Sylvester Howard Roper


American Howard Syslvester Roper
was born at New Hampshire in 1823. During the 1860's Howard Sylvester Roper started his experiments on powering motorcycles with a steam engine in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Howard Sylvester Roper demonstrated his first working model in 1867. Roper's engine, which used charcoal as fuel, had two cylinders. The vehicle, basically a two-wheeler, also had "training wheels" to keep it upright.

Sylvester Howard Roper - Inventor of Early Motorcycle

Sylvester Howard Roper steam powered motorcycle was not very popular among the masses that they saw it as a bone crusher. Without losing heart Howard Sylvester Roper made improvements to his motorcycle and finally can take it to race it.

At the ripe age of 73, Howard Sylvester Roper took his motorcycle to the Massachusetts University for a demo race. It was all laugh and insult he got there from the students as they are not ready to believe that Howard Sylvester Roper's steam powered motorcycle can even start and satisfy the promises made by Howard. All these insults lasted only till the race began. Howard Sylvester roper in his bone crusher based steam powered motorcycle started racing at a speed which no one have realized or gone before. Howard Sylvester Roper already the covered the two laps of the race in under 2 minutes speeding at 36 mph in beating all his young competitors way ahead. For Howard Sylvester Roper that was not enough and he still wanted to beat his own speed record for 36 mph set a week before in his neighborhood and he went on accelerating his steam engine and it reached a top speed of 40 mph and the crowd was stuck in awe on the speed reached by this 73 year old man.

When he was racing at 40 mph tragedy struck Howard in the form of cardiac arrest which threw him on to the sand dunes near by. When People rushed to help him Howard Sylvester Roper had left this world. Initially the world believed that the steam powered motorcycle was responsible for Howard Sylvester Roper's death but after an autopsy it was confirmed that Howard Sylvester Roper died because of heart attack. Thus Howard Sylvester Roper's idea of motorcycles led to other invention and innovation of motorcycles in the nineteenth century. This page is a tribute to Howard Sylvester Roper for his creativity and belief.