Forgotten models from 1902

History informs us that Germans Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the first motorcycle powered by an internal combustion engine to run and perform successfully. On November 10, 1885 Gottlieb’s 17-year-old son Paul rode this ½hp 264cc single-cylinder machine, named the Einspur, on the 7½-mile round trip from Daimler’s workshop in Cannstatt to Untertürkheim and back. Daimler and Maybach weren’t really interested in building motorcycles, rather the Einspur was a test bed for their engine design and although it was further developed during the winter of 1885/6, once its role was over, the Einspur was sidelined.

Others furthered the development of motorcycles, including Edward Butler, whose design for a three-wheeled ‘Velocycle’ was patented in 1884 (before the Einspur) and Fèlix Millet, A Frenchman who built a small number of two-wheeled machines with radial five-cylinder engines installed in their back wheel from 1892. As all designers relied on so-called ‘low speed engines’ (which have limited power output and need to be of large capacity and therefore weighty to produce enough power), thus many worked on tricycle designs to support these engines, rather than motorcycles.

In the late 1880s the Hildebrand brothers, Heinrich and Wilhelm, were working on a steam-powered motorcycle. Later they joined forces with Alois Wolfmüller and Hans Geisenhof who, in 1892, developed a small two-stroke engine that proved underpowered. Wolfmüller and Geisenhof (who both had earlier worked with Karl Benz) developed a larger parallel twin cylinder