The 54th Annual Meeting of the Middletown Springs Historical Society will convene at 2:00 p.m., on Sunday, Sep.17, at the Historical Society Building. After a brief business meeting, guest speaker UVM Professor Luis Vivanco will present his slide program, "Of Wheelmen, The New Woman, and Good Roads: Bicycling in Vermont, 1880-1920".
In this lecture, Prof. Vivanco explores the fascinating early history of the bicycle in Vermont, a new invention that generated widespread curiosity when it arrived here in the 1870s. During the 1890s, enthusiasm exploded statewide as bicycles became safer, women took to the wheel, roads improved, and retailers developed novel advertising techniques to draw in buyers. By 1920, popular interest in bicycles had waned, but it had not just been a fad: the bicycle was tied to important changes in industrial production, consumerism, new road policies and regulations, gender relations, and new cultural ideas about auto-mobility and effortless speed.
Luis Vivanco is Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. He has published extensive scholarship on bicycle culture, politics, and history.
His lecture draws from archival research he began for his book Reconsidering the Bicycle: An Anthropological Perspective on a New (Old) Thing (Routledge, 2013).
On display at the event will be a restored "high wheel" bicycle from the MSHS museum collection.The bike is a 56.5 inch Columbia by the Pope Manufacturing Co., Boston, patented in 1878. It belonged to the family of Dr. Emelie Perkins of Rutland.
This program from Vermont Humanities Council is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the NEH or VHC.
For more information about this event, about Middletown Springs history, and about MSHS, its activities, museum and events, visit www.mshsvt.org.
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