The sudden popularity of the Internet beginning in 1995 has an antecedent in the sweeping success of an earlier technology, that of the bicycle, which exploded in America in the 1890s in a way that could not have been comprehended just a decade earlier. From an oddity to a staple just like that. Not an intermittent fad like roller skates (and, later, blades), the bike quickly gained such a foothold that it seemed only the emergence of a dependable, affordable electric version was needed for it to become the primary transportation of the future. That’s not how it worked out, of course, but an article in the June 18, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle was published when that still seemed possible, even likely. As the piece states, some early versions of motorized bicycles were powered by kerosene, and Edison and Tesla were training their talents on the problem. The article’s opening follows.