BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Raleigh’s sale to Accell has been all but finalised (a competitions watchdog has to give the all-clear) and the company will soon be part of the Dutch operation. The BBC has marked the occasion with a prominently-displayed photo gallery on BBC.co.uk, one of the biggest websites in the world.
The photo gallery features posters and advertisements from 1892 through to the 1980s. Amazingly, there’s only one photo of a Chopper – photo editors tend to major on this iconic Raleigh bicycle to the detriment of the other fine bicycles the Nottingham-based company has made in its 125-year history.
Historical background for the posters and print ads was provided by BikeBiz executive edtitor Carlton Reid, described by the BBC as a "cycle historian."
The historian tag is because of Reid’s forthcoming book, Roads Were Not Built for Cars, a history book on the Good Roads movement of the 1880s and 1890s when influential upper- and middle-class cyclists started the revolution in improved roads that was later to benefit the early automobilists of the following century.
