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Some antique motorcycles are time travelers. They do much
better in current conditions than they did when they were built.
One of these is the Reading Standard.
The Reading Standard was built in Pennsylvania for 19 years
starting in 1903, long before there were decent roads. Motorcycle
frames had to be tough to put up with the era’s bad roads, and
the Reading Standard’s frame was not tough enough. Collector
Mike Terry, the owner of the 1921 Reading Standard featured
here, has six Reading Standards, and the frames on four of
them had been broken and re-welded. One had an extra support
added. “It’s a keystone frame, with the engine a stressed member.
There’s no top motor mount, and I’m not sure why,” Mike says,
adding, “the fragile frame must have contributed to bad sales.”
Early days
Many early motorcycle manufacturers were essentially assem-
blers, using components brought in from different manufactur-
ers. From 1902 until 1907, Indian, one of the most famous
among early American motorcycle manufacturers, sourced
its engines from the Aurora Automatic Machine Company
in Aurora, Illinois. The Indian/Aurora contract provided
that Aurora could sell additional engines on the open
market. Designed by Indian’s Oscar Hedstrom, these
single-cylinder engines were well designed and
well built for their time, and powered a lot of early
American motorcycles.
One of the companies using Aurora power
was Reading Standard, which commenced pro-
duction in 1903. For the first two years, Reading
Standard bikes not only used Aurora engines
designed by Indian, they also copied Indian’s
diamond frame and the “camelback” tank
set over the rear fender. They were, in fact,
almost identical to the same year Indian.
In 1905 the company changed the shape of
the tank, moved it to the top tube in front of
the seat and started using standard dry-cell
batteries to power the bike’s ignition. The
next year, Reading Standard hired engineer
Charles Gustafson Sr. and sent him to Europe
to study engine design.
At the time, American motorcycles were pri-
marily powered by single-cylinder engines with
inlet over exhaust valves. The Hedstrom engine
used this top end configuration, which had been
developed by the French firm De Dion-Bouton in
the late 1890s. De Dion-style engines were better
than anything else on the market, and most early bike
designers followed the De Dion lead.
Although the inlet over exhaust design emerged as the
best alternative available at the dawn of the 20th century,
it was widely recognized that it had major drawbacks. For
example, valve steel in the early years was pretty marginal. Since
Story by Margie Siegal
Photos by Sedrick MitchellI
“It has the power of a postwar Harley. It goes
faster than it will stop.”— Mike Terry, collector,
about his 1921 Reading Standard
1921 Reading Standard