rompus Archives -

29 Jun

Women’s Six Day Bicycle Races

I’m more and more convinced that my new heroine will be a bicycle racer, so I’ve been looking up about women’s racing at the end of the nineteenth century. There is, in fact, a book on the subject of women in six-day bicycle races — but it doesn’t come out until October 2018! I even sent an email to the author in hopes of snagging an early review copy, but no dice. He did email me a copy of an article he’s recently written for Michigan History magazine, which was helpful in that it explains the women’s races were sprints, compared to the men’s six-day races.

For male cyclists, the six-day race was just that: riding as long as you were awake for six days. It was an endurance event to the extreme. For the women, it was apparently an hour in the afternoon and two hours in the evening, which allowed their races to focus on speed and coincidentally be more exciting for spectators.

Understanding how the races worked is one part of the puzzle, but I’m still missing info. Namely, who was racing, when, and where? There’s a bit of a list at sixday.org and another at 6dayracing.ca, but the women’s information is scanty and earlier than I’m looking for. So I’m combing through the Library of Congress’s online newspaper database and making a similar list of women in six day races. And if I’m doing the work already, I might as well share it.

I started by searching for Tillie Anderson, easily the era’s most famous female racer (she’s even earned herself a children’s book) and then doing secondary searches on her named competitors. I got to about forty races and over fifty named competitors. Because the races last for so long, it’s hard to tell quickly if a news report is talking about a new race or is a slightly delayed account of a previous race. The list may therefore contract as well as expand. It’s a Google spreadsheet, so you can click here to view it. I’ve added in some notes as I found interesting tidbits in the new articles that were longer than just race results: dogs on the track, riots, and wardrobe malfunctions are a few of the newsworthy mishaps!

17 Jun

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle Motor

While I’m working out the plot for my new book, I’m also trying to figure out what exactly the machine my heroine’s father has invented looks like. I have in mind for it to be an early motorcycle, but my knowledge of motorcycles and motors past and present is minimal. Fortunately my reliable friends at Google have scanned in volume 1 of The Horseless Age, a publication for the nascent automotive industry in 1895. There are a great many bicycle, tricycle and carriage motors described, from steam-powered to gasoline, and spring-motors, which were coiled by a hand-crank and then powered a bicycle for 15 miles. I was briefly excited by the description of an ether-motor–more efficient and powerful than using water for steam–until I looked a little further and learned that ether is extremely explosive, which is why we don’t see it used as a propellant in many engines these days. There will be some mishaps in the novel, but not the explosion and full-body burns sort of disaster.

Right now the leading contender for me to base my fictional motorcycle off of is a kerosene motor, a lightweight option which could be attached to a regular bicycle frame. It doesn’t seem to have caught on, as the only mention I can find is this description on page 19 of Vol. 1, No. 1 of The Horseless Age, printed in November 1895.

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle

C.C. Riotte, of the Riotte & Hadden Mfg. Co., 462 East 136th St., New York, has invented a kerosene motor for bicycles which is extremely simple, light and inexpensive. It can be attached to any ordinary bicycle, detached at a moment’s notice, and is started and stopped by a small handle at the oil tank. It consists of two small valves, a cylinder, piston and igniter.

The operation of the motor it [sic] as follows: When the piston descends, a cylinder full of air mixed with a small quantity of kerosene oil is compressed into the explosive chamber and there ignited by an electric spark which is generated from a small battery weighing one half pound. This battery never polarizes or requires recharging.

The air in the cylinder being highly heated from the combustion of oil drives forward the piston which is connected through a crank with the rear wheel as seen in the illustration. The operation continues on, almost noiseless and without smell, with every turn of the rear wheel. A speed of twenty five miles per hour has been attained with it on level ground and a pretty good speed maintained on grades of about four or five per cent.

The weight of the motor including tank full of oil is nine and one half pounds. The tank holds enough oil to carry a person 75 miles and when the oil gives out a quart of kerosene or any kind of petroleum lamp oil can be bought at any country store or of any farmer.

Mr. Riotte has been experimenting in gas and oil engines all his life, and has had a good deal to do with stationary and marine engines of all descriptions.

The principle of this bicycle motor is the same as that of his new improved stationary oil engines except that heavy weights and the fly wheel are dispensed with.

The firm is also constructing a carriage, which is propelled by a kerosene motor the same in principle as their stationary motors. The operating gear will have but one lever to start, stop, reverse, or go at any speed from 2 to 25 miles per hour. They expect to form a company to manufacture bicycle and carriage motors on a large scale.

As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty plausible option, especially with the option to buy fuel on the road. One of the things I’ve realized about the development of motor vehicles is that they were initially hampered by the lack of infrastructure. To be successfully used for long distance travel, they needed to have good roads for all the wheeled vehicles, and for the fueled vehicles, they needed places to buy fuel. I’ve pretty much taken the existence of gas stations for granted, but now I assume that part of what made or broke the different motor options described in The Horseless Age was the availability of their required fuel, whether it was kerosene, ether, or gasoline. It may also explain the interest in the spring motors!

06 Jun

Victorian women learning to ride a bike

More on women’s cycling from old books and journals. There are two popular topics regarding women and bikes: method of riding and choice of dress. Throughout the 1890s the debate rages on skirts vs bloomers/knickerbockers, what sort of cut to the skirts, bifurcated or not, how to keep your skirt out of the wheels, best bikes with skirtguards… There’s a lot of concern about looking unladylike while riding a bicycle. For the lady who did want to ride, how would she get through the awkward phase of learning to ride gracefully without embarrassing herself publicly? By attending a cycling school or academy, where a (presumably male) teacher would assist her with balance behind sheltering walls. As you might expect, there were still writers ready to make fun of the female student of the bike, as in the poem below, which I found in a magazine for Locomotive Engineers. I’m considering making my heroine a female bicycle instructor, as she could surely provide a more friendly experience than that described in this poem!

At the Bicycle Academy

‘Twas at the female cycling school,
Where bloomer costumes arc the rule;
And fairy forms in trousers hid,
Essay the bike as she is rid.

A rare and radiant vision she!
A dream! a song! a rhapsody!
To whom none other there was like,
Came forth to tame the festive bike!

She cast about a bashful glance,
Gazed at her wiry steed askance;
Then eyed her bifurcated skirt,
And wondered if a tumble hurt.

Then at the master’s stern command,
She grasped her steed with trembling hand;
A gasp, a sigh with anguish pent,
A bounce, a boost, and up she went.

Prate not to me of dire alarm,
Of fire and floods and martial arms;
For depth of woe there’s nothing like
A frightened female on a bike!

She stuck, she strained, she vainly strove
To make that pesky pedal move;
She pumped, she pushed, turned ghastly white;
And worked both feet with all her might!

And now she starts, she seems to feel
A thrill of life along her wheel!
But, oh! a bump! a zigzag slump!
Girl, bike, spokes, legs, all in a lump!

Reprinted from the New York Evening Sun in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal, Vol XXIX No 3, March, 1895.

22 May

Psycho Ladies Safety Bicycle

I’m finishing up my first historical romance and starting to draft the second in the series, which means I am back into research mode. Book two’s heroine is a cyclist, so I’ve been trying to figure out what she might be wearing — the 1890s is still a period of upheaval in ladies’ fashion, as corsets disappear and “rational dress” appears, and the advent of women’s bicycles leads to debate on where and when it is appropriate for women to wear knickerbockers or should they be riding bikes with drop frames, with nothing for their skirts to get involved in…

Anyway, I was reading an opinion letter in an 1890s magazine and the lady writing mentioned that she and her sisters have all ended up riding the Psycho Ladies’ Safety.

“Safety” is the “safety bicycle” but Psycho Ladies? Really?

Yes, really! Imported from England in 1888 and after, the ladies’ safety bicycle from the Psycho line, manufactured by the Storley Bros. was one of the first ladies’ bikes available in the United States. A search in Google Books brings up two pages of mentions in the late 1880s and 1890s of the Psycho ladies’ safety. For instance, at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association’s seventeenth triennial exhibition in 1890, W.W. Stall of Boston won a silver medal in the category of “Agricultural Implements and products, carriages, wagons, bicycles, and other vehicles and appliances” with “Bicycles and appurtenances, including New Star Combination Drop-Frame Psycho, Ladies’ Light Roadster Psycho, Ladies’ Extra Light Roadster, Double-Frame Psycho, Coventry Rival Safety, Tremont Safety, Elliott Safety, and others.”

Psycho Ladies’ Safety Bicycle

Sorry, I have to repeat it because I’m so excited that it existed with that name.

Obviously, “psycho” had different connotations at the time. Etymonline tells me that it wasn’t used as a shortening for “psychopathic” until Raymond Chandler used it that way in 1936. If we look at the roots f the word, it’s the Greek term psykhe, meaning “mind, mental; spirit, unconscious.” There’s also the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid/Eros, a variation on the Beauty and the Beast storyline, in which Psyche is married to a terrible serpent who visits her at night as a handsome man and, after she breaks some rules, she has to complete a number of quests in order to win him back and live happily ever after. I think it’s safe to say that the makers of Psycho bikes had this image in mind,

And not this.

Anyway, the Psycho ladies’ bikes – and there were soon several different options – and ladies’ bikes in general were a big step forward from tricycles, which had earlier been the most accepted form of bicycle for ladies. As one article from 1891 points out, “it was surely not in reason that a presumably robust, lightly-clad man should ride the light-moving fifty-pound bicycle, while the weaker, long-skirted girl was condemned to trundle the hundred-pound tricycle.”

By 1893, manufacturing and technology had improved even on the fifty-pound bicycle option, and Iron Age‘s 1897 history of the women’s bicycle tells us that,

The combination of light steel frame perfectly elastic air tires held on a tough and springy wooden rim makes a bicycle of 25 pounds weight or less to ride which is as near like flying as woman is likely to get in our generation.

Compared to a modern bike, that sounds like, well, a modern bike. I ride a 2013 Trek 520, a steel-framed touring bike, which weighs 27 pounds. Perhaps it would be a little lighter with wooden rims on the wheels!

I still have to decide if my heroine will be riding a Psycho ladies’ safety, which had a drop frame, i.e. no top bar.

This allows it to be ridden more easily while still wearing skirts, but my heroine will be following rational dress and wearing knickerbockers. From this illustration in the novel A Study in Bloomers: Or, The Model New Woman, however, wearing bloomers, or knickerbockers, doesn’t automatically mean a female cyclist would be riding a wheel with a diamond frame.

She’s wearing a velvet suit, which sounds incredibly stylish but hot for actual riding… Obviously I still have more research to do!

11 Feb

The Legend of Sarila – Inuit inspired kid’s film

sarila-poster Recently I found a kid’s film called “The Legend of Sarila,” which takes its inspiration from the Canadian arctic.

The story arc is straight up hero’s journey: leave home, pass trials, gain knowledge, mysterious helper, return home with rewards and establish new order. That’s fine. There are some reasonable portrayals of the Arctic landscape: caribou, seals, lichen, wide open tundra landscape. There are several scenes where I thought they really got the lighting right. There’s a wonderful warm glow that happens when the sun is low to the horizon in the north. It’s the golden hour for photographers around the globe, but at the higher latitudes it lasts a long while and you can enjoy it.

The destination for the little protagonist group (three friends, aka a love triangle) is Sarila, a mythical land of plenty. When they arrive, it is a beautiful, bountiful boreal forest: trees and berries and tasty tasty herbivores. Since that’s the biome that I grew up in, I was greatly amused and probably more positively disposed toward the film that I might have been otherwise.

legend-sarila-boreal

Of course, it’s far from perfect. The carryover of actual cultural detail may be a bit thin, as this Animation Scoop review points out.

Given the beauty of the Inuit carvings of humans and animals, Legend of Sarila should be a visual feast. But the viewer looks in vain for that influence on the designs, aside from the occasional angle of a cheekbone. The animation is weightless and inexpressive, indistinguishable from countless other recent CG features.

The Legend of Sarila is apparently Canada’s first 3D animation. I’m agnostic on animation styles in this case, but I’ll throw in with the Animation Scoop reviewer and wish that there was a bit more artistic influence on the character design. I’ve recently been reading about Arctic facial tattoos (another blogpost soon!), but Sedna’s the only one who gets any. I’m glad they included those, but the portrayal of Sedna with fingers was the first wrinkle for me. Sedna is one of the legends that was part of my own childhood, so I take this a bit personally. The whole point of her story is that she doesn’t have fingers! Briefly, Sedna accidentally marries a bird. When she tries to return home, her husband calls up a storm and she falls out of the boat. Rather than helping her back in, her father, who doesn’t score a lot of points for contemporary supportive parenting, cuts off her fingers as she clings to the gunnels. The finger bits become sea mammals; Sedna becomes a fingerless undersea goddess who controls the marine food supply.

The Legend of Sarila - Sedna and Markussi

Even with these caveats, I’d say give it a watch if you have any interest in the arctic. It’s not long, and if you’re looking to expose your kids to a different biome — or, for those of already in the north — watch a story set somewhere familiar, it’s worth the time. Particularly if, like me, you’re looking for a distraction while working on a craft project. (Apparently quilting involves a lot of fabric cutting before any actual sewing happens. Who knew?)

As a postscript, I looked up the film online when I started writing up my reactions and discovered the biggest mistake that the film’s producers made: trying to market it in the US as “Frozen Land.” That lasted for about six seconds before Disney’s lawyers shut it down.

19 Nov

Barcelona’s Museums – So Much Culture!

My taller half and I are on a two week trip to Spain and while he is at a Very Important Conference I am getting cultured. Like a yogurt. A yogurt that is visiting many of Barcelona’s Museums.

My first stop was the Museu Maritim de Barcelona, which was a triple dose of history. First, it’s a museum. Second, the building complex in which it is located became a museum in 1941 but had previously been used as a shipyard since the 13th century. Finally, archeology on the site also indicates the presence of a Roman necropolis, because Europe.

As an American, when faced with this sort of epochal historical context certain parts of my brain overload and I can only burble in internet memespeak.

But I kept going and looked at the pretty boats and great exhibits which were nicely labeled in Catalan, Castillian Spanish, and English.

I learned that Barcelona’s port contributes 24% of shipping through Spain, including .8 million cars per year. When we passed through here on our 2011 bike tour we arrived on a boat which brought a large number of cars (and two bikes) from Italy and we wondered about it at the time. Now I know that the Barcelonans are aggressively expanding to be the European entry port for Asian goods (via Suez Canal).

Replica of the flagship in the European fleet that trounced the Turks in 1571 in the Battle of Lepanto. That’s a very important battle in the history of Christianity, so look it up!

In addition to port industry and historical boats, they had exhibits on the history of underwater photography and on travel by boat. The travel section included an ~8 ft long drawing showing the cross section of a late 19th century passenger liner which I seriously coveted and unsuccessfully tried to get a panoramic photo of. Alas! Instead, I give you this Zen koan from MMB: The port is the first and last thing seen by those traveling by sea.

An international variety of chocolate sculpture

From there I went to the Museu Xocolata, where your ticket is also a chocolate bar with a wrapper appropriate to your country of origin. The museum was notable mostly for the bizarre chocolate sculptures made with varying levels of artistry, presumably by students of the patisserie school in the same building, but I learned a few new facts: Chocolate (as a drink) apparently was acceptable nourishment for monks on fasting days and Catholic nuns in Mexico were the first to think of adding sugar to chocolate.

There was also the local aspect. Barcelona was a pretty big port of entry for goods from the New World, including chocolate, so it ended up with chocolate warehouses and factories, making it the site of the first mechanical production of chocolate in 1777.

Lips. Second from right, bottom row.

I stopped in at the municipal photo archive (upstairs from the chocolate museum) where there was a very small exhibit on early photography techniques which made a good companion to early underwater photo exhibit at MMB. I watched a video showing the whole process of making a daguerrotype and learned that when adding color to photos at the time, “lips” was one of the included hues.

The following day I went to the Monestir de Pedrables, which, like the shipyards of the MMB is so old I can barely fathom it. It was founded in 1326 by/for a Queen Elisenda, the fourth wife of King Jaume II. He died the next year and she, being only in her thirties, lived out the remaining 35 years of her life at the monastery. It continued as an active convent, save for a few brief war-induced interruptions, until the 1970s when the nuns moved to a new facility next door and the place became a public museum. The exhibits include, most impressively, the entire grounds, as well as the expected collection of religious art. Having visited a number of cathedrals on our last European sojourn, the notable thing about the Pedrables religious art is that they mixed and matched to make altar pieces with art by different artists and from different eras, including Catalan paintings next to Flemish visions of the various saints.

Where does sacramental wine come from? Question answered!

Generally, I find that Catholic art leaves me with a lot of questions, like “what is an ostensory?” Or “How come this is the holy family of the fly?” Or “what’s the story behind a painting labeled ‘St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins and a Donor’?” Sometimes I feel smart, though, when I see a lady carrying her boobs on a silver platter and I know she’s the patron saint of breast cancer.

Even when you’ve seen all many cathedrals that they all blend together, you still want to check out Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, which was today’s cultural pilgrimage.

I found it amazing that something made of stone and glass (and light) can seem so soft. In the overhead words of a nearby Canadian tourist, “This is so inspiring, I would come here even if I was an atheist and enjoy it.” The basement has many many iterative models in plaster, both to show the evolution of the cathedral’s design, and to guide them as they work to complete it. Yes, they started in 1883 and, funded by the tickets of several million visitors each year they are hoping to finish in 2026, on the centenary anniversary of Gaudi’s death. Seeing so many plaster casts made me wish that Gaudi were around today so he could have access to CAD & a 3D printer. It would be like Mozart in the mall with Bill & Ted.