The harleydavidson story is a unique blend. Its a microcosm of the american industry. The company was born at the dawn of the 20th century when so many things were happening and the company has actually been in continuous operation, making motorcycles for 116 years now. For me, as a curator, its wonderful because the story is so great. Ups and downs through the depression, world war ii, triumph and tribulation, and they saved everything. You will see as we walk through the museum, they had, for whatever reason, you know, these young guys starting this company from almost nothing, began saving stuff from the first years of their operation, generations of employees have continued that throughout the history of the company and its just given us so much stuff to help tell all of these stories. Were here in front of serial number 1, at the beginnings of the Harleydavidson Motor Company story. This is the oldest harleydavidson in existence. It was restored during the 1990s which means it was repainted and replated. The fantastic thing about most of our motorcycles is they are all original paint but this one, were not exactly sure when the founders got it back, so its a fantastic artifact of the beginnings of the company and its sort of enshrined here. It does look basically like a heavyweight bicycle with the frame modified to embrace that engine. People are often puzzled by, there is a chain on the other side and a belt here and pedals and like whats up with that . Early in the 20th century the way you started one of these things you would pedal it, and at a certain point when you got enough kind of momentum, you would move that lever there. It would tighten up the leather belt and it kick starts the engine. So you didnt have an electric start. With harley it didnt happen until the 1960s, and we had a step starter early in the teens. For the first 10 years, that is how you started these things. You could just pedal it if you felt like it but it was a little heavier than the normal bicycle. This drawing, which is the original drawing from 1901 is the beginnings of our company. Arthur davidson and bill harley decided they wanted to motor motorize a bicycle and bill harley by that point being an accomplished draftsman actually drew the drawings of this early engine. You can kind of see the date down there in the right corner. Its july of 1901. The little bicycle engine. There are two sheets, we only have one but its miraculous that we only have one, so they were working with a local machine shop and local foundries, made this engine. Put it in a bicycle. Thats really fun, we think, and decided to make a full fledged motorcycle. But thats sort of the foundation of the Harleydavidson Motor Company right there. This story really could only have happened in milwaukee. If you think back to the beginnings of the 20th century, milwaukee was known as the machine shop of the world. This was a real kind of Manufacturing Center. So these young guys kind of grew up in the city where people made things. They brewed beer, which is one of the things that made milwaukee famous. This was kind of the Leather Industry here, tanneries, foundries, machine shops and as kids growing up, this was part of their environment, and they both, arthur and harley were bicyclists. They decided they wanted to motorized one of those things. They said, were that city where they make things. They decided were going to make this thing, and davidsons father built a little shed behind the house for them to work in, and in this little shed they were able to actually start a business making motorcycles because of all of the different facilities they had around them, they could use the machine shop down the road and have the parts cast at the foundries down here in menomonie valley and all of these things were happening at a time when there was this incredible excitement about all this new technology and these guys just sort of rode that wave. So youre looking at a picture here of the expanded shed. So having sold a motorcycle in 1903, and then doubling their sales in 1904, they needed a little more space, and needed what, in contemporary parlance, would say was an angel investor, which they found in a reportedly somewhat eccentric uncle in madison, who had been saving his pennies, nickels, and dimes, and loaned them 170 in 1904 to help really kind of kick start the company. Having gone from one motorcycle to two, to eight, in 1905, by 1906, they sold 50 and then 150, then 450. They outgrew that large shed and this is the first purpose built factory that they built in 1906. This photo was taken in 1907 when they incorporated. Three of the founders were there. Bill harley at that point was pursuing his engineering degree in madison and working nights and weekends, so thats the entire work force. The original factory, the day that they incorporated in 1907. We have this incredible collection, so we use it on both floors of the museum as kind of a timeline, so we begin here, in the gallery adjacent, telling the history of the company and out here you see the progression of bikes starting with the singles, so this is a later single, 1911. The thing thats incredible about this collection is that these things were saved in their original condition. And this one looks to me like en a little bit but you can see its got its original leather belt. Its original leather seat, all the original paint. The tires really rot out so the tires are all reproductions. In 1909 the Company First started trying to build its vtwinengine like this one here. Thats the year that that bike was introduced. We built, i believe, 27 of these, and they didnt quite perform the way the founders expected, so they all were kind of brought back here to milwaukee and they went back to the drawing board, and redesigned that engine, and 1911 was the first production v twin that was really successful. So this is our engine room, and were here at our engine wall which kind of tells the progression of the harleydavidson v twin over the course of our history, and what were talking about there is the v is made by the cylinders, so youve got a 45degree angle there, and inside the cylinders youve got the pistons going up and down. One of the things that ties all of these together is that, that there are aircooled with the fins on the cylinders, 45degree angle, and there is a big fly wheel down there, and the pistons are actually connected to a single pin, so they kind of go like this through the engine. Rather than the way an automobile would work, and thats part of the distinctive sound. As we walk through history its just a progression of the engines getting larger, more powerful, more technologically complicated. When this engine was introduced in the middle of the depression, the knuckle head, thats our first engine that has recirculating oil, just like an automobile today. So youve got an oil tank and the oil recirculates around the engine. The demands that are placed on these engines both from kind of power and speed requirements, but also regulatory requirements and noise regulations the engines become actually really, really complicated. By the time we get to our most recent engine here, the milwaukee eight, thats pretty much a marvel of modern engineering, and actually, the task is made a little more difficult by the fact that were maintaining that same architecture, but its such a part of the harley dna that weve got to do it. In discussing harleydavidson history, we talk about the four founders, the three david son brothers and bill harley. They each played different roles. Arthur davidson, i think, was really critical to the companys growth and success in that he was the person who took on the sales role and started traveling around the country and signing up dealers and setting up an initial dealer network. The real task for harleydavidson was to convince people that this thing, this new thing that were making, is really good, economical, reliable, family transportation. At the turn of the 20th century, if you were moving in anything other than a train, you were out in the elements. A horse. A horse and buggy, an automobile, a motorcycle, an airplane, everything was open cockpit. And it was all new and it wasnt obvious that the automobile was going to become kind of the favored form of transportation until you got doors and windows and a roof. So for the first 15 years of the Harleydavidson Motor Company they were really focusing on getting people to accept these vehicles as the way that families are going to get around. We had sidecars. You could put a couple of kids in. It was kind of a challenging sales pitch there for a little while but it was exciting enough for people that, you know, the motorcycle was really embraced and harleydavidson was one of dozens of Motorcycle Companies in the first years of the 20th century. By 1920, harleydavidson was hugely successful, the largest Motorcycle Company in the world. We talk a lot about the Great Depression of the 1930s. Beginning in 1929. There was a pretty significant recession early in the 1920s and that hit the company pretty hard. And by the mid1920s, the company was having to pretty significantly rethink their whole business proposition because ford kept putting out that same kind of reliable automobile and the prices were going down while, as we were redesigning our motorcycle, our prices went up and we hit a point in the mid1920s when the top of the line harleydavidson cost more than a model t. So clearly, if your whole sales proposition was good, economical family transportation, if youre starting a family you would probably buy a vehicle with doors and windows. There was a big change happening, and then the depression hit and the company struggled. We havent established how many Motorcycle Companies there were between 1900 and 1930. At least 60. By the time you got into the early depression, we were down to just a handful, and only two made it out of the Great Depression, harleydavidson and indian, which stayed in production through world war ii. By the time the u. S. Entered world war ii, harleydavidson was beginning to recover. World war ii, everyone was involved in the war effort, and the Manufacturing Center like milwaukee, you know, if you had manufacturing facilities, they were going to be turned to war time production of some sort. Harleydavidson got the contract to build the military motorcycles, so we ramped up motorcycle production. This was such a turning point for the company and for the world, and harleydavidson was fortunate to get the contract, to build motorcycles for the military. This is kind of a primary work horse of world war ii. Its got a sexy same, wla, but we made these motorcycles not only for the u. S. Military, but also for all of our allies, so they went to canada, russia, they werent combat vehicles, they were primarily dispatch riders, so they would be running back and forth at the front carrying messages and doing a variety of support operations, but you had to be ready for everything. Its got block out lights and machine gun. This was, in addition to making the bikes, we trained the riders and we trained the mechanics, and then after the war, and all of these g. I. s who were lucky enough to come back, they decided they wanted to keep riding. The ones that might have been stuck in a trench looking at those dispatch riders going by probably decided now is my chance. As we go downstairs you will see what they did with them once they tore all of that military gear off. The harleydavidson story as we tell it in the museum, the mezzanine levels end with world war ii and this is the beginning of what became chopper culture. Were proud above the bike to be able to display vino willies club uniform but these guys were part of the famous hollister incident which i would like to tell you about. When people think about these outlaw clubs its like the hells angels, one of these clubs that actually did engage in a lot of criminal activity and these fighters were not a club like that. However, thats the reputation that group. It was really kind of spawned by this incident in hollister, california, where the blues fighters and a couple of other fighters showed up at a sanctioned motorcycle race and they werent allowed to participate because they were not members so they spent the weekend reportedly running up and down main street drinking beer and raising heck, and this incident in hollister was sensationalized in the press and particularly life magazine, which was in almost every household back then. They claim this was one of the motorcycle roughians who were terrorizing the town. I dont know where all those be a bottles would have come from. In the wake of this incident like Middle America became terrified of these motorcycle clubs and this actually was the basis of the Marlon Brando film the wild one, which kicked off this Popular Culture myth of these marauding motorcycle gangs coming to your town to whisk your daughter off the porch and cause you trouble. This really changed the image of the motorcyclists in global culture. There is, from a motorcycling point of view, there is a sexiness to that, that draws a lot of people to the sport. There are obvious downsides to some of the activities that some of these clubs engaged in. Its interesting living here at the harleydavidson museum because we get to interact with harleydavidson owners from all over the world. Its an interesting crosssection of the population. In the kind of customization world, you ended up with two kind of divergent paths. You had all the guys, kind of taking off from those, they called them barbers, like the blues fighters bike, and these more minimal choppers, and then you had what some people referred to as works of art and other garbage wagons. But i feel that they are works of art. This guy here is one of my favorite vehicles in the museum. Partly because i got to know the family members, but its also, such a real feat of engineering prowess. The little guy who wore those clothes and rode this monstrous motorcycle, had a shop in a town called mine 35, pennsylvania. Coal mining country. He would make these fantastic contraptions and ride them to motorcycling events and hand out business cards and say, look, if i can do this, you can magic fix you can imagine i can fix your bike. For peopletom bikes from all around the area. This is a board that hung outside his shop and when he made a motorcycle for you, he would take a polaroid of you and stick it up on his board. Just a fantastic story. This is rhinestone harley. Numerous times when ive talked to people about their visits to the museum they have said, oh, i loved that liberace bike you have. This one ive got a soft spot in my heart for, because peggy townsend, there is a picture here of it before it got bedazzled. They were so proud of this vehicle. We acquired it for the museum. In 2008 when the Museum Opened her whole family arranged to have a surprise Family Reunion for her, so thats my picture of the opening of the museum is the whole Townsend Family in tears around this motorcycle. And last year, for the 10th anniversary of the museum, the whole crew came back, the kids that were like, this tall in 2008, rode their motorcycles in from minnesota, and, you know, a great example of how this activity can bring people together and, you know, in contrast to that sort of outlaw image of the motorcyclists, real family riding together, and, you know, just drawn by their love of motorcycling, and rhinestones, in this case harleydavidson, couldnt have happened in any place other than milwaukee. It is a unique combination of factors that allowed these guys to build this company. Milwaukee and harleydavidson feel almost inextricably linked. There are a lot of people out there that associate this city with this motorcycle. Here in the city, its, you it is a point of pride. Announcer you can watch this, and other programs on the history of communities across the country at cspan. Org. American history tv, only on cspan3. On lectures in history, Baylor University professor david smith teaches a class about the growth of the internationalist worldview in 1890s america. He argues that economic memorial impulses caused americans to consider a larger role in the world for their nation. Professor smith then details the actions they took, such as pursuing missionary work, arguing for the expansion of the navy, and searching for new economic markets. Prof. Smith what we are going to do today is start something very new and very distinct in the evolution of the story were telling. The 1890s becomes a distinct beginning of the way americans