1907 Harley-Davidson Strap Tank

After a long, long journey, Otis Chandler’s 1907 Harley-Davidson motorcycle rests in comfortable retirement at his museum in Oxnard, Calif. More than time alone separates it from its beginnings in Milwaukee, Wis.; the world around it has changed completely.

(Click to enlarge)

That the little dove-gray machine has survived at all is something of a miracle, given the hazards it faced: the pounding it surely took from the rutted dirt roads of the early 1900s, the likelihood that it received lackadaisical maintenance for some of its life, and the delicacy of many of its components. But survive it has, with an amazing number of its original parts in place.

William S. Harley certainly wasn’t thinking about the well-paved world of 21st-century America when he designed his first gasoline engine in 1901. What he did have in mind was a powerplant for a bicycle.  The idea was hardly novel, as the concept of powered bicycles dated back to 1867, when one S. H. Roper built a bike powered by a steam engine. Gottlieb Daimler, of Daimler-Benz fame, was the first to mount a gasoline engine on a bicycle—for which he built a frame out of wood—in 1885. By the time 21-year-old Harley set pencil to paper, several companies were producing gas-engined bicycles, or kits allowing riders to motorize their own “wheels” (as bicycles were then called).

	The Strap Tank's direct drive, via a leather belt, transmits the four horsepower to the rear wheel.  (Click image to enlarge)

Two years after finishing his plans, Harley and Arthur Davidson (Walter and William Davidson would join the company later) were producing a few Harley-Davidson motorcycles in a 150-square-foot wooden shed in the Harleys’ backyard. Total output that first year: three motorcycles. Though all of the early H-Ds were designed for competition, road riders wanted them. So by 1907 H-D had 18 employees working in a 4000-square-foot factory trying to keep up with demand.

In that year, motorcycle #2042 was built. Even after four years of development, H-D was still producing what amounted to motorized bicycles, and would continue to do so for quite some time. The basic design, less the engine, looks much like any bicycle of its day—remarkably like a Schwinn cruising bike from the 1950s, right down to the wide saddle, pedals, chain-and-sprocket drive, simple handlebars, and “coaster” brake on the rear wheel.