. This is a good example. It reads as if he consulted the Hendee/Indian board minutes, but did he really? Do those board minutes even exist? Possibly they do and he consulted them, but until something verifies that I must remain doubtful and would not quote his on this subject, altho others have, esp. on the internet.

Years ago I became alerted to major problems with his work after doing my own research in Milwaukee. One striking claim was that Arthur Constantine had designed the Super X for "Pop" Schwinn & Excelsior. As it turned out, however, that was very unlikely. Because during the time the Super X was designed and came out, Constantine was working for Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee! There is even a detailed article in the club mag from a few years ago telling the whole story and how unlikely a scenario that could be.

One of our most respected club members who passed away not long ago told me that when Mr. Sucher's H-D book came out he read it word for word and found many glaring errors. He said that he corrected those mistakes using original Harley documentation and other sources and sent Mr. Sucher that material and urged him to update the book. But that Mr. Sucher bluntly refused to consider that any mistakes were even possible.

As mentioned, Mr. Sucher's story about Ricardo coming to Milwaukee during WWI and helping fix the proto Eight-Valve is another whopper. I sat on that one for years wondering if it were true or not and finally got hold of Ricardo's autobiography but not a word is mentioned about any such trip although that period was covered in great detail. In fact, during that time in WWI Ricardo was working for the British goverment doing war work on large, heavy tank & airplane engines. His later engine work, including motorcycle work, that Mr. Sucher alludes to and that he became famous for (turbulance, squish, etc.), had not even been done yet. Nor was Ricardo yet a well known figure in England, and was entirely unknown in the USA.

Yet Mr. Sucher minutely describes how Walter Davidson sent Ricardo a round-trip boat ticket to Milwaukee and has him coming over to Wisconsin and saving the day for the Eight-Valve because Bill Harley and Bill Ottaway weren't smart enough to do it themselves. And all this happening during the Great War when the Brits were fighting for their lives against Imperial Germany and U-boats were ringing the British isles sinking everything in sight!

It seems highly improbable that H-D found this unknown guy Ricardo in England who hadn't done anything yet, and then convinced the British government to let him drop his war work at a time when the war was going badly, and then he crossed those U-boat infested waters in order to go to Milwaukee, Wis. to help some hay-seeds with their motorcycle engine, and yet it doesn't even rate a mention in Ricardo's autobiography? Wot?! What sounds authoritative and solid at first read, becomes wildly unlikely, even absurd, upon closer examination.

On the other hand, Mr. Sucher claimed that the first Knucklehead prototypes used the Two-Cam bottom. Nobody else ever said that. I contacted him about it and he could not provide anything more specific. But as it turns he may have been right. We know now that the Factory built some 45 OHV hillclimb motors using Two-Cam bottoms and reworked Peashooter heads and casting new cylinders to make them fit. Photos of these engines exist and they seem to a missing link in the earliest stages of Knucklehead development. On the other other hand, what he said about Petrali doing important design work on the Knucklehead motor is probably not true.

In my experience, Mr. Sucher's books are entertaining and worth consulting for what they might contain, but the information they contain should be used cautiously and cross-checked against other sources. If you sift them out very carefully once in awhile something good drops out, but more often not. I don't mean to disrespect him, but the truth concerning our motorcycle history and heritage is very important to me, although it has gotten me in hot water.

Thanks!