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While the bicycles most people are familiar with today rely on chains as the heart and soul of their “engine”, there is always someone who thinks there must be a better way to make the two-wheeled machine go. While many innovators try building a better mousetrap, few are true originals, particularly the late George N. Pierce.

In 1863, a young Mr. Pierce picked up his life and headed to Buffalo, New York. After settling down and putting a few years’ work under his belt, Pierce formed a household goods manufacturing business. Heinz, Pierce and Munshauer successfully produced a variety of items ranging from bathtubs to birdcages.

Time would eventually tell this experience offered Pierce the first of many valuable lessons in effective market segmentation. So attuned was he that had his greatest innovation only been met better by a fickle buying public and subsequently evolve a bit longer we might not recognize the modern bicycle as it’s known today.

The George N. Pierce Company was established in 1878 when Pierce went his own way and decided to compete with his former partners. Within 10 years of forming the company, Pierce added a new product to his lineup – a series of children’s tricycles began rolling off the production floor. The Pierce three-wheelers he built for children ages 3-15 were a hit in this new and red hot market.

A year later, riding on the success of his tricycles, Pierce added bicycles to his offerings. Although bicycles of this era were a far cry from the carbon fiber, 20-plus speed demons manufacturers are pumping out today, the rate of technological change occurring then was every bit as revolutionary as today’s trend toward composites.

The bicycles released by Pierce in 1889 were available not just as hard-tired models, but also models featured with the previous year’s leading invention, the pneumatic tire. The air filled tire, invented by John Dunlop, was Dunlop’s attempt to smooth out his 10 year-old son’s rides on Ireland’s infamously rugged cobblestone streets. The first pneumatic tires consisted of rounds of inflated garden hose. The so-called “safety bicycles” offered by the George N. Pierce Company during this time featured two same-sized wheels. The social implications of this development have proved enormous.

Predecessors of the “safety” bicycles were high-wheeled machines. Although such machines offered great sport and enjoyment for men, women in the long skirts and bustles of the day found them virtually impossible to ride. Women were thusly relegated to tricycles that were slower and more cumbersome, yet accommodating to the figure-covering fashions they popularly wore. Transportation and accompaniment of the woman was still a man’s duty and responsibility. Women were tradition-bound to being escorted by their male companions while men were free to hop on their bikes and ride.

The safety bicycle, a useful vehicle for commuting and recreation, inspired a generation of women to shed their overwhelmingly bulky garb in favor of clothing allowing them to participate in the freedom of cycling. Victorian corsets and bustles were removed quickly as bike-friendly bloomers allowed women to straddle bicycles and themselves ride. In the words of women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony, the bicycle was an innovation that did “more to emancipate women then anything else in the world”.

The chain driven bicycle was still a reasonably new invention, but George Pierce quickly recognized it had room for improvement, especially given the widening audiences bicycles were now attracting. Although chain drives afforded the efficient transfer of human power to bicycle wheel, it was a dirty contraption that took a heavy toll on the commuting public’s pant legs. This led Pierce to fit his bicycles with a new type of chainless system – the shaft drive. At the turn of the 20th century, the Pierce Hygienic Cushion Frame bicycle equipped with a spring fork, telescopic suspension stem, shaft drive and pneumatic tires was the crème de la crème of bicycles now catering to a market with increasingly sophisticated sensibilities.

In 1901 Pierce introduced the gas powered “Motorette” at that year’s Pan-American Exposition. Although the automobiles attracted plenty of attention, Pierce was well represented by bicycles as well – including the Exposition’s police force putting them to good use.

Once Pierce showed the Motorette to intrigued bicycle dealers, the company realized enormous production growth and was forced to vacate its Hanover Street production facilities in favor of occupying a newly built 15-acre production plant on Elmwood Avenue in Great Arrow.

In 1907, the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company was hatched. Although the company was poised to make among the finest vehicles of the time, Pierce jumped ship and pulled his family interest from the business. Proprietor of Buffalo’s Pedaling History Bicycle Museum, Carl F. Burgwardt, offers the following statement to help explain Pierce’s action: “George Pierce was probably more of a bicycle person than an automobile person. While he was the founder and principal officer in his bicycle business for more than twenty years, he was only in the automobile business for eight. By the time the automobiles were being produced in his bicycle plant, although he was still president of the company, other major stockholders were those most involved with the automobile.”

It is interesting to note although “Pierce-Arrow” is the common brand by which all products of the company are known, bicycles that emerged from the business were never Pierce-Arrow bicycles, but were instead products of the Pierce Cycle Company. This misnomer is possibly due to early Pierce bicycles exhibiting an arrow-shaped logo on their headtube badges.

Two years after leaving his namesake company, George N. Pierce succumbed to a heart attack. Although his life was short, the legacies Pierce left in the bicycle and automobile industries were substantial. Products produced by Pierce and subsequently Pierce-Arrow were known for their quality and design. Nonetheless the shaft drive system invented by the Pierce Cycle Company never gained widespread adoption – it limited riders to a few gears near each other in ratio and made for an unreasonably heavy drivetrain.

Pierce’s limited success with the chainless bicycle hasn’t stopped companies from pursuing the dream of a cleaner drivetrain today. Quite the opposite, it would appear. So alive is the dream today that an Internet search for “chainless bikes” returns some 20,000 results. The search for a better mouse trap continues.

Dynamic Bicycles is among the countless companies trying to produce it. Regarding its proprietary gear system, the Massachusetts based manufacturer states, “it eliminates the number one complaint people have always had about their bikes – the chains and derailleurs. With our shaft drive bikes, there is no more grease; no more mess; no more cuts on fingers or tears in clothes; and no more chain and derailleur maintenance. Just pure, worry-free riding fun.” To someone who spends hours elbow-deep in chain lube, degreaser and cassette brushes after a tiring ride it certainly sounds like a bandwagon worth considering jumping on. So why have Pierce’s chainless bikes become highly desirable collector’s items instead of what we all ride? Hopping on a bicycle discussion forum quickly reveals the answer.

Described by users as “heavy, slow but smooth”, requiring “little maintenance – but when it does it’s real expensive” and possessing a “poor range of available gears”, it sounds as though the technology used by Pierce’s drive shaft lacks much real improvement, a full century after its introduction. From freestyle BMX to time trialing, bicycles and their uses have changed dramatically since the safety bicycle first took to the streets. It remains interesting to note while much has been improved, much else remains the same. The spring shocks and chained drivetrains of yesteryear look equally familiar on today’s bicycles. Perhaps “time tested” really does stand for something.

Modern day manufacturers may spiff up their products with space age materials but the core concepts remain the same. Indeed technological advances allow today’s manufacturers to produce bicycles capable of substantially higher performance thresholds than their predecessors. In terms of pure innovative power though, Pierce’s chainless drivetrain remains in a class by itself.

The following websites were used as references in the preparation of this article:

bikeforums.net
Dynamic Bicycles
xroads.virginia.edu
this site
patent pending blog
pedaling history
wikipedia article
this page
this page