Dursley Pedersen ca 1911 3602-108

Dursley Pedersen 1911ca frame # 6613
The bicycle was designed by Mikael Pedersen (1855-1929), a Danish engineer and farm machinery inventor who was known for his centrifugal cream separator. He emigrated to Britain in 1893 and worked for R. A. Lister, the engine and cream separator manufacturer in Dursley, Gloucestershire. Pedersen was an enthusiastic cyclist but found the safety bicycle seats uncomfortable. He designed a woven saddle made of silken, wiped or leather cord 45 yards (40 m) in length. The net was soft to sit on, and the seat was supported at the front by an adjustable leather strap. Pedersen advertising noted the saddle had “perfect ventilation” and did not create “perineal pressure”.
After finding his seat did not fit a conventional safety bicycle frame, Pedersen designed a new triangular one said to have been based on the Whipple-Murphy truss used in railway bridges at the time. The frame gave lateral stability to the machine. It was made from 14 separate narrow diameter tubing rods, joined in 57 places, making 21 triangles throughout the bicycle.
At first Listers was not interested in plans for Pedersen’s new bicycle design but let him use some buildings as a workshop at the Lister factory. The first Mikael Pedersen bicycles date from 1896 to 1897. The Dursley Pedersen Cycle Co. was established in 1899 and owned jointly by Mikael Pederson, Robert Asthon Lister and his son Charles. This company ceased operation in 1917, but other firms continued making the bicycles until 1921. It is estimated that between 28,000 and 30,000 bicycles were made in all; however, the frame numbers indicate that probably no more than 8,000 were actually made.
The first Dursley Pedersen frames were not adjustable; only the seats went back and forth. After customer complaints the seat construction was altered so it could be adjusted vertically. Later, the bicycle was produced in eight different sizes for men, based on their inside leg measurement; frame sizes 1 to 8 measured from 27 to 38 inches. Women’s bicycles came in three sizes, A, B and C (with the then sensitive inside leg measurement not being mentioned).
During the First World War cycle production fell gradually and was partly taken over by other companies around Gloucestershire. Licence fees to Pedersen remained unpaid, and his poor business sense saw him cheated out of payments. Increasing alcohol misuse, a failed marriage and poor health saw him reduced to a pauper back in Denmark by 1920; he died 9 years later and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1995 bicycle enthusiasts had his remains exhumed and reinterred in Dursley with a headstone to ensure his achievements would be remembered.
(Source: http://www.dursley-pedersen.net/index.html Dursely Pedersen Cycles)
The machine we present has a 30 ½ inch frame and is painted black. It’s in generally good condition with headstock badge not present. Both front and rear brakes are complete. There’s a Rexx Judd LTD sticker on the rear mudguard.