History of the Harley-Davidson Sportster XL - Ep.1: Before 1956
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- Опубліковано 25 вер 2024
- In this, episode 1, we look at the world and the influences which shaped the Harley-Davidson Sportster's development. This will be viewed from a specifically British perspective.
Great history lesson - going to part 2 now. We are of the same generation and also am a student of history. Thanks.
Afternoon Rick - thank you for you comment. I trust you'll enjoy the other videos too. 'Our generation' must remain united!
Cheers mate,
Chris
Fantastic content. You need more views and subscribers, thanks for the great info and story telling.
Evening Silent - that's a very nice thing to say, thank you very much. It's really good to hear that my efforts are so appreciated.
Thanks again,
Chris
Too boring and slow man. Young generation doesnt give things more than 5
Minutes. I came
Here for sporster history not the rest call me boring or impatient but the views show it
This is great, I wish this had more views. You did a great job both with the information and overall narrative. Nice work my friend.
Thank you Nathan. I wish my vids got more views too. And I wish I made loads of money from all my hard work, but alas, it's just not so. For me, 'telling the story' is hugely fulfilling. It's a great way to put my point of view across, and to explain a bit about how I feel and why - and Harleys are just so interesting! It means that I can get satisfaction from this videoing malarkey, even without earning a bean, which (I've come to learn) is a great benefit in my mental health battles.
Thank you too, Nathan, for your high praise and kind encouragement. I appreciate it! 🙂
Cheers,
Chris
All that to say,
So sorry to hear how bad it was in the SE of England in the 1950s. My mother was lucky enough to live in the North West of England, which was still hyper industrial in those days. She left school at just 14 in 1942 and became apprenticed as a tailoress in a garment factory. This didn't pay too well and she had a taste for glamour, so post-world war II she also worked Saturdays at a large city-centre department store. From there her boss recommended that she try for a job as a humble file clerk at a high-technology company designing jet engines and electricity turbines. She got the job and her line-manager seeing that she was good with figures had her made a Cost Clerk and transferred to the Cost Clerk dept. By this time in the early 50s she was saving enough to holiday in Switzerland at top hotels, hobnobbing with rich American tourists. Doing the whole Swiss-thing - the train inside the Jungfrau etc. Taking photographs in colour of her adventures, looking all glamourous in beautiful clothes and sunglasses. The year before that she had flown to Jersey in a Dakota and the year before that took a British staple holiday of the time - a coach tour around the Scottish highlands. It was a works outing, hundreds of other Northern factories did a similar thing - ICI, Pilkingtons, Metrovicks, English Electric etc, Hardly this horrible bleak picture you are painting.... To relax in the weekends she was a member of a cycling club as were hundreds of thousands of ordinary working people. They would often cycle from Manchester to Southport and back in the day on reasonably quiet well-surfaced roads. Life seemed more or less perfect. Oh I forgot the bit where she rode on the back of an AJS 500 to Wales on a day trip, at one point racing alongside a Jag. Oh and the company she worked for had a Sports complex - not just a gym, so she also did fencing, ballroom dancing and played lots of tennis. Doesn't it just sound grim!!! 😁
Hi Freemen - thanks for taking the time to write.
Your mum seems to have been a remarkable lady: God bless her! I suppose that anyone holidaying in Switzerland & Jersey would have enjoyed life after the war - regardless where they were from. But, in reality, that was a life on a tiny majority were able to enjoy. From what you say, it seems that your mum was both talented and a conscientious worker; good on her. She seems to have worked hard for her success.
Nice to hear English Electric mentioned too - those were the days! The company your mum worked for seems to have been very presigious & successful; which was it?
Still, I get that life wasn't 'so grim' for everyone (certainly 'hard') - but it was for most, I think.
Cheers,
Chris
@@chrisoftheot6272 Ha ha ha... my mother would have laughed a lot to know she had been described as 'successful' - she was just a humble Cost Clerk. In those days before computers there were tens of thousands of them up and down the country, a mix of male and female. Before that she was an even more humble 'File Clerk', of which there must have been hundreds of thousands in the UK and predominantly women. The vast majority of working people, certainly in England in the 1950s had access to amazing Sports and recreational facilities including trips out at the weekend and even holidays.
Just typical North West employers such as ICI, Pilkington's, Rylands, Crossfields, UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) with its 40,000 workers most of which worked at the industrial headquarters at Risley, Warrington. Add to that the nearly 2 million people in the UK who were working directly or indirectly in the aircraft industry, add the hi-tech sectors such as aerospace/rockets which included Rolls Royce, De Havilland, Armstrong Siddeley, Saunders Rowe etc and Computer manufacturers such as ICL - based in Manchester. Far too many manufacturers to list.
Some of my Aunts and Uncles were more fortunate than my mother, some not quite so. One used to regularly tour the continent - first on a Scott Sidecar, then later in cars throughout the 'grim' 1950s.
Tens of thousands of ordinary British people flocked to the Isle of Man to watch the TT each year. Sporting events in general were massively popular and races for example were held all over Britain on most weekends.
If you're interested in the period I suggest you watch the series 'Look At Life' made by the Rank Organisation which chronicles the happy smiling faces typical of the time.
ua-cam.com/video/EuP8ba96KYQ/v-deo.html
@@chrisoftheot6272 I thought you would have guessed my Mum's employer when I mentioned early jet engines. She worked at Metropolitan-Vickers, known colloquially as Metrovicks, which was a British heavy engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial electrical equipment such as generators, steam turbines, switchgear, transformers, electronics and railway traction equipment. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the World’s first commercial transistor computer, the Metrovick 950, and the first British axial-flow jet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2. Work began on the engine in 1938, it flew in a Gloster Meteor in 1943 and the engine was used in Bluebird for example to break the World Water Speed Record. In 1947, a Metrovick G.1 Gatric gas turbine was fitted to the Motor Gun Boat MGB 2009, making it the world's first gas turbine powered naval vessel. Later development including the entire design team was sold to Armstrong Siddeley then to Bristol engines and eventually Rolls Royce where it formed the basis of the Olympus engine. They also designed and built Britain’s first turboprop engine in 1938. During World War II they also worked on radar and pilotless control systems as well as gunlaying / aiming for aeroplanes. They also built Lancaster bombers in four aircraft production hangers. One of my aunties was a teenage welder there during the war. (She also, compared to modern British people lived a fantastic life.) They also rather bizarrely produced electric vans and lorries, probably because petrol was becoming scarce.
The site was also home to BBC radio Manchester which first broadcast from there in 1922.
Post-war Metrovicks also expanded its appliance division, becoming a well known supplier of refrigerators and stoves. The design and manufacture of sophisticated scientific instruments, such as electron microscopes, and mass spectrometers, became an important area of scientific research for the company. They also diversified into building diesel-electric locomotives for the UK and abroad.
Its factory in Trafford Park, Manchester, was for most of the 20th century one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering facilities in Britain and the world providing employment for 30,000 workers.
Thanks for the link - I note there are several videos in this 'Look at Life' series, I'll try to check them all as they look fascinating.
Cheers,
Chris
My History teacher was my own father. One of the first sentences I heard quoted was "England expects that every man will do his duty..." 😂😂
Hi - yip, gotta love that history. I doubt that, today, many Englishmen would be so willing to 'do their duty', at least, not in that way. The world (and Britain) has changed - but I'm not sure if it's better or worse!
Cheers,
Chris
I ride a 2010 Harley 883 it was the last bike at the AAFES dealer ship while posted there with the Army in Soul Korea, and I got a killer deal on it, I could ship it back to the US by House Hold goods what a deal. Thank you for your detailed research on the Sportster. Now on to PART II
Cheers from Colorado.
Thanks again Tumnbleweed, nice to hear from you. I trust you'll enjoy the rest of the series. (Sorry for the delayed reply, I am not getting UA-cam message alerts for some reason.)
Cheers,
Chris
Nicely done. The K model was originally supposed to be an overhead valve aluminum V-twin engine called the KL. But time and money ran out before it could be perfected so they revamped it into the side-valve K until the less exotic XL was developed. A few photos of the KL have been published over the years.
Morning Brown - nice to hear from you again.
I found the KL pictures on the HarleyKModel website but, alas, Dave wouldn't let me use them. Still, in episode 2, I have mentioned your tip - and you! - and even found some pictures on Mecum of the experimental U model (so to speak) which also has overhead valves. I'm trying to persuade Mecum to let me use their pictures, although I'm not sure they're actually copyrighted as they appear everywhere anyway. But getting a pukka thumbs-up would be nice: I'll keep trying!
Thanks again Brown, your pointer really opened my eyes to something I'd over looked.
Cheers,
Chris
The KL was also known as the ‘high-cam K’ there used to be an example on Harley Davidson museum engine wall, but has since been removed. Not sure why
@@jamesbetancourt9041
Yes, the KL was a high cam engine. I think it also had unconventional "hairpin" valve springs. Funny they would remove the KL engine from the Museum. Maybe they're recreating a complete bike with it. That would be cool.
My history comes from my own experience as a 17 yr old in northern California attending rock concerts (Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore West) and bike runs (Angels Camp, Frog Jumps), and riding a motorcycle. "I don't want to eat a pickle...I just wanna ride my motorcycle"!
Awesome history, your teachers did well. New sub, your likes are like mine. Retro 60’s/70’s motorcycles and Harley’s.
Morning Jarhead - you're obviously a man of great taste and charm. We're so much alike. Thanks for the kind words too. Jarhead? Have we met somewhere else, maybe on some Harley forums? The name seems familiar... but then I could be wrong. I was wrong once you know.
Cheers mate,
Chris
As an American (from the country that lost its edge to European and Japan bikes) I wonder if our relative lack of pain from WWII made us less hungry and susceptible to competition.
Morning Clinton - that's a very interesting comment you make there: I'm sure the 'relative lack of pain' that WWII inflicted on the US had (and has) a huge impact on your nation. (I wonder how the situations in Korea and Vietnam would have been handled had US cities suffered like European ones, for instance?)
I'm not sure that this would have affected America 'hunger', as you do seem to be an ambitious nation, at least from a British perspective. I think the British (motorcycle) invasion of the '50s & '60s had a good deal to do with Marshall-esque policies to help our exports so very much. (This made British bikes so much cheaper - and helped Britian re-build itself - thank you all for that!)
The Japanese motorcycle invasion was just inevitable though: all markets were bound to suffer the same 'cos the bikes were so good & cheap. In fact, it's a lot like the Chinese today: they didn't used to be any good at all, but now some of them are tremendously good. You can't push the tide back (alas?!).
Cheers Clinton,
Chris
@chrisoftheot6272 thank you for the thoughtful response. The very fact that I like vintage cars, motorcycles, music etc shows, at least in some way, I want to push the tide back. However, I think that's a fools errand.
Morning Clinton - I firmly believe that 'vintage' anything is wonderful! (An age thing, I fear...)
Tide pushing is a bit tricky, at best, but in this instance, it may not be all bad. For instance, the Japanese domination of the motorcycle (eventually) led to all manufacturers improving thier product. And that good old American hunger gradually delivered the Sportster: God bless America!
Just looking for silver linings, I suppose.
Cheers Clinton,
Chris
Well I'll beef hooked. I came for a model K and got a good history lesson instead. Now I have to sub and watch more.
Thanks Mark - I appreciate the encouragement!
Cheers,
Chris
3 eps was enough for one afternoon.
@@chrisoftheot6272
Three is quite enough Mark - remember, there's no rush!
Cheers,
Chris
Ah yes, as an American, how can I not appreciate that famous dry British humor?😆
Afternoon Hainero - thanks for the appreciation! I fear the 'British humour' - with a 'u' - continues into the next videos so I'm glad it's managable for the distinguished US gent. :-)
Cheers,
Chris
My current rides are a 2009 Sportster 883 xlc and a 2016 Triumph Thunderbird lt,1700 cc parallel twin, basically its a British Road King classic
Morning Chas - good pair of bikes you have there. I've always thought it sad that the Thunderbird ended production... nearly as much as I hate that the Sportster went out of production.
But it does mean that the 'British Road King' can be bought very cheaply nowadays.
Cheers,
Chris
@@chrisoftheot6272 lol seems I have a pair of orphans on my hands
Enjoyed the video very burger and chips rather than burger and fries.Enjoyed
Morning Lee - that may be the best comment I've had: you really get it!
Thank you mate,
Chris
Oh, I went to Embrook just down the road....small world
Embrook! There's a blast-from-the-past. We played you at rugby, I'm sure. Since I was rubbish at rugby, I have no idea how we did (at any match ever).
Cheers Jolly,
Chris
10:26 = a '54 BMW , ..... YES , please !!!!
What a gorgeous bike .....
I used to ride around with a Vietnam vet who had a white '68 (I think, maybe im remembering wrong (?) BMW , complete with side-car , outstanding condition,
He barely ever even rode it , but when he did, MAN, was that thing either THE, or one of the bikes eberyone was gawking at and talking about . . . Beautiful bikes IMHO
I agree Klayton - some of those old bikes are sooooo gorgeous.
Cheers,
Chris
Lovely video, now to think we are going through demographic Replacement by 2033, heartbreaking,.
Thanks for the appreciation Jon :-) Yes, if 'internal comubstion' is banned, it'll be sad indeed. Maybe I'll design a nice hydrogen-powered Sportster...
Cheers,
Chris
What a great video!!
Many thanks for the vote of confidence & appreciation Joao. 😉
Triumph bit is Brilliant! LOL! Love, an American
Thank you CB. I love Americans too.
Cheers,
Chris
😱🤔👍
😚
Wow this was soo sloooooowwwww, you tube for content not docs fyi
You haven't included speedway and grasstrack racing which used alcohol guzzling JAP 500cc singles in something similar to US flattrack racing.
Afternoon Anthony - yes, I didn't mention speedway or grasstrack as they don't really figure in Harley-land. And, truth be told, I only mention flattrack as it was important to Harley, and the US, back in the day. I can't see the appeal myself. Go figure.
(Boardtrack must have been fun to watch, but crazy impractical AND dangerous!)
Cheers,
Chris