tv Harley Davidson in Milwaukee CSPAN May 2, 2020 11:38pm-12:01am EDT
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every weekend on c-span 3. tour takes ities american history tv on the road to feature the history of cities america. here's a recent program. [rock 'n roll music] harley-davidson story is a unique blend. it's a microcosm of the american industry. the company was born at the dawn 20th century when so many things were happening and the actually been in continuous operation, making for 116 years now. curator, it's
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wonderful because the story is so great. ups and downs, the depression, orld war ii, triumph and tribulation, and they saved everything. you will see as we walk through had, for , they whatever reason, you know, these starting this company from almost nothing, began saving stuff from the first operation, ir generations of employees have continued that throughout the history of the company and it's given us so much stuff to help tell all of these stories. in front of serial number 1, at the beginnings of harley-davidson motor company story. this is the oldest harley-davidson in existence. it was restored during the 1990s repainted and was replated. most ntastic thing about of our motorcycles is they are all original paint but this one,
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e're not exactly sure when the founders got it back, so it's a artifact of the beginnings of the company and it's sort of enshrined here. does look basically like a the weight bicycle with frame modified to embrace that engine. by, le are often puzzled there is a chain on the other side and a belt here and pedals what's up with that? early in the 20th century the way you started one of these it, and u would pedal at a certain point when you got enough kind of momentum, you lever there.at it would tighten up the leather elt and it kick starts the engine. an electric have start for -- with harley it until the 1960s, had a step starter early
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in the teens. pedal it if you felt like it but it was a little bicycle.than the normal this drawing, which is the original drawing from 1901 is of our company. davidson and bill harley decided they wanted to motor harley icycle and bill by that point being an accomplished draftsman actually early e drawings of this engine. you can kind of see the date down there in the right corner. 1901.uly of the little bicycle engine. there are two sheets, we only one but it's miraculous that we only have one, so they a local ing with machine shop and local foundries, made this engine. it in a bicycle. fun, we that's really think, and decided to make a full fledged motorcycle. sort of the foundation of the
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harley-davidson motor company there. >> this story really could only milwaukee.ed in if you think back to the 20th century, he milwaukee was known as the world.e shop of the this was a real kind of manufacturing center. kind of grewg guys up in the city where people made things. hey brewed beer, which is one f the things that made milwaukee famous. this was kind of the leather tanneries, e, foundries, machine shops and as this was part , their environment, and they arthur and harley were bicyclists. they said, we're that city where they make things. decided we're going to make
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davidson's and father built a little shed behind the house for them to work in, and in this little shed able to actually start a business making motorcycles different all of the facilities they had around them, they could use the machine shop the partsoad and have cast at the foundries down here of enomonie valley and all these things were happening at a time when there was this incredible excitement about all these w technology and guys just sort of rode that wave. so you're looking at a picture expanded shed. so having sold a motorcycle in 1903, and then doubling their ales in 1904, they needed a little more space, and needed what, in contemporary parlance, say was an angel investor, which they found in a reportedly somewhat eccentric uncle in madison, who had been saving his pennies, nickels, and dimes, and $170 in 1904 to help
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really kind of kick start the company. really, you know, having gone from one motorcycle to two, to in 1905, by 1906, they then 450.d then 150, they outgrew that large shed and first purpose built factory that they built in 1906. photo was taken on 1907 when they incorporated. founders were there. harley at that point was pursuing his engineering degree nights on and working and weekends, so that's the entire work force. the original factory, the day they incorporated in 1907. incredible his collection, so we use it on both floors of the museum as kind of timeline, so we begin here, in
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adjacent, telling the history of the company and out here you see the progression bikes starting with the ingles, so this is a later single, 1911. the thing that's incredible about this collection is that in theirngs were saved original condition. and this one looks to me like but been rid an little bit you can see it's got its original leather belt. all riginal leather seat, the original paint. the tires really rot out so the are all reproductions. n 1909 the company first started trying to build its v-twin-engine like this one here. that's the year that that bike was introduced. e built, i believe, 27 of these, and they didn't quite perform the way the founders expected, so they all were kind of brought back here to milwaukee and they went back to board, and 1911igned that engine, and
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was the first production v twin that was really successful. engine room, and e're here at our engine wall which kind of tells the progression of the the y-davidson v twin over course of our history, and what we're talking about there is the by the cylinders, so ou've got a 45-degree angle there, and inside the cylinders you've got the pistons going up and down. one of the things that ties all that se together is that, air-cooled with the fins on the cylinders, 45-degree angle, and the big -- there is a big fly wheel down there, and the actually connected to a single pin, so they kind of through the engine. rather than the way an utomobile would work, and that's part of the distinctive
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sound. it's walk through history just a progression of the engines getting larger, more powerful, more technologically complicated. when this engine was introduced depression,e of the knuckle head, that's our first engine that has recirculating just like an automobile today. tank and got an oil the oil re-circulates around the engine. the demands that are placed on engines both from kind of power and speed requirements, regulatory requirements and noise regulations the really, become actually really complicated, and by the ime we get to our most recent engine here, the milwaukee eight, that's pretty much a engineering, rn and actually, the task is made a by the ore difficult fact that we're maintaining that same architecture, but it's such part of the harley dna that
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it.ve got to do >> in discussing harley-davidson history, we talk about the four three david son brothers and bill harley. they each played different roles. arthur davidson, i think, was really critical to the company's that he d success in was the person who took on the started traveling around the country and signing up dealers and setting up an network.ealer he real task for harley-davidson was to convince people that this thing, this new making, is e're really good, economical, reliable, family transportation. the turn of the 20th century, f you were moving in anything other than a train, you were out in the elements. a horse. horse and buggy, an automobile, a motorcycle, an irplane, everything was open cockpit. and it was all new and it wasn't
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the automobile was going to become kind of the favored form of transportation you got doors and windows and a roof. for the first 15 years of the harley-davidson motor company hey were really focusing on getting people to accept these vehicles as the way that families are going to get around. we had side wars. you could put a couple of kids in. of a challenging sales pitch there for a little while but it was exciting enough that, you know, the motorcycle was really embraced harley-davidson was one of dozens of motorcycle companies 20th first years of the century. harley-davidson was hugely success, the largest world.ycle company in the we talk a lot about the great s.pression of the 1930 beginning in 1929.
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there was a pretty significant 1920s andearly in the that hit the company pretty hard. the mid-1920s, the having to pretty significantly rethink their whole business proposition ford kept putting out that same kind of reliable prices were d the going down while, as we were motorcycle, our prices went up and we hit a oint in the mid-1920s when the top of the line harley-davidson model t. than a whole sales f your proposition was good, economical family transportation, if you're tarting a family you would probably buy a vehicle with doors and windows, so there was a big change happening, depression hit and the company struggled.
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established how many motorcycle companies there were between 1900 and 1930. at least 60. by the time you got into the we were down on, to just a handful, and only two made it out of the great harley-davidson and ndian, which stayed in production through world war ii. y the time the u.s. entered world war ii, harley-davidson was beginning to recover. ♪ ii, everyone was involved in the war effort, and the manufacturing center like milwaukee, you know, if you had manufacturing facilities, they to war ng to be turned time production of some sort. harley-davidson got the contract to build the military motorcycles, so we ramped up motorcycle production. >> this was such a turning point company and for the world, and harley-davidson was
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the contract, t to build motorcycles for the military. kind of a primary work horse of world war ii. a sexy same, wla, but we made these motorcycles not for the u.s. military, but of our allies, so russia, to canada, they weren't combat vehicles, they were primarily dispatch be runningthey would back and forth at the front doing a messages and variety of support operations, but you had to be ready for everything. it's got block out lights and machine gun. this was, in addition to making trained the riders and we trained the mechanics, and all after the war, of these g.i.'s who were lucky enough to come back, they wanted to keep riding and the once that might
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have been stuck in a trench looking at those dispatch riders going by probably decided now is my chance. could -- as we go downstairs you will see what they did with them once they all of that military gear off. so the harley-davidson story as tell it in the museum, the mezzanine levels end with world war ii and this is the beginning culture.became chopper so we're proud above the bike to able to display vino willie's uniform but these guys were famous hollister incident which i would like to about.ou when people think about these outlaw clubs it's like the of these els, one clubs that actually did engage lot of criminal activity and these fighters were not a club like that.
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however, that's the reputation and it was really kind of spawned by this incident california, where the blues fighters and a couple of other fighters showed up at a motorcycle race and they weren't allowed to participate because they were not members so they spent the reportedly running up and down main street drinking heck, and this g incident in hollister was sensationalized in the press and particular particularly "life" magazine, which was in almost every then.hold back they claim this was one of the arians who were terrorizing the town. wake of this incident middle america became terrified of these motorcycle lubs and this actually was the basis of the marlon brando film "the wild one," which kicked off
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myth of lar culture these marauding motorcycle gangs whisk to your town to your daughter off the porch and cause you trouble. really changed the in e of the motorcyclists global culture. there is, from a motorcycling view, there is a exiness to that, that draws a lot of people to the sport. obvious downsides to some of the activities that some in.these clubs engaged >> it's interesting living here museum arley-davidson because we get to interact with owners from all over the world. it's an interesting population.n of the >> in the kind of customization with two ended up kind of divergent paths.
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of had all the guys, kind taking off from those, they called them barbers, like the and these ers bike, more minimal choppers, and then people what some referred to as works of art and other garbage wagons. but i feel that they are works of art. his guy here is one of my favorite vehicles in the museum. partly because i got to know the also, members, but it's you know, it's such a real feat prowess.ering this guy, felix -- the little wore those clothes and rode this monstrous motorcycle, town called mine 35, pennsylvania. t was near lindbergh, coal mining country, and he would ake these fantastic contraptions and ride them to motorcycling events and hand out and say, look, if --an do this, you can ajavon
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magic fix your bike for you. this is a board that hung shop and when he you, he otorcycle for would take a polaroid of you and on his board. just a fantastic story. rhinestone harley. however, numerous times when i've talked to people about their visits to the museum they oh, i loved that liberace bike you have. one i've got a soft spot in peggy t for, because townsend, there is a picture got of it before it beaswegeneled. when the museum opened her whole family arranged to reunion rprise family for her, so that's my picture of
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the opening of the museum is the townsend family in tears around this motorcycle. year, for the 10th anniversary of the museum, the kids crew came back, the that were like, this tall in 2008, rode their motorcycles in minnesota, and, you know, a example of how this activity can bring people in ther and, you know, ontrast to that sort of outlaw image of the motorcyclists, real together, and, you know, just drawn by their love and torcycling, this case -- n harley-davidson, couldn't have happened almost in any place but milwaukee. factors that of allowed these guys to build this
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company. milwaukee and >> you can watch this and other programs on the history of communities across the country at c-span.org cities tour. this is american history tv, only on c-span3. >> up next on lectures in history, wellesley college professor breanna greer debunks some of the myths about rosa parks on the montgomery bus boycott. rosa parks was not first african-american to refuse giving up her seat. and that the boycott had planning and precedent. she also explores why the simple five version of history has become so widespread. prof. greer: our focus today is the montgomery bus boycott. that's what you read your
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