Miss Clara Wagner with Her Motorcycle at Coenties Slip, New York

"Miss Clara Wagner with her motorcycle at Coenties Slip, New York, using the Eclipse Coaster Brake. 30206. Photo only by A. Loeffler, Tompkinville, N.Y."

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According to Wikipedia, "Clara Marian Wagner (1891-1961) was the first documented woman motorcyclist who became notable as an endurance racer and was sponsored by the Eclipse Machine Co., a bicycle company, for using its braking products. In 1907, Clara, aged 15 years old and the daughter of the Wagner Motorcycle Company (1901-1914) owner George Wagner from Saint Paul, Minnesota, became a member of the American Federation of Motorcyclists (FAM). Clara put the company's motorcycles on the map by achieving a perfect score in a FAM 360 mile endurance race from Chicago to Indianapolis in 1910, aged 18, but was denied the trophy because she was female."

In the early twentieth century, the Eclipse Machine Company published a series of advertising postcards like this one that featured exaggeratedly large women and men with correspondingly huge motorcyles and bicycles in ordinary-sized settings at locales in and around New York City (in this case, Coenties Slip is "a historic pedestrian walkway in Lower Manhattan"). The postcards were advertisements for the various types of motorcycle and bicycle brakes that the company manufactured.

For the message on the back of this postcard, see Miss Clara Wagner with Her Motorcycle at Coenties Slip, New York (Back). For a similar postcard advertisement, see J. C. Ferguson Using a Morrow Coaster Brake at the Hotel Astor, New York.