Clara Wagner is often lauded as the first woman to race a motorcycle—or at least the first documented woman to do so, as captured by many newspapers in 1910. But is she?
Clara Wagner: The First Woman to Race Motorcycles?
Nick DeWolf’s Motorcycle Photography
Nick DeWolf posing with a young girl through his travels in Northern Thailand.
Nick DeWolf carried around multiple cameras for most of his life, cataloguing the events and views around him. Nick was a MIT graduate, engineer, entrepreneur, and photographer. He co-founded Teradyne in 1960, a Boston based company that manufactured automatic test equipment. Back then, automated equipment like this was a big deal. They didn’t exactly have super computers and google back then.
His son-in-law, Steve Lundeen, has archived his photo collection on flickr- with a total of over 77,000 scanned images. These are some of my favorites.
Girl on a DT125 enduro, near Aspen, CO in 1975
Above, Gerda Waigand, poses at the Grand Canyon with a 50cc Puch Moped on which she and her husband rode around the world (August 1958).
1976 Aspen
Circa 1995 in Vietnam
“Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance are vital in Vietnam. Innertubes survive 30 patchings!”
1971 in San Francisco’s Chinatown
1976 racing at Woody Creek Raceway in Aspen, CO
1972 Tokyo, Japan
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- Woman on a scooter- 1972 Chiang Mai, Thailand
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- Woman on a scooter- 1972 Chiang Mai, Thailand
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- Racing at Woody Creek Raceway in 1977
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- Racing at Woody Creek Raceway in 1977
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- Racing at Woody Creek Raceway in 1977
1971, a girl and her motorcycle, Harvard Square, Cambridge.
1971, Berkeley, California
August 1973, chopper riders in Cambridge Massachusetts
To peruse all 77,000+ images, head over to the Nick DeWolf flickr archives.
related: more historic images | more photography
Posted on November 14, 2014 in History, News & Features by Alicia Mariah Elfving