Featherstone Duchess 1898

[Waffenrad]

There were some huge forum threads about Featherstone bicycles on the Wheelmen website a few years ago, but unfortunately that forum recently moved to a new server and the older content isn't available again yet. I kept copies of those forum threads myself and I'll try to upload them either here or on the new Wheelmen forum. In the meantime here a few highlights. Featherstone originated in Chicago around 1890 as a children's conveyance maker. In the early 1890s the company secured the exclusive American rights to the Scottish Dunlop tire, the first pneumatic bicycle tire. Featherstone quickly built an enormous factory and became one of America's largest manufacturers. However, Featherstone sold most of its bicycles to other distributors, so it is relatively rare to find a bicycle with a Featherstone badge. The Featherstone product line took its model names after royalty, i.e. Road King (men's), Road Queen (ladies'), Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, etc.