page_title: Albert Augustus Pope
section_title: Imports and the first Columbias
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Augustus Pope / The bicycle years / Imports and the first Columbias
caption_attribution_description: view of the Pope Mfg. Co. building at no. 221 Columbus Ave, Boston, USA
context_page_description: Albert Augustus Pope was a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel in the Union Army. He was an importer, promoter, and manufacturer of bicycles, and a manufacturer of automobiles.
context_section_description: Pope was elected to Newton Common Council in 1875. The following summer, he attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in his capacity as Newton Alderman, where he saw a display of English ordinary bicycles. Some Baltimore-based importers sponsored the bicycle exhibit. The English manufacturer Haynes & Jefferies was building and exporting copies of the Ariel model with the permission of James Starley and William Hillman.  The Ariel-design featured a system of spokes that allowed larger wheels, and to prove the point, an ordinary with an 84-inch front wheel was on display.
  In 1877, English bicycle-manufacturer John Harrington visited Pope during an extended stay in the United States.  He hired a machinist to build a bicycle, completed in August 1877 at a cost of $313. Harrington used this machine to teach Pope how to ride. Pope made arrangements to import eight model Excelsior Duplexes from Bayliss, Thomas and Company of Coventry, England. He accepted delivery in January 1878, and placed an advertisement for his imported bicycles in Bicycling World magazine a few months later.
  Pope had already invested over $4,000 importing about fifty bicycles through the first part of 1878. In May, he started inquiring about manufacturing his own machine. He met with George Fairfield, president of Weed Sewing Machine Company in Hartford. Pope stowed his Excelsior Duplex in the baggage hold of a New Haven Railroad train bound for Hartford, then rode from the Hartford station to the meeting at the Weed factory. Pope proposed to Fairfield that Weed produce fifty copies of this bicycle on a contract basis. Fairfield later accepted the offer.  The Weed factory completed the order in September 1878, and these were the first bicycles Pope marketed under the Columbia brand. He managed his new bicycle business from his Pope Manufacturing Company office in Boston.
  Pope sold a total of about ninety-two bicycles in 1878, combining imports and Columbias.  In 1879, he sold about 1000 Columbias, the last year of the Excelsior Duplex copies.  Demand for his bicycles exceeded his ability to produce them, so his advertisements stressed imports.  Fairfield started tinkering with the design, improving the head and the front ball-bearing assembly resulting in the Special model.  In 1880, a Special with a 48-inch wheel and full-nickel plating retailed at $132.50.  The newly named Standard model also had design changes, but could be purchased without the ball bearings and nickel plating for $87.50.
caption: Pope Manufacturing in Boston
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