I've never put much weight on that snippet about Schwinn pioneering front-facing rear drops in 1938. It was written years later and, given what I've seen and what has turned up in terms of catalogs and actual bikes, I think the claim that Schwinn started front-facing drops in 1938 is merely ad copy oversimplifying something so that Schwinn could make a bigger claim to innovation. My view is much closer to what the totality of this thread shows - that is, that early New World bikes in the 1938-39 period had rear-facing drops. At some point early on, very likely at some point in 1939, the frames moved to forward-facing rear drops such that by the time of the 1940 catalog, the drops were forward facing. I think a rear-facing drop bike could be from 1938 or 1939.