Motorcycle Club on Liberty Street, Westminster, 1920s

Photographer Unknown

The motorcycle was the first form of personal mechanized transport, predating the automobile by 25 years.  In 1868,  French engineer Pierre Michaux attached a small steam engine to one of his velocipedes and created the first motorized bicycle (motorcycle).  By 1900, a number of companies were producing motorcycles by mounting small, centrally located engines on bicycles.  Thousands of motorcycles served on the battlefields of World War I, as the armies on both sides of the conflict used the fast, nimble devices for carrying dispatches.  The motorcycle's impressive performance on the battlefield created the image of a machine that took take the rider anywhere and led to a boom in motorcycling in the years after the war.

This group of fashionable riders posed on Liberty Street in Westminster near the distinctive stone building that housed the B.F. Shriver Canning Company.