History
Petersen worked from 1984 to 1994 on bicycles and catalogues for the U.S. division of Bridgestone Cycle, Japan's largest bike maker. Bridgestone closed the U.S. office after 10 years when the dollar-to-yen exchange rate fell. Petersen, then 40, started Rivendell with $89,000 of retirement money, savings, loans, and stock. The company worked from a garage for two years. It now has 5,000 square feet (460 m2).
The name came from the mountaineering equipment company, Rivendell Mountain Works (RMW), which took its name from the fictional refuge in The Lord of the Rings. Several of their products have Tolkien-derived names; it is not known what arrangement they have with the Tolkien Estate, if any.
The first custom frames were built by Waterford Precision Cycles. Later frames were built by Joe Starck, then by Curt Goodrich and Mark Nobilette. Currently, Mark Nobilette is the only custom builder of Rivendell frames.
Read more about this topic: Rivendell Bicycle Works
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)