Origins
Using part of the substantial profit he had made from selling his Gladiator bicycle factory to Adolpe Clément, Darracq began operating from a plant in the Paris suburb of Suresnes. The company started with a Millet motorcycle, powered by a five-cylinder rotary engine, but shortly introduced an electric brougham, and in 1898 a Léon Bollée-designed voiturette tricar. This proved a débâcle: the steering was problematic, the five-speed belt drive "a masterpiece of bad design", and the hot tube ignition crude, proving the £10,000 Darracq had paid for the design a mistake.
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)