LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I have had a long letter (two pages) from Douglas Marchant who is Editor of 'Cycle Clips' (this deals with matters and ephemeria to do with cycling). He comments that I have consulted various books and repeated the errors that have been repeated and repeated over the decades. This does happen and unfortunately it is not always possible to spot these errors, and once a fact has been recorded several times it tends to be taken as gospel. A case in point is my mention of the early 'two wheels in a line machine, that could not be steered', which Doug doubts ever existed, Bartleet however states quite categorically "could not be steered, the front wheel being rigidly attached to the main frame", he goes on to say that this was later improved "by passing the fork through a socket, so making it possible to direct the front wheel by a handle and so steer the machine". Bartleet formed possibly the largest collection of old bicycles ever assembled, which on his death was left to the City of Coventry, to found a cycle museum, and the above facts are taken from Bartleet's Bicycle Book published in 1931. Doug may be right, and it would then follow that nobody could "improve the design of a non - existent machine". There are other points, mostly minor, Griffin (1890) mentions Dennis Johnson taking out a patent in December 1818, Douglas claims Denis (one n) Johnson took out the patent in June 1818. He noticed that I missed out the year when I mentioned Macmillan knocking over a boy in Glasgow on the 6th of June, it was in 1842. Thanks for putting me right Doug, we'll have a get together some time.

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