1881 Ordinary Otto Bicycle
edited by David Barth, 6 June 2011.
Courtesy The Forney Museum of Transportation at 4303 Brighton Blvd., Denver,
Colorado 80216. Photos were taken in June 2011.
Some information is courtesy of The World of Motorcycles
Web Page.
This bicycle has four seats for racers to practice pacing. It was built by Waltham Manufacturing Company.
The "Waltham Manufacturing Company" (WMC) of Waltham, Massachusetts, was co-founded by Charles Herman Metz (1863–1937) in 1893. Waltham began by manufacturing
bicycles, but by 1903 Charles expanded the company into automobile and motorcycle manufacturing. Waltham Manufacturing was a spinoff of the Waltham Watch
Company, which was established in 1854 by Aaron Dennison.
Metz moved to Massachusetts in 1893, to begin a new career designing racing bicycles for the Union Cycle Club in Newton Highlands. He then went on to form
Waltham Manufacturing with three other partners, and $100,000 in seed money. Although the company was incorporated in Maine, the physical location was on
Rumford Avenue in Waltham. Metz called his cycles "Orient racing bicycles," named after the Orient Fire Insurance Company of New York where he had previously
sold insurance.
In the early years, Waltham Manufacturing Company produced "pacer" bicycles like this example, tandem bicycles, and "safety bicycles" which were a response to
two cyclists being killed in a race at the Waltham Bicycle Park in 1894 in which the "Left Thread" pedal which would not unthread and detach while
riding.
Metz held over 20 patents for his innovative safety designs. Waltham was also known for such oddities as the 1896 "Oriten," (for "Orient racing bicycle for ten,"
aka "On-ten") an improbable ten-seat bicycle which is now on display at the the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Charles H. Metz is credited with being the first to coin the term "motor cycle," first used in an 1899 advertisement for the Orient motorcycle. Waltham
Manufacturing's 1900 Orient Light Roadster and "Orient-Aster" were America's first mass-production motor-driven cycles, which were also known simply as
the "Orient Motorcycle."
Metz first introduced his creation to the world in July 1900, at the Charles River Race Track in Boston, marking the first recorded motorcycle speed event
in the United States. The Orient set a track time of 7 minutes over a five mile course.
By 1902, Waltham also produced a gasoline-powered automobile known as the "Orient Buckboard." The Orient Model 1902 sold for around $875.00 With the immediate
success of the Orient Buckboard automobile, Waltham Manufacturing soon came to be known as the "Metz Car Company." Among Metz' many other achievements, he also
built one of the first electric cars, sponsored by Charles Coffin of the General Electric Company. Metz left the Waltham Manufacturing Company in 1902, to begin
the "Metz Motorcycle Company."
Waltham Manufacturing continued to manufacture watches, speedometers, compasses, stoves, boilers, aircraft parts, gramophones, Victrolas, and radios through
the mid 1900s, later focusing only on specialized clocks and chronographs for use in aircraft. Waltham was sold in 1994, becoming the Waltham Aircraft Clock
Corporation in Ozark, Alabama.
The Exhibit number is 117.
