The Fin-de-Siècle World by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317604792
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Globalizing Speed

When trying to determine a precise starting date of the amorphous Fin De Siècle, one could do much worse than to settle on 1867, the year the first bicycle appeared on the streets of Paris. These early bicycles, known as the “Ordinary,” employed an enlarged front wheel up to five feet in diameter and remained a plaything for elites and adventurers thanks to their prohibitive price and the danger of taking a “header” from the high seat of the poorly balanced contraption at high speeds. Nevertheless, these early bicycles were a cultural phenomenon throughout the Western world; within three years they had spread to Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and South America (Herlihy 2004: 75, 132, 144, 159–63). Bicycle producers continued to tinker in the following decades until two innovations of the mid-1880s revolutionized its form and function. English inventor J. K. Starley developed the “Safety” bicycle in 1885, which placed a low frame on equal-sized wheels driven by a chain. This design benefitted immensely from the invention of the pneumatic tire by Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop in 1888, which created a smoother ride and allowed cyclists to reach great speeds while maintaining control during turns. These two inventions set off a global bicycle “fever” in the 1890s, as falling prices democratized the bicycle and made it an object of mass consumption, although many among the working classes were forced to scour the secondhand market (Mom 2004: 33–34). No longer were bicycles the exclusive province of the well-to-do, and as we shall see, the independent mobility provided by the bicycle revolutionized both class and gender relations in the Fin De Siècle. As the bicycle began to deliver on its promise as a democratic means of individual transport, it shifted in the first decades of the twentieth century from a leisure tool to a utilitarian means of transport. Indeed, by 1910 the American vice consul in Yokohama, Japan could report that “bicycles are in general use throughout the Empire” (quoted in Herlihy 2004: 316). Although the bicycle set off a cultural craze during the Fin De Siècle, it quickly began to recede as an object of popular rapture both because it was no longer socially exclusive and because it demanded immense effort and exertion, placing bicycles in conflict with contemporary ideas of idle leisure (Sachs 1992: 104).

Meanwhile, scientists and engineers working in a variety of fields invented the automobile, as innovations in bicycle and automobile technology reinforced one another. The development and technical refinement of the internal combustion engine across Europe from the late 1850s forward culminated in the creation of the first automobile by German engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in 1886, while another engineer, Karl Benz, produced a working automobile independently in the same year (Volti 2004: 3–4). Many early automobile producers were bicycle mechanics, and the techniques employed in the mass production of bicycles in the 1880s and 1890s laid the basis for the expansion of the automobile industry in the first decade of the twentieth century.

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