The Other Harley Davidson

Ideally, this Harley Davidson would have been the progenitor, or at least the namesake, of the well-known maker of motorcycles. But no.

Instead, this Harley Davidson was a champion cyclist of Canada, winning his first race at Simcoe in May of 1894. During the first half of 1895, he won fourteen of the sixteen races that he had entered, and finished 2nd in the other two. In October of the same year, he set a world's record for the half-mile, unpaced with a flying start, riding the distance at Toronto in fifty-three seconds. Over the same period of time he came to hold nearly every Canadian record for distances up to twenty-two miles.

Davidson, it was said, never protested a race, and was never accused of foul riding, making him an ideal character to promote Brantford wheels, and Morgan & Wright tires. The photo (along with a brief bio of him) was used in an ad for the wheel and tire manufacturers in the Referee and Cycle Trade Journal.