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NBHAA GUIDE TO CORRECTING THE CLASSICS
(NBHAA GTCC) !!

CORRECTIONS TO "EVOLUTION OF THE BICYCLE WITH PRICE GUIDE" (VOLUME #2) FOLLOW...

copyright © Leon Dixon/NBHAA 1999, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013. All rights reserved. CAUTION! WE ARE WATCHING, SO WATCH YOUR CREDIT LINE! THESE CORRECTIONS ARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. If you use them without getting permission first, you are violating federal copyright laws. No part of these corrections may be republished, excerpted, referred to in print, used in any way unless written permission from the author has been obtained and acknowledgments are made.

Books on special bicycle subjects are always of interest. We bought this one years ago when they first came out. But OMG!!! We were deeply disappointed once we saw the result of this badly flawed "Evolution of The Bicycle" second volume edition.

While we believe that this publisher meant well and was only thinking of doing the hobby a positive service when this work was assembled. However... wow...it just has a lot of rather unforgivable errors. And if we had a dime for every time someone picked a fight with us because "...but it's gotta be right–heyyyy...I saw it in the Evolution books!.." Wow. Bad enough, but this volume also makes the mistake of NOT listing sources for items that indeed have been copied from older publications, but may appear purpose-made for THIS book. But it does improve on accuracy of dates for original literature. But...that improvement is offset negatively by other factors. This book is largely composed of photos sent in by people who may have meant well but were either guessing or just seriously mistaken. And there is neither indication nor separation of customized frankenbikes from what is accurate and/or original.

The "Evolution of The Bicycle Volume 2"(volume two) has obviously sold very well (who doesn't have one?). But this book is so full of mistakes, chaotic editing, guesses and problems it is hard to know where to begin. One unlabeled page is Sears... the next Montgomery Ward...the next, who knows? Years are mis-labeled. Brands mixed. Dates out of sequence. Original literature is mis-identified as to what year it is (how do you do this?) And then there are the sections where people just sent in names and years and made up whatever "facts and information" they wanted to say–regardless of accuracy–or lack thereof.

Again, our usual test of a good historical book (especially on bicycles) is to open to a random page and begin reading. If we find a mistake on that page, our opinion of the book is lowered. If we find a BAD mistake on that page, our view of the book is lowered even further. We found several BAD mistakes on the very first page we read. Need we say more?

Of course, the excuse is that the book is merely a publication done based on info that was contributed. ANother communal work. And contributors obviously were doing some wild-wild guessing here. But even some of the original literature reprinted inside is mis-identified and is often years off. Sad. If you are expecting THIS book to be an accurate history... don't. Allowing people to guess at years and posting this all in a book may make this a politically correct, popular work ... like "people's choice" trophies at car shows, but being popular is not what history is all about. History ought to be accurate to be worthwhile. Otherwise, have fun reading it. But don't take this book as a serious historical work.

However, in the interest of purely constructive corrections of items we noticed in this book, we'll attempt a few points here addressing serious errors. These are things one might seriously want to consider in promoting and referencing this volume. Of course, we would expect acknowledgement on the following corrections...

• Page 39 (top photo)... It is stated here, "...taken in 1940 with his Bluebird Elgin..." but the nice bicycle you are looking at here appears to be a 1936 Elgin Robin–definitely NOT a Bluebird.