When the motorcycle was very young, that it should run at all was a novelty. That made such automotive refinements as a free-engine clutch, multispeed transmission and brakes superfluous. Before magnetos became the clear choice, beginning around 1903, many engines were fired by dreadful flame ignitions. (Yes, flame burning in a little ‘lantern’ next to the cylinder, from which a flame port drew in a whiff.) In many cases, the air-fuel mixture taken into the engine’s cylinder came not from the familiar spray carburetor but from
