HOLES IN THE MEMORY

摘要

When Sylvester H. Roper attached a small steam engine to an iron-frame "boneshaker" bicycle near Boston in the late 1860s, he had no idea Guillaume Perreaux was fitting a micro-steamer to a pedal-velocipede at the same time in Paris. Kevin Cameron and I disagree on their species; he calls them "steam cycles," but I think any motorized two-wheeler that delivers yeehaw is a motorcycle. That's a scientific measure, the all-important Y factor. It's what got both you and me and everyone else into bikes, even in the 1860s. Roper regularly rode his "self-propellers" around Boston, scorching the road between his home in Roxbury to the Boston Yacht Club, where he'd refuel and (presumably) have a beer. On June 1,1896, Roper was invited to demonstrate his steamer at the Charles River Speedway, a banked cement velodrome in Cambridge. He outpaced a peloton of bicyclists then steamed away from a top pro racer. Track officials urged him to unleash the hissing beast, and after a few scorching laps timed at more than 40 mph, Roper wobbled, shut down, and collapsed. He was 72 years old and had a fatal heart attack during a major yeehaw moment.