About the Author

Ever since his first ride on the back of a Triumph Thunderbird at age ten the author has maintained a keen interest in motorcycles of all kinds. One result is that over the past forty years he has assembled one of the largest private collections of motorcycle books and literature in the U.S. He has drawn extensively from the information in that collection along with his own experience as the owner of two Gold Stars for this book. Previously he edited an anthology of writings on the early years of motorcycling entitled Motorcycling at the Turn of the Century, contributed articles and columns to The Antique Motorcycle, Early-Riders Magazine, Motorcycle Collector Magazine, and Walneck's Classic Cycle Trader, and wrote an essay on the history of motorcycles as well as the Bibliography for the catalog of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's record-breaking1998 The Art of the Motorcycle. He also served as co-Curator of that exhibition, for which he received an award from the International Association of Art Critics. Professionally, he is a Fellow of four science and engineering societies (the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America, and the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)), has published more than 275 scientific manuscripts, co-edited two books, has seven U.S. patents, and given over 400 invited talks at conferences, research institutions, and cultural organizations in 32 countries.