Timeline of Motorcycles: A Sourced History From Steam Velocipedes to Electric Bikes

Ask a showroom full of riders who built the first motorcycle and you will get three or four answers, and most of them can be defended. It depends on what counts: a steam engine on a bicycle, the first gasoline engine on two wheels, or the first motorcycle you could actually buy.

This timeline is for riders and dealership staff who want the history right. Every date below comes from a museum, a manufacturer's own archive or a hall of fame, and each row in the table names its source. Where accounts disagree, we say so rather than pick a winner. It replaces our 2020 version of this post, which had a few dates wrong; the corrections are listed near the end.

Who built the first motorcycle?

There are three fair answers, depending on the definition:

1. First powered two-wheeler: steam. Sylvester Roper's steam velocipede made its first public appearance in 1869 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, according to the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame. In France, Louis Perreaux patented a steam engine for a pedal bicycle in 1868.
2. First internal combustion motorcycle: Gottlieb Daimler's "riding car" (Reitwagen) of 1885, built with Wilhelm Maybach. The Mercedes-Benz Classic archive calls it the world's first motorcycle.
3. First production motorcycle: the Hildebrand & Wolfmüller of 1894, which the Guggenheim Museum describes as "the first commercially produced motorcycle."

All three are true. The disagreement is about the definition, not the facts.

Motorcycle history timeline

The steam era, 1868 to 1896

The first powered two-wheelers borrowed everything from the velocipede, the pedal bicycle craze of the late 1860s. The Guggenheim's exhibition text for The Art of the Motorcycle dates Louis Perreaux's patent for a steam engine in a pedal bicycle to 1868.

In America, Sylvester Roper attached a twin-cylinder steam engine to a hickory-framed velocipede. The AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame describes the machine: iron-shod wooden wheels, a spring-mounted firebox and boiler between the wheels, a charcoal fire under the boiler, and water carried in a reservoir in the seat. It made its first public appearance in 1869, and Roper toured the fairs and circuses of New England with it.

In 1895, with backing from the Pope Manufacturing Company, Roper built an improved steamer. On June 1, 1896, he rode it at the Charles River bicycle track in Boston and died there. The Hall of Fame notes it was later determined he died of heart failure, not from the crash itself. Both of his steam bikes survived, and the Smithsonian owns the original.

Steam never became a business. The boiler, the fire and the water supply made it impractical, and gasoline engines were catching up by the end of the century.

Daimler's riding car, 1885

The Mercedes-Benz Classic archive tells the Reitwagen story in a few lines. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach had built a small, fast-running test engine in 1883 at their workshop in Cannstatt. The upright-cylinder version that followed, nicknamed the "Grandfather Clock," was compact enough to fit a two-wheeler, which made the riding car its first test vehicle.

• Engine: single cylinder, 264 cm³, 0.5 hp at 600 rpm.
• Patent: August 29, 1885, for a "riding car" with "gas or petroleum engine," German patent DRP 36423.
• First trip: in November 1885, from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim, at up to 12 km/h (about 7.5 mph). The archive says Daimler's younger son, Adolf, made the ride; many other accounts name his son Paul.

The riding car was a test bed for the engine rather than a product, and Daimler moved on to four-wheeled vehicles. Its importance is the engine: it was a gasoline engine, not a diesel and not steam.

The first production motorcycle, 1894

The next step was a motorcycle someone could buy. The Guggenheim's curators put it this way: by 1894, the Hildebrand brothers and Alois Wolfmüller "had patented a water-cooled, two-cylinder gasoline engine in a bicycle type frame, the first commercially produced motorcycle." Their German patent, DE 78553, uses the word Motorrad, the German word for motorcycle that is still in use.

Indian and Harley-Davidson

America's two best-known names started within two years of each other.

Indian, 1901. George Hendee, a champion bicycle racer, saw the motorized pacing bicycle built by Oscar Hedstrom and asked him to build a prototype of a mass-produced motor bicycle. The AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame says Hedstrom hand-built the first Indian prototype in 1901, and in 1903 he rode an Indian to a record 56 mph on Ormond Beach in Florida. By 1912 the Indian Motocycle Company was the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer.

Harley-Davidson, 1903. The Harley-Davidson Museum says that in 1903, "inside a 10' x 15' wooden shed in the backyard of the Davidson family home, Arthur Davidson and William Harley started building their first motorcycle." The Hall of Fame lists four founders: William S. Harley, Arthur Davidson, and Arthur's brothers Walter and William A. Davidson.

Between the wars and the cruiser look

Two designs from this period still shape what dealers sell. The Guggenheim notes that BMW's transverse flat-twin "Boxer" engine, first introduced in the R32 in 1923, remained the mainstay of BMW's range. And the Indian Chief, first designed in the 1920s, "came into its own in 1940" with its deep, curved fenders; the museum credits it with establishing a cruiser look that is "still being followed today, principally by its former archrival, Harley-Davidson."

Japanese makers change the market

The biggest shift in the second half of the century came from Japan. The AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame traces Honda's start to 1946, when Soichiro Honda motorized bicycles with small war-surplus engines. Renamed Honda Motor in 1948, the company began manufacturing motorcycles. The C100 Super Cub, released in 1958, became an international bestseller.

American Honda was founded in 1959 and used the slogan "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" to counter the image motorcyclists had at the time. The Guggenheim calls that slogan the one that "completely broke the mold of motorcycle marketing in the early 1960s." The same year, Honda became the first Japanese team to enter the Isle of Man TT.

The Guggenheim also credits Honda's four-cylinder CB750 with ending the era when vibration from big vertical twins was accepted as charm. Its verdict on the British industry is blunt: it was "too slow to react to the new Japanese standards of production, design and marketing."

The electric era

Electric motorcycles are the newest chapter. Zero Motorcycles says it started in a Santa Cruz, California garage and has invited riders to go for a ride "since 2006, when the first prototypes were produced." Established brands have since added electric models, and a dealer today may sell gasoline and electric bikes from the same floor.

What most motorcycle timelines get wrong

We checked the top results for this topic, including our own 2020 infographic. The same mistakes repeat:

• "Daimler built a diesel motorcycle." It was a gasoline engine. The patent covers a "gas or petroleum engine."
• "The first motorcycle patent was filed in 1900." Daimler's riding car was patented in 1885, and Hildebrand & Wolfmüller held a patent by 1894.
• "Roper's steam bike was 1867 (or 1868)." The AMA Hall of Fame gives 1869 for its first public appearance. Dates of 1867 and 1868 belong to other steam experiments or to disputed accounts.
• Mixed-up units. The Reitwagen's top speed was about 12 km/h. Some pages say 12 mph, which would be about 60 percent faster.
• No definition. "First motorcycle" means nothing until you say whether you mean steam, gasoline or production. Good timelines say which.

What this means for dealers today

History is not a sales tactic, but it is useful in a powersports store:

1. Riders trust staff who know the product's story. A salesperson who can explain why a flat-twin sits across the frame, or what a cruiser borrowed from the 1940 Indian Chief, sounds like a rider, not a script.
2. Heritage is content customers search for. History, model-year and "what changed" pages answer real questions. Our guide to content marketing for powersports dealers shows how to pick topics from what riders already ask and measure them by leads.
3. Powersports buyers are not car buyers. They buy for passion and identity as much as transport. Our comparison of automotive vs powersports marketing covers what that changes in your messaging.
4. Classic and heritage models need careful listing. Accurate photos, model years and details matter more when buyers know the history. PSX Ascend's inventory management "connects vehicle capture, appraisal, pricing, merchandising, aging visibility, and syndication so dealership teams can move units from arrival to market-ready with less disconnected work."
5. Owners of older bikes are trade conversations waiting to happen. Our guide to the best time to trade in a motorcycle or ATV gives staff an honest way to have that talk.

A quick staff checklist before you publish or repeat a history claim:

• Does the date come from a museum, the manufacturer or a hall of fame?
• Did you say which "first" you mean?
• Are speeds in the unit the source used?
• Is any "first" or "largest" claim attributed to the source that makes it?

About our 2020 infographic

The 2020 version of this post linked a one-page graphic. You can still view the 2020 motorcycle timeline infographic (PDF), but treat it as an archive item. Several entries do not match the sources above: the 1885 entry calls Daimler's engine "diesel based" (it ran on gasoline), the 1900 entry calls a Werner Brothers filing the "first motorcycle patent" (Daimler patented in 1885), and Roper's machine is dated 1868 rather than the 1869 first appearance the AMA Hall of Fame gives. Use the table on this page instead.

You can also see the same inventory management tools on our sister site, PSXDigital's inventory management tools page.

Related reading

• The history of the ATV, from Honda's 1970 three-wheeler to today's federal ATV standard.
• Content marketing for powersports dealers.
• Why the car-dealer marketing playbook falls short in powersports.

Sources

• AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame, Sylvester Roper.
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Art of the Motorcycle, exhibition text, June 26 to September 20, 1998.
• Mercedes-Benz Classic archive, Daimler riding car, 1885.
• Mercedes-Benz Classic archive, Chronicle: 1885.
• Hildebrand & Wolfmüller patent DE 78553, via Google Patents.
• AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame, Oscar Hedstrom and George Hendee.
• Harley-Davidson, Harley-Davidson Museum.
• AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame, William S. Harley.
• AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame, Soichiro Honda.
• Zero Motorcycles, Company.