A description of the company which produced Gabriel's 1887 Singer Challenge Ordinary bicycle, written in the year they made it!
"A visit to the works of Messrs. George Singer & Co., of Coventry, will at once give a stranger an idea of the extent of the cycling trade. Established in 1875, Messrs. Singer & Co. did not make any specialty of racing machines until the season of 1885, having devoted their attention almost entirely to turning out all classes of road machines, bicycles, tricycles, manumotive velocipedes, children's velocipedes, and in short every description, the number of patterns being remarkable. The works in Alma Street are excellently arranged. Entering through a large hall, partly occupied by a clerks' office through want of more accomodation, the visitor passes into the large shop, on either side of which are to be seen storerooms containing an apparently inexhaustible supply of parts and fittings, piles of castings, bundles of steel tubing, coils of wire, lengths of iron material, indiarubber [sic] tires, all stacked ready for use; whilst in every room not otherwise used may be seen, in the spring of the year, hundreds of completed machines packed as closely as they will go, ready to be dispatched from the great packing-room across the road—which is the old Coventry Rink—now converted into a cycle shop, where machines of all classes are daily being packed and dispatched to every part of the globe. In the main shop, all the operations for the production of the various machines are to be seen going on with steady activity. Here is a workman drilling holes in a hub with the aid of a machine which not only drills them at the proper angle, but spaces them as well. Another is running the thread of the screw on to the spoke. Yet another is heading them. And all these varied operations go on continuously and without intermission throughout the year. For during the dead season Messrs. Singer work hard to lay up the stock which is to be seen in the store-rooms early in the spring. The Premier Works are also extensive and very interesting...
There are a large number of other firms engaged in the production of specialties, and so extensive is the industry that the production of minor parts and castings for the trade finds employment for large firms and much capital. Thus Messrs. John Harrington & Co., of Coventry, are devoted to the production of the well-known Arab cradle spring, and to the enamelling process which has now been adopted by a large number of manufacturers; Messrs. Thomas Smith & Sons, of Saltley Mill, Birmingham, supply the trade with castings and finished parts to almost any extent; Mr. W. Bown's ball-bearings have won an excellent name for themselves, and are largely adopted by the manufacturers; Messrs. Lamplugh & Brown, of Birmingham, the cyclists' saddlers, supply the trade with saddle-bags and other leather goods, requisites which have done a great deal to make riding comfortable; and a number of other instances could be given to show how great is the general demand in connexion with the cycling trade."[1]
[1] Bury, Viscount. and G. Lacy Hillier. The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes: Volume I: Cycling. Ed. The Duke of Beaufort, K.G. and Alfred E.T. Watson. London: Spottiswoode and Co., 1887, pp. 65-67.
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