bicycle craze

(noun)

A sudden consumer enthusiasm for bicycles during the 1890s, precipitated by improvements in bike design.

Related Terms

  • Frederick Law Olmsted

Examples of bicycle craze in the following topics:

  • Outdoor Recreation

    • Bicycle riding, camping, baseball, and public parks grew in prominence during the late nineteenth century.
    • The 1890s experienced an enormous bicycle craze, driven by several significant developments in bicycles: the invention of the "safety bicycle" with its chain-drive transmission, whose gear ratios allowed smaller wheels without a concurrent loss of speed; and the subsequent invention of the pneumatic (inflatable air-filled) bicycle tire.
    • By the 1880s, large numbers of visitors took part in the pastime, which was connected to the late Victorian craze for pleasure boating.
    • In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area.
    • The Overman Victor Flyer was a popular safety bicycle during the 1890s.
  • The Culture of the Roaring Twenties

    • Dance clubs became enormously popular, and classical music, operettas, and folk music were all transformed into popular dance memories to satisfy the public craze for dancing.
    • While there were only a few radio stations in 1920–21, by 1922 the radio craze soon swept the country .
  • Flappers

    • Classical pieces, operettas, and folk music were all transformed into popular dance melodies in order to satiate the public craze for dancing.
    • A brief Black Bottom craze, originating from the Apollo Theater, swept dance halls from 1926 to 1927, replacing the Charleston in popularity.
  • Panic and Redemption

    • Much of the craze in railroad investment was driven by government land grants and subsidies to the railroads.
  • Spectator Sports

    • In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area.
  • Sears Roebucks

    • By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, featuring sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods, automobiles (produced from 1905–1915 by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago, not related to the current Ford Motor Company brand of the same name), and a host of other new items.
  • Theatre and Novels

    • The term most often refers to publications of the period 1965-1973, when an underground newspaper craze swept the country.
  • Popular Culture

    • In the park, people could ice skate during the winter and bicycle during the summer.
  • Economic Conversion

    • Typewriters, gasoline, bicycles, footwear, silk, nylon, fuel oil, stoves, meat, lard, shortening and food oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled, and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies, and fruit butter were rationed by November 1943.
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