Everyone knows the big names in motorcycles today: Harley-Davidson, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki. But how many people know the name Michaux-Perreaux? Probably very few bikers have ever heard of Pierre Michaux, but they should have. He's the father of the motorcycle, and while his vehicle might not look anything like today's bikes, he's the one who came up with the idea.
In the late 1860s, Michaux was working in Paris, France, as a blacksmith. He mainly created parts for carriages, but in the 60s, he and his son Ernest had the idea to create a bicycle with pedals. This bike, called the velocipede or Michauline, became very popular very quickly. In 1867, he had the idea to attach a Louis-Guillaume Perreaux commercial steam engine to the bicycle, creating what is basically a motorcycle. Around the same time, the Roper Steam Velocipede was created, which some consider to be the first motorcycle, and there is debate over which of the two was produced first.
Others do not consider either of these vehicles to be a true motorcycle because they were powered by steam, not an internal combustion engine that ran on gasoline. To these, the first motorcycle was the Teitwagen, which was designed by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Mayback near Stuttgart, Germany, in 1885. It was the first gasoline-powered motorcycle. It was, however, just a prototype. The first commercial motorcycle wasn't produced until 1894 when Hildebrand & Wolfmuller rolled out a few hundred of their vehicles.
What happened to the Michaux-Perreaux? Only one of those steam velocipedes was produced, and it currently resides at the Musee de l'lle-de-France museum in Sceaux. However, it is occasionally loaned out, such as when it was a part of the Art of the Motorcycle exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1998.
