The Founders

The development and marketing of motorized transportation was in full swing by 1900. In small shops in Europe and America, designers and engineers were using machinery and techniques already decades old, trying to improve upon their own ideas and those of others. Henry Ford, Glenn Curtiss, the Wright brothers, Ole Evinrude, Oscar Hedstrom, and Bill Harley (above) first drafted their designs with pen and ink, then crafted them with wood and metal into patterns for prototypes. With cast iron, steel, aluminum, leather, and wood, they machined, cut, bent, forged, and brazed these materials into cars, airplanes, power boats, and motorcycles. Though their designs varied widely, making an airplane, a car, or a motorcycle required similar techniques, and it is likely each of these designers had access to shop tools more or less like those in this "replica" of the original 10-by-15 foot Harley-Davidson shed.

The original shed was constructed around 1901 in the back yard of the Davidson home in Milwaukee as a work shop for Bill Harley and Arthur Davidson (left). We can only speculate as to what it contained or what was actually done there, because nobody really knows. This exhibit contains typical turn-of-the century tools that might have been found in the shed and used by two young men trying to build a motorcycle.

Next: The Decision to Race