Welcome to the Web Page for Herbert Wagner's Landmark Book:
At the Creation
Myth, Reality, and the Origin of the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle, 1901-1909
Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Paperback $24.95
228 pages, 150 photographs
ISBN 0-87020-351-7
Foreword by John E. Harley, Jr.
Order your copy from:
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published to coincide with Harley-Davidson's 100 year anniversary celebration, At the Creation is the first detailed look at the birth of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and how it rapidly became a major force in the motorcycle industry and an enduring American legend!
Learn firsthand how the American frontier urge was transformed into an "iron horse" through the invention of a rugged and powerful motorcycle built in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!
Illustrated with vintage photographs including Bill Harley's "bicycle motor" drawing of 1901 and other recently discovered images, some seen for the first time in almost 100 years!
With facsimile vintage Milwaukee street map showing significant locations from early Harley-Davidson history!
Includes the first critical analysis of Harley-Davidson origin accounts written between 1908 and 1919 demonstrating their confused and contradictory claims plus a solution to this long standing historical puzzle based on a lost Motor Company document from 1907!
Fully documented and backed by recognized experts in the field. With complete index and detailed endnotes containing a wealth of additional information found nowhere else!
Foreword written by the grandson of William S. Harley!
Perry E. Mack with his record-breaking Harley, June 1905
Book Contents
Foreword by John E. Harley, Jr.
Acknowledgments
Preface: A Woodshed History of Harley-Davidson
1 Unsolved Mysteries of the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle
2 The Pennington Motor Cycle, French Technology, and William Harley's 1901 Drawing
3 Harley-Davidson Origin Accounts: A Study in Confusion
4 A Rosetta Stone for Harley-Davidson ÷ 1903-1904
5 Harley-Davidson's First Race, First Dealer, and First Customer ÷ 1904
6 Production Begins ÷ 1905
7 Woodshed Days ÷ 1906
8 The Chestnut Street Factory ÷ 1907
9 Making Haste Slowly ÷ 1908
10 Rising Fame and Fortune ÷ 1908
11 Built on Honor ÷ 1909
12 Conclusion: Myth-Making ÷ 1908 and Later
Notes
Appendix: Production Numbers of Early Harley Singles
Index
Order your copy st:
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
The Yellow Brick Factory
Book Details
At the Creation: Myth, Reality, and the Origin of the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle, 1901-1909 by Herbert Wagner is an original work based on a decade long investigation into the authentic roots of the Milwaukee motorcycle. As the first documented study of Harley-Davidson's critical early years, At the Creation is a treasure trove of long forgotten events and Harley lore beginning in Beer City over a century ago.
Travel back in time to an earlier quainter Milwaukee of rumbling beer wagons, old world accents, and cream brick architecture. To a day in 1895 when the wildly outlandish but visionary American inventor E.J. Pennington brought the latest product of his dubious genius to Milwaukee: a gasoline-powered bicycle that "moted" by internal fire.
Pennington Motor Cycle, 1895
Calling his invention The Motor Cycle, Pennington demonstrated his improbable device in the downtown Milwaukee neighborhood where 14-year-old Bill Harley and Art Davidson were then living in their boyhood homes. Contemporary accounts tell of the street mobbed with spectators as The Motor Cycle blazed up and down Grand Avenue at a peak velocity of 58 miles per hour!
While that speed claim was almost certainly spurious and Pennington's crude machine soon forgotten as Milwaukee settled back into its late 19th century beery slumber, this fantastical but real event may have inspired the "dream" that young Harley and Davidson held fast in their minds to take the work out of bicycling by building a motorcycle of their own. The first step in this pioneering enterprise came a few years later in 1901 after new French technology had reached the United States. That year Bill Harley drew up plans for a small "bicycle motor" ÷ plans that are preserved in the John E. Harley family today and might be called the Holy Grail of Harley-Davidson.
Young William S. Harley
Such discoveries were only possible through Herbert Wagner's unique Milwaukee-centric approach to Harley-Davidson's past and his hunt for original primary sources instead of repeating the scanty and unreliable information handed out by the Motor Company over the years for advertising purposes. As a result At the Creation reads like a fast-paced detective story with a wealth of new information and often surprising conclusions. As the first documented work devoted to the beginnings of the original Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Wagner's book includes explanatory endnotes containing additional details and facts found nowhere else. For example, if you think that the recent V-Rod is Harley-Davidson's first production water-cooled engine as claimed today you'd be wrong!
Lovers of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle will find At the Creation an essential addition to their library. Yet this work goes far beyond an enthusiast readership. The Harley-Davidson origin story encompasses a forgotten chapter of America's early gasoline age and the almost magical process by which the bicycle cast off the chains of gravity and toilsome pedaling and was transformed into a fast and reliable freedom machine combining qualities of the bicycle, horseback, and automobile.
Author's V-twin cover story in The Antique Motorcycle
This exciting metamorphous of bicycle into motorcycle is described in a lively manner that only Herbert Wagner ÷ author or contributor to five books and many articles on Harley-Davidson ÷ could accomplish so well. For example, learn why William S. Harley's first marketable design was able to quickly challenge the already established Indian motorcycle. Find out what early design and engineering influences made the first "real" Harley-Davidson a superior mount. Explore with the author the early controversy of what form the modern motorcycle should take. Whether it would be an ultra-light vehicle scarcely heavier than a normal pedal bike and still resembling one, or a rugged powerhouse with its own demands and solutions in a handsome package that could surmount every obstacle and hill under its own brute "chug-bike" force. Through Wagner's exhaustive research and probing analysis the fast-paced developments during this early pioneer epoch are charted in a manner that makes you feel like you are living them yourself.
Also described in detail are many important Harley-Davidson firsts. Be present at State Fair Park in September of 1904 when the Harley-Davidson motorcycle first enters the historical record at a speed race ÷ an event lost to historians for almost 100 years! See the earliest known drawings, photographs, advertisements, and model reviews of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle as they first appeared in long forgotten early 1905 periodicals such as Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal and Automobile Review.
Earliest known photo of a Harley-Davidson, 29 April 1905
Learn the identities, locations, and correct dates for Harley-Davidson's first bona fide dealers. Hear about the Canadian skater Harley Davidson and how this famous athlete's name was confused with the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Get the inside scoop on author Herbert Wagner's discovery of the only known image of the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the photograph named "Negative 599." Read the story of Harley-Davidson's first customer Henry Meyer as told by his son and nephew. Find out in an intriguing sidebar account how Meyer's Harley-Davidson, the very first Harley ever build and sold, was lost sometime after 1916 and remains lost to this day!
Henry Meyer
At the Creation reconstructs the early competition exploits of Walter Davidson and other early riders as they ventured out onto the race track and risked life and limb to put the Harley-Davidson name on the map while proving that Bill Harley's design philosophy was superior to all others. Many of these early race accounts are revealed for the first time since they originally took place between 1905 and 1909 and include a detailed account of Walter Davidson's stunning "1000 plus 5" Diamond Medal endurance win and Economy Cup victories ö a feat unmatched to this day!
Trophies won by 1909
Also explored are the early effects of the motorcycle on society and how these pioneer bikes were far more "demon machine" than any outlaw biker wannabe could hope to achieve today. With the lax or nonexistent laws of the time and the presence of horse-drawn vehicles and farm animals on early 20th century roads, these early bikes with their clutch-less engines and lack of multiple gearing traversed roadways with the finesse of a cannonball with predictably dire results!
Early anti-motorcycle cartoon ("Fut-Fut-Fut")
Peer inside the legendary Davidson backyard woodshed and the long vanished yellow brick factory on Chestnut Street where the first Harley-Davidson motorcycles were built. Share in a wealth of new information about the methods and outside suppliers that contributed to the building of Harley-Davidson motorcycles in 1907. Explore exclusive material gleaned from a long forgotten Motor Company account book passed on by Arthur Davidson to his son and that now resides in Harley-Davidson's Archives. Also accessed in Wagner's exhaustive study are early stock ledgers and rare publications never before utilized for historical purposes.
Inside the yellow brick factory
These features alone put At the Creation at a level of knowledge and expertise miles ahead of the competition. Yet Herbert Wagner delves still deeper in his wild ride into historical fact and fancy. Follow his dogged pursuit of historical truth as he explores the twists and turns of a near century of obfuscation promulgated in the Harley-Davidson name that in its most extreme form includes claims of time travel and "back-to-the-future" engineering. Enter this bewildering maze of deception and see how the "official" origin story of Harley-Davidson dissolves into a whirlwind of confusion until like Dorothy you feel that you're no longer in Kansas, er, Milwaukee anymore, but in a gasoline-perfumed Land of Oz with no ruby slippers for getting back home again!
For the first time anywhere At the Creation exposes the false history upon which modern writers and experts have based their own renderings of Harley-Davidson's origin, including the faulty belief that 2003 is the 100th model year of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Wagner's hard-hitting account includes the stunning revelation that the machine widely celebrated today as a "1903" model almost certainly never existed outside the imagination of early advertising men, and that the first marketable Harley-Davidson was actually completed in 1904, with bikes for general sale first available in 1905! These amazing conclusions are backed up by early Motor Company documents and sworn testimony in a court of law!
Claimed 1903 Harley is actually mid to late 1905 model
In step-by-step fashion Wagner shows how the original true history was altered after 1908 when mythical 1901, 1902, and 1903 models were created as advertising strategy sacrificed historical truth for a better marketing tool. These business high-jinks caused such a messy situation by 1919 that no one at Harley-Davidson (including company president Walter Davidson) could untangle them. Falsifications that over the decades became so deeply entrenched that modern writers and historians are still fooled by them today!
Walter Davidson in 1909
Rest assured that Herbert Wagner does not let this confused situation hang or go unresolved. At the Creation offers a new chronology of Harley-D origin events as they most plausibly occurred. This new interpretation of Harley-Davidson's birth is based upon the first known history published by the Motor Company in late 1907 before marketing forces got their teeth into the truth and savaged it. Unknown to historians until Wagner's discovery of it in 2001, this late 1907 document unravels many long-standing puzzles and mysteries about early Harley-Davidson that continue to baffle even highly placed officers inside the Motor Company today.
Like a prizefighter Herbert Wagner knocks out pernicious myths and falsehoods about Harley's origin until the road of historical truth grows smooth and the dangerous potholes that have fooled generations of writers and historians are left behind in the dust. For the first time the true story of Harley-Davidson's origin is revealed as the world's most famous motorcycle was first conceived, developed, and marketed in the "wild one" years of the early 20th century.
1909 logo
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Wisconsin Historical Society Press
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Notice: This site is not connected with the modern Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Inc. (HDI). Nor does this site represent the views or policies of the modern Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Inc. (HDI). This site is intended to serve as an overview of a historically accurate documented guidebook covering the earliest years of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the original Harley-Davidson Motor Company incorporated at Milwaukee, Wisconsin in September of 1907. Previous to that date the Harley-Davidson Motor Company operated as a loose partnership and thence back to the orginal enterprise of being the hobby of Bill Harley and Arthur Davidson with the first primordial stirrings taking place in the year 1901.
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Herbert Wagner
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