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British Bikes / Re: Can you identify this Bike?
« on: March 17, 2020, 02:19:53 PM »
Here is the description of the Indian Military wireless station I told you about above.
This looks like it could be a Big Twin about 1915 time frame. The US Army used these through out the war time. Unfortunately the State side dealers took it in the shorts and only the government got the bikes. Many dealers went under or changed to other motorcycles because they couldn't get any for civilian sales. This was a 60.88 cubic inch motor generating about 15 to 18 horsepower. Atop the gas tank is the metal tool box and it had an option to mount two switches to control the lights and horn. The throttle is the left hand grip and the spark advance is the right hand grip. The kick starter is on the right side and in this picture it is folded down so that you can kick start the motor. The side car frame looks like the one used by Indian and the configuration of the car was left up to the Army. The price for the sidecar at the time was $70.00! Some Indian side cars sported machine guns during WWI. This is information from the book "The Iron Redskin."
If you look closely at the unit on the far left in the sidecar, you will see that the radio outfit is one of the first wireless telephone transmitters, invented and developed by Lee DeForest, the inventor of the triode vacuum tube- you can see the earliest example of the first radio tube (Valve) on the market, mounted on the detector box on the sidecar. He placed the first voice transmitters on the market.
This looks like it could be a Big Twin about 1915 time frame. The US Army used these through out the war time. Unfortunately the State side dealers took it in the shorts and only the government got the bikes. Many dealers went under or changed to other motorcycles because they couldn't get any for civilian sales. This was a 60.88 cubic inch motor generating about 15 to 18 horsepower. Atop the gas tank is the metal tool box and it had an option to mount two switches to control the lights and horn. The throttle is the left hand grip and the spark advance is the right hand grip. The kick starter is on the right side and in this picture it is folded down so that you can kick start the motor. The side car frame looks like the one used by Indian and the configuration of the car was left up to the Army. The price for the sidecar at the time was $70.00! Some Indian side cars sported machine guns during WWI. This is information from the book "The Iron Redskin."
If you look closely at the unit on the far left in the sidecar, you will see that the radio outfit is one of the first wireless telephone transmitters, invented and developed by Lee DeForest, the inventor of the triode vacuum tube- you can see the earliest example of the first radio tube (Valve) on the market, mounted on the detector box on the sidecar. He placed the first voice transmitters on the market.
