A Two-Wheeled Lickety-Split Thing
A Two-Wheeled Lickety-Split Thing
Better known for his airships and wizard cameras, boy-inventor Tom Swift made his literary debut on a motorcycle
Albert D. Manchester
TOM SWIFT WAS RIDING HIS BIcycle to town when he saw a great cloud of dust approaching him. At first the boy thought the dust was being kicked up by a herd of cattle coming along the road. But as the dust cloud grew closer, Tom could hear a steady "chug-chug" emanating from it.
“It’s a motorcycle!” exclaimed Tom. “He must have his muffler wide open, and that’s kicking up as much dust as the wheels do.”
This exciting scene appears on page 10 of Tom Swift and his Motorcycle, and through it, the motorcycle and Tom Swift first rode onto the pages of popular literature. The book was written by Victor Appleton and published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1910. It is subtitled “Fun and Adventures on the Road,” which is just what Tom found once he got mounted on the very machine that startled him and almost ran him down that summer day so long ago.
Tom Swift?
Once upon a time, American boys had to get through every day of their lives without television. And one of the ways they did it, besides playing games and causing a peck of trouble, was by reading the unlikely adven tures of Tom Swift, the precocious boy-inventor from New York state. Appleton pounded out 30 Tom Swift titles between 1910 and 1928; and while those adventures may seem hi lariously naive now, few boys in Tom’s day survived adolescence without reading about his airships, wizard cameras, electric rifles, wireless message machines and submarine boats, or traveling with him among the diamond miners or into caves of ice. A couple of generations of American boys were raised on these tales of adventure.
Luckily for Tom, the motorcyclist crashed into an oak tree while passing his house later in the day. The chap was a middle-aged man who had bought the machine just one week earlier for $250 and so far had ridden it but a hundred miles. Terrified of the “two-wheeled apparatus,” the fellow agreed to sell the somewhat bent bike to Tom right then and there for only 50 bucks. Tom scampered into his house and grabbed the money out of his safe before the biker could change his mind.
What kind of a motorcycle? We don’t know. We do know that it was a “fine make,” but many different makes were being produced in the United States in 1910, some of them quite good machines. In that year there were over 30 American motorcycle manufacturers worthy of the title. Tom’s bike could have been a Harley or an Indian. But it also might have been a Merkel, Excelsior, Thor, New Era, Marsh, Miami or Minneapolis. By 1910, over 80,000 machines that passed for motorcycles had been registered in the U.S. One thing is certain: Tom’s bike wasn’t made in Japan.
Tom’s new motorcycle had a sprocket-and-chain drive instead of belt drive, the preferred method of power-transmission in those days. Thanks to the crash, it also had a busted front wheel, bent handlebars, a smashed lantern (headlight), and some slight damage to the engine and transmission. He picked up a new wheel in town, straightened the handlebars and repaired the engine. While he was at it, he changed the sprockets to get more speed, and in fact increased the revolutions of the rear wheel by 15 percent. He was delighted.
“But it will take more gasoline to run the motor,” admonished Tom’s father, a noted inventor.
“Then I’ll enlarge the gasoline tank,” declared Tom. “I want to go fast when I’m going.”
Without a lantern, Tom was forced to wait until morning before taking his motorcycle out for a spin. He was away before breakfast, returning home with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. He had ridden all the way to Reedville, he announced proudly.
“What, a round trip of thirty miles!” exclaimed Mr. Swift.
“That’s right!” declared his son. “I went like a greased pig.”
“You must be careful,” cautioned his father. “You are not an expert rider yet.”
Tom wasn’t completely satisfied with the bike’s performance, however. So the boy-wonder rearranged the gasoline and spark controls, making the necessary levers and connecting rods in his own machine shop. After that, he found the motorcycle and was much easier to control.
Few boys in Tom's day survived adolescence without reading about his airships,wizard cameras, electric rifles...or traveling with him among the diamond miners or into caves of ice.
The central story in Tom Swift and his Motorcycle has to do with a newfangled turbine motor Mr. Swift had invented. He had to get a model of the invention and the required patent papers to Albany before some dastards who were lurking in the neighborhood could steal them from him. And because Mr. Swift had other matters to attend to at home, he asked his son to take the model and papers to Albany for him.
“Am I going by train?” asked Tom.
“Certainly. How else would you go?”
There was a look of excitement in Tom’s eyes when he announced, “Dad, why couldn’t I go on my motor-cycle?”
The matter of transportation settled in Tom’s favor, the lad was soon off for Albany. He pedaled away, turning on the gasoline and spark, and threw forward the levers when he had gained speed. The engine caught, and the rattles and bangs of his motorcycle were “quickly subdued by the muffler.”
On the way to Albany, Tom was waylaid by three evildoers who were riding in a red automobile. Tom was knocked on the head and chloroformed, and his father’s valuable papers and model were stolen from him. Then his limp body and his motorcycle were packed into the rear of the car, and he was driven far from the scene of the crime and hidden in a farmer’s shed.
Rescued from the shed by the farmer, Tom asked if anybody had seen his motorcycle.
“I didn’t see nothin’ like that,” said the farmer. “Is that what you call one of them two-wheeled licketysplit things that a man sits on the middle of an’ goes like chainlightning?”
“It is,” said Tom. “I wish you would help me look for it.” The farmer agreed, and they soon discovered the bike in some bushes just down the road.
In spite of what might be thought of by some as urgent business to attend to, and still feeling dazed from the blow on his head and sick from chloroform, Tom paused long enough at the farmer’s house to repair a new butter churn that had slipped a cog.
Tom then tore up the country road in search of the culprits, discovering that a motorcycle was a dandy improvement over a bicycle when a fellow had a lot of ground to cover. Snorting down one lumber road, however, he collided with an apparent tramp, a chap called Happy Harry who was, in fact, an accomplice of the crooks, although Tom didn’t know this at the time. Tom bought off the tough-looking gent for 50 cents, which seems reasonable enough. Unfortunately for Tom, Happy Harry took off into the woods with a wire from the motorcycle— “which wire served to carry the current of electricity that exploded the mixture of air and gasoline.”
With a dead engine, Tom was in a pickle. But not for long. He stripped a piece of wire from a barbed-wire fence along the road. To insulate the wire, he used a strip of linen from his handkerchief, tying the linen on with pieces of string. The clever lad was soon pop-popping down the road.
Tom managed to track the thieves to their hideout, a deserted mansion on the shores of Lake Carlopa. The model of the turbine and the patent papers were soon recovered.
“Well,” remarked Mr. Swift to Tom afterwards, “your motor-cycle certainly did us good service. Had it not been for it I might never have gotten back my invention.”
This is, then, how Tom Swift was launched on the American scene. And although Tom had many adventures after his debut on a motorcycle, he never gave up his two-wheeler.
Today, Tom Swift books are counted among the special collections of libraries and universities, and complete sets are expensive and difficult to find. Tom Swift has entered the realm of collectible Americana— and it’s nice to know that the redblooded, all-American boy-inventor started out on a motorcycle.
