By Al Tietjen © 2007

Once I had a dream of happiness.
I came to America and worked hard.
I made some money and thought I could use it to buy my dreams, but I was wrong.
I will have to work hard again.

When this rare, chainless bicycle re-emerged in 2003, the dreams and the off-the-shelf parts were long gone, but the patented 3-speed shaft-drive mechanism remained intact, begging to rejoin its place in bicycle history. Like the original paint and nickel plating, much of what is known about this bicycle had disappeared. The principal players had abandoned it early and their immediate descendents had lost the threads, but a song was calling from its too-early grave.

That song, curiosity, and a desire to know my grandfather’s life and times, piqued my interest in the restoration of this old skeleton and its story, both of which were crumbling into the dust of family and bicycle lore. My part began shortly following the death of my mother Helen (Muller) Tietjen, when an envelope full of papers describing the “Hill-Climber” bicycle surfaced from the depths of an old cedar hope chest. I’d like to think she saved this part of the story in her possession for a reason. She was a saver of personal relics, and relished a good story.

In the envelope was the curious paper trail of her family’s folly—a 3-speed chainless bicycle. Her thread of the story was a fading memory when she came into possession of these papers later in her life. In the envelope were:

—a handwritten copy of a contract for a business partnership making “certain changeable-gear bicycles commonly known as Hill-Climber Bicycles, motor Bicycles, Automobiles, and such other articles as said parties may hereafter agree to…”
—a printed advertising circular of the Independent Cycle Mfg. Co. showing the two- and three-speed models for 1904, and offering the reader to “take up the matter of agency with us and prepare early for a good profitable business that is sure to come to dealers who handle our line, our machine will be a seller to the best class of riders who appreciate the features as a labor-saving device second to none.”
—a certificate of stock, 4 shares at $25 each to the hopeful investor, Mike Dublo.

These curious artifacts begged the question of what became of the inventor and what really happened to the business my grandfather and his brothers invested in. What other records remained that could fill in the facts to this story? I contacted my brother, William Tietjen, who agreed to some minimal research on the subject to see what could still be retrieved. The story began to open in front of us.

Historically, the chainless (or shaft-drive) bicycle was first sold in Europe and made its way to America by 1897 where the patents were sold to Pope Manufacturing by the League Cycle Company. Other manufacturers soon had their own models – Pierce, Crescent, Gormully & Jeffery (G & J) and others. The development of the chainless bicycle followed a flurry of bicycle patents in an unprecedented era of transportation development that did not end with a bicycle on top— the automobile took those honors. But of all the bicycle variations that came out of this era, the shaft-drive represented the most advanced (and expensive), solution. A drive mechanism with three speeds, more closely related to what would become automobile running gear (after they abandoned chain drives), would have lifted it to a place at the top of the pile that the “Hill-Climber” aspired to scale— if it had survived.

When my uncle, Louie Muller, pulled it off the farm junk pile in the late 1950s, it had resided there, stripped of its useable parts, for some time after being ridden into disrepair by his older siblings. The oral history was muted by this time down to a single phrase “family fortune lost.” It now represented only broken promises and unfulfilled dreams dashed on the shores of a different era. Louie gave it a cursory brushing, and hung it on the wall in the basement of his house, a basement the bicycle’s promised riches did not build.

What the bicycle originally promised was a gear ratio of 86-51-36 that “helps the rider up the hill, against the wind, and makes riding the bicycle a pleasure at all times.” It was, as claimed, “the only bicycle that gives the rider a variation of three gears.” The gears are changed “while you ride with a small lever at the head within easy reach of the rider, AND IT STAYS CHANGED!” I have no reason to suspect that this claim was invalid, but I did experience an urge to ride it one more time and feel the breeze in my face.  

With the artifact in my possession in the summer of 2003, I embarked on what would become a cross-country search for suitable “period parts”— handlebars, pedals, wheels— and an unknown version of a rear hub with an equally unknown version of a coaster brake. My search eventually turned up the rear hub, sans coaster brake, in Oklahoma. The collector adroitly identified the bike frame as a Columbia model, from 1901 or 1902. This information led me to the Columbia Bicycle Museum archives in Massachusetts, from whom I received a copy of the 1903 Columbia/Hartford/Verdette catalog. Assuming that unmodified parts were purchased from Columbia in 1902, I suspected the coaster brake was not the Corbin Duplex promised for the 1904 model, but more likely the item mentioned in their catalog, an ABC (American Bicycle Company) brake.

I was proved correct in September 2005, when upon returning to the family farm, and with a clue from a first cousin, rediscovered the “bone yard” in the crawl space under the garage where he used to play. Remarkably, critical parts separated from the bicycle years earlier, and now thought unrecoverable, were found half-buried in a corner:
– the original rear wheel with rear hub parts (hub shell with brake drum) attached;
– the coaster brake and internal engaging lever;
– the front fork (with the “fatal accident” bend);
– the seat post(sans spreader nut and bolt);
– the “Wheeler” seat (leather partially disintegrated, internal wood platform gone);
– the seat spring (connecting hardware missing);
– the original THOR front hub (rusted beyond use but still with bearings in place); and
– the cast aluminum wheel gear covers (a three part assembly) in perfect condition.

Not found was a retaining ring for the crank assembly (we have remanufactured this), and top head tube fittings (modern replacements were re-tooled to mimic the original).

For the remainder of the restoration, most of the period parts were scavenged from a Hartford model of the time (under a “Regal” badge), sold to me by Dave Stromberger (Dave’s Vintage Bicycles www.nostalgic.net). He also turned over to me a matched pair (28 spokes front, 36 rear) of G & J rims, which have been refinished to period painting specs, and which now hold “natural” color Vredestein tires purchased in Amsterdam, Holland. These mimic the original white rubber tires of the era and are as close as I can get to the original look and feel. They will hold 30# of pressure before blowing off the rims, which will prove to be enough to ride around the block, carefully.

I now had all the parts for the complete restoration of the bicycle— and a ride. By this time, I also had more of a story to tell.

Uncovering a tale nigh 100 years old is bound to .raise more questions than answers. Most of the connecting facts were buried with the principal players in this drama, which included my grandfather, John K. Muller, his brothers Joe, Frank and Marzell, and the inventor of the changeable-gear drive mechanism, Peter J. Scharbach Though there was much that he knew, my grandfather talked to few, probably preferring to retain whatever dignity that remained in silence rather than hold open wounds that could heal only with time. He had lost face selling stock to a large number of friends and neighbors; there was little he could do. (An undocumented family anecdote holds that he vowed to and eventually did repay most of the small investors.) No doubt he had quickly taken the lessons learned to heart, and it was time to move on. 

The inventor of this last surviving 3-speed shaft-drive bicycle, was a second-generation son of German immigrants, whose father and grandfather were originally from Koblenz, Germany. Peter Scharbach was born in January, 1854, in Staatsville (today known as Germantown), Wisconsin. In his early 20s, he came west to Oregon with his entire family, and settled in Marion County, Oregon.

He was a blacksmith by trade, but inventions were probably his passion. By 1902, he had a string of farm and home implement patents to his name:
—#363686 for a wheeled cultivator, May 24, 1887
—#548662 for a Machine for Making Clothes Pins, Oct 29, 1895
—#580959 for an adjustable mop-head, Apr 20, 1897
—#612574 for a non-refillable bottle stopper, Oct 18, 1898

He had been living in Woodburn, Oregon, for 25 years when he applied for his first bicycle patent (#649878) in 1899, which was granted in May, 1900. Seventy-five percent of that patent was assigned to Thomas Sims of Salem, Oregon, who was a venture capitalist from Canada. Looking at the patent drawings now, it seems unlikely this was a real working machine. (It was not a requirement to submit a working device until after 1904.) In any case, it was quickly superceded by the next patent (#707359) granted in August 1902.

The device in this patent grant closely matches the actual bicycle in our possession today. It also closely matches another patent device (#589266) granted in August of 1897 to B.T. Nedland and C. Fredrickson both of Westby, Wisconsin. The only visible point of difference with the earlier Nedland patent is that the shifting mechanism was applied to the crank, instead of the wheel. Another inventor, L. Oberhammer of Munich, Germany, received a patent (#624964) in May 1899, in which he applied the shifting mechanism to the wheel. (Curiously enough, both of these patents came from German inventors.) There were many changeable gear patents issued in the last decade of the 19th century, many applied to the shaft-drive bicycle. Did Peter Scharbach see these earlier patents, know of the inventors from his connections to Wisconsin, or did he see the opportunity here through connections at the patent office? We may never know.

What we do know, is that, though portrayed by its manufacturers as the next wave of bicycles, the single-speed chainless bicycle at this time was old news, and rendered largely unsuccessful by three major problems:

1) The quality of steel in the frame was low.  An “accident” such as a major road bump would be a frame bending incident resulting in misalignment of the wheel and drive shaft gears that would render your expensive bicycle useless.

2) The bicycle market was oversupplied by 1900 and heading downhill fast. In fact less than a third of the manufacturers from the previous era survived up to 1903. Major realignment of the industry would favor a few players who managed to get control of the market through methods legal and otherwise.

3) This was an expensive machine, costing well over 3 times what a simple chain bicycle would have cost.

But the wheels of fortune were already in motion for Peter Scharbach when he began using his connections to finance his improved chainless bicycle in 1901. For reasons still unknown, he came looking for investors in PeEll, Washington.

PeEll was a small community in the southwest corner of the state recently filling with Swiss, German, and Polish immigrants. My grandfather came to PeEll  from Switzerland with his brothers in the late 1880s. They all filed for homestead claims and immediately set to work logging the virgin forest. They also built a sawmill on Rock Creek and turned the raw logs into building materials for a burgeoning population. In the late 1890s, with most of the easy timber down, a larger corporation, the McCormack Lumber Company, went through the area and methodically bought (or squeezed out) all the independent mills like the Muller operation.

Frederick Hoerth, a local blacksmith, was Peter Scharbach's first partner. Hoerth and his family had come out from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, probably in 1889 or 1890. As PeEll blacksmith, he provided the parts needed to keep the Muller mill in operation. Scharbach, Hoerth and Company, San Francisco was the parent manufacturer listed on the headbadge on the bicycle that survives.

On May 29, 1902, Frederick Hoerth caught the fever and died. (Sadly, in September, Catherine Hoerth also lost three of her six children, those three dying from an epidemic of black diphtheria, and then a fourth in December of the same disease.) Catherine Hoerth, a widow with two remaining children, was an unlikely person to approach as a principal investor. It seems more likely that she was already financially committed by virtue of her marriage. There may not have been much money left in Scharbach, Hoerth and Company in 1902. She was probably “in for a penny, in for a pound” when the Hill-Climber Bicycle Company was formed with the Mullers in 1903. It may not have been possible for her to drop out until more capital could be raised. Recovered ledgers show she was given 4/7 of the voting stock for her share of $40,000.

What the Mullers were thinking when they invested their meager fortune in this business is pure conjecture at this time. When the partnership was formed with John K. Muller, his brothers, several friends of the family, and numerous small investors, all paid $25 per share to play in this game. The plan was to set up a plant in Chicago. Chicago was probably a better choice than San Francisco to start up a bicycle business: a larger market, better roads, and smaller hills. It was also closer to the manufacturing heartland of America in 1904.

They may have had thoughts larger than bicycles. Given the insertion of “Automobiles” into the contract, we are led to believe that manufacturing bicycles was to be a foothold into the fast developing automobile industry. Indeed, Peter J. either already had, or was in process of inventing a real automobile when the contract was drawn up. Pictures sent to us by his great grandson, Paul D. Scharbach, shows us this automobile (see picture at right) and is dated “1905 or 1907.” Whether John K. and his brothers knew of or had seen the plans for this automobile will forever remain a question. It seems likely they were aware of the existence of the fledgling automobile industry, and this may have been Peter Scharbach’s real “dream,” and theirs as well.

The Independent Cycle Company production arm of the Hill-Climber Mfg. Corporation in Chicago failed in late 1904. My grandfather was devastated and would never again speak of the affair. Many of the friends and associates to whom he had sold stock in the new company could not be repaid. The bicycle in his possession went into the barn where it remained unridden, a dark reminder that hard work is a surer way to success than get-rich-quick schemes. Years later, one of his 10 children must surely have pleaded for its re-introduction to daylight. It eventually received a fatal blow to the front wheel, bending the fork, and was disassembled and dispatched to the farm machinery junkpile.

Following the failed Chicago business, Peter Scharbach was listed in the 1907 San Francisco directory under “Automobiles.” He was not listed in partnership with anyone under the listings for Automobile Dealers. His prototype was apparently never a product of the Hill-Climber Co. After 1907, there is no mention of Peter Scharbach being associated with the automobile business. He did, however, apply for his another patent on Aug 5, 1911, a clutch for an automobile transmission (#1206922). This patent was granted in 1916. 

Peter Sharbach died in San Franscisco in December 1913, his last occupation being that of a patent medicine salesman for his Old Mission Bitters Co. He never solved the investment/production/sales triangle so vital to a successful manufacturing business. He was survived by large family (11 children) and an even larger extended family, though nothing except a few photographs and one remaining copy of his bicycle survives his days as inventor. To our knowledge, none of the other copies of this bicycle survived, though it is believed that a handful of bicycles were sent to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho with Joe and Frank Muller, after the business failed in 1904.

The shaft-drive bicycle “dream”still lives. Shimano has put together an 8-speed shaft-drive mechanism using a patent that references Peter Scharbach’s 1902 patent. The device can be applied to a variety of human powered machines. It is sold in bicycle form by Dynamic Bicycles, who import them from Taiwan (http://www.dynamicbicycles.com) and most of its claims are the same as those made in 1902. If history repeats itself, it may well suffer the same fate of its cousin from another era. Success, fittingly, will be an up-hill climb.

Our surviving bicycle has been reassembled and ridden briefly again, although a more complete restoration remains a question of respect for the “patina” of history. That history includes a time when blacksmiths morphed into bicycle mechanics and then dreamed of automobiles and flying machines. For some, those dreams started the great transportation movement of the 20th century. For Peter J. Scharbach, they were dreams unfulfilled, ending in a footnote reference in patent history. For the Mullers, the ride promised by the Hill-Climber ended early as well, but after the fatal blow was struck, they picked themselves up, dusted off the dreams they still held, and moved on to more familiar pursuits in farming and dairy businesses.

I am certain my grandfather and his brothers would look askance at my efforts to bring this bicycle back to the light, but I am equally certain they too would like to ride it again.

————————————————————
Scharbach family photos courtesy of Paul D. Scharbach, great grandson of the inventor.
————————————————————

The bike can now be totally reassembled. By late 2007, nephew Tom Tillotson re-manufactured the brake actuator, a part found in 2005 with others separated in the early 1920s and presumed lost.
Click here for a explanation of its working order.

WARNING – SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

RESTORATION is an intriguing story of the search for bicycle parts, with insights that connect a path of failure and loss 100 years ago to success and recovery through several generations of the author's family. This is the story of personal discovery behind the story of the recovery of the Hill-Climber.
Buy the book on Amazon.

To view an outline summary of this site go to Site Map

!! NEW !! Historical Hill-Climbers LINKS for History Junkies and Motor-heads ONLY - All others check these links at your own risk Quality books for early motorcycle buffs- ACOM Publishing - http://www.acenturyofmotorcycling.com First motorcycle history "The Indian" http://www.indianmotorcycle.com/History/HistoryHome/tabid/78/Default.aspx A fun story about saving an early racing car - 1926 Pontiac Boat-tail http://www.hillclimber.com/htmldocs/Hill_Climber.html

Selecting buttons throughout the site will always return to this page. Selecting the photos on this page navigates to specific pages for more information.

Not much to look at in 2003, maybe just enough left to recover fully.
In 2005, most of the original parts removed years earlier were rediscovered
in a crawl space under the garage on the family farm where the Hill-Climber
hit a bump in the road.

Rusty but recovered, the original headbadge was still intact.


John Konrad Muller on the current family farm (Joe Muller's homestead)
in an undated photo (c. 1895) with an early bicycle, not the Hill-Climber.

Detail from patent #707359, page 2, for Changeable Gear For Bicycles.

As-found bicycle gear detail, August 2003. The linkage that changes the
gears operates a clutch mechanism that allows the bevel gears to remain
meshed while operating in “free-wheel” mode, and in “working” mode when
engaged to the drive shaft. One lever moved forward or back controls the two
lower hill-climbing gears. When placed in neutral position, operating the
second lever engages the level road gear.

Peter J. Scharbach on far right at the J. Gaehwiler Blacksmith shop in
San Francisco (c. 1902). John Geahwiler (1860-1919), a Swiss immigrant,
is probably 3rd from left. This is the likely place where parts for the Hill-Climber
were fabricated, and later, automobile parts were made.
CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR A MODERN VIEW OF THIS SHOP.

The Hill-Climber bicycles manufactured by Scharbach, Hoerth, and Co.
in San Francisco. Peter J. Scharbach, inventor (far right), son Frank H. (left),
wife and family members (background) c. 1902.
CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE A MODERN-DAY VIEW OF THIS BRIDGE.

Patent #707359, page 1, for Changeable Gear For Bicycles.

At the Muller Sawmill in the 1890s, Frank Muller in front of log,
Joe Muller with bow tie, John K. on far right.

Handwritten copy of the Co-Partnership agreement, page 1.

Detail from the advertising prospectus for the 1904 model,
which never made it into production.

The early automobile assembled by Peter J. Scharbach in San Francisco
(1905?). Peter J. (far right), son Frank H. (far left). The man standing to Peter's
right might be his cousin, Jacob, from Mt. Angel, OR. As for so many other
blacksmiths at the time, making automobiles was a natural progression
from making bicycles. Undiscovered records of this automobile business
would tell us much of the life and times of the inventor.

Louie Muller passes on the relic to his nephew, Al Tietjen
(author of this article), in August, 2003.

Back on the family farm in 2005, showing off the bicycle restoration progress
and re-discovering lost parts in the garage crawl space.

Renovation completed in 2006, the missing crank assembly locking ring. Machine
tool changes between centuries forced the manufacture of a new crank barrel with
a new threading gauge.

Renovation from February 2007, the front fork repaired.

To view an outline summary of this site go to Site Map

Selecting buttons throughout the site will always return to this page. Selecting the photos on this page navigates to specific pages for more information.

!! NEW !! Historical Hill-Climbers LINKS for History Junkies and Motor-heads ONLY - All others check these links at your own risk Quality books for early motorcycle buffs- ACOM Publishing - http://www.acenturyofmotorcycling.com First motorcycle history "The Indian" http://www.indianmotorcycle.com/History/HistoryHome/tabid/78/Default.aspx A fun story about saving an early racing car - 1926 Pontiac Boat-tail http://www.hillclimber.com/htmldocs/Hill_Climber.html