The rapid decline of the ordinary bicycle in the period 1886-92 was to see the machine as branded old-fashioned and obsolete by the mid 1890s, if not before. Remarkably, however, it was soon to enjoy a type of currency as an icon of the quaint as a pioneer ‘bygone’. Today, in the context of collectibles and a developed market for antique consumer durables, this would be unremarkable, but in the early 20th century it was a pioneer in demonstrating that old manufactured products might have antique value. By the end of the 1950s it had been joined by such things as the veteran car, and horn gramophone as emblematic of a picturesque past in the context of modernity.
Today, the public identity of the high wheel machine that accompanied it in the transition from ‘bicycle’ to ‘ordinary’ to ‘penny farthing’ is one that many in cycling culture find embarrassing. In particular the machine’s use in parades at town fetes and village fairs in the first half of the 20th century is seen to denigrate it, yet it should not been seen in this way. As with so many other areas of material culture, in this process we find the bicycle at the forefront.
This paper sets out to explore the implications of the ‘bygone bicycle’ not only in terms of cycling history, but as a more significant cultural artefact in establishing that the consumer goods of the industrialised era have an intrinsic value beyond that of their initial currency.