An economic and technical history of the early American bicycle industry, focusing on the period from 1876 to the beginning of World War I. In particular it examines in detail the life and career Albert Augustus Pope, and the meteoric rise and fall of his Pope Manufacturing Company, the first company in the US to manufacture bicycles in significant numbers.

This economic and technical history of the early American bicycle industry focuses on the crucial period from 1876 to the beginning of World War I. It looks particularly at the life and career of the industry's most significant personality during this era, Albert Augustus Pope. After becoming enamored with English high-wheeled bicycles during a visit to the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876, Pope soon started paying Hartford, Connecticut's Weed Sewing Machine Company to make his own brand of high-wheeler, the "Columbia," the first to be manufactured in America in significant numbers. A decade later, Pope bought out that company, and ten years after that, Hartford's Park River was lined with five of Pope's factories. This book tells the story of the Pope Manufacturing Company's meteoric rise and fall and the growth of an industry around it.