How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Rowe on Columbia Racer Defeating Temple
Hartford, Connecticut: F.O. Tucker, 1888. Albumen print, mounted to captioned card, "Finish of One Mile Professional America's Championship Race, Hartford, Sep. 13, 1888. Instantaneous Photograph / Rowe on Columbia Racer Defeating Temple". Light soiling on card edges. 3 3/8 x 5 1/2 in. (86 x 140 mm) print, on 4 1/4 x 6 1/2 in. (108 xx 165 mm) card.

A rare photograph, showing the dead heat photo finish of American cycling champion William A. Rowe, of Lynn, Massachusetts, defeating Ralph Temple, of Chicago, at the Great International Bicycle Tournament at Charter Oak Park, in Hartford, Connecticut, on September 13, 1888—likely the earliest known extant photograph depicting the photo-finish of an American sporting competition.

As early as the late 1870s, cameras were being called for to determine winners in sports racing to replace the fallible eye of the placing judge. In 1882 the esteemed photographer of movement Eadweard Muybridge lent his voice, claiming that, "in the near future...no race of any importance will be undertaken without the assistance of photography to determine the winner of what might otherwise be a so-called 'dead heat'." While the first documented image of a photo finish is attributed to Ernest Marks at a horse race in 1881 in Plainfield, New Jersey (it is not known to survive), the widespread and regular use of cameras to determine winners in dead heats, or in other instances, did not widely take root until the second and third decades of the 20th century. In the interim, the practice gained steady use by professional and amateur photographers alike, most notably by sports photographer John C. Hamment, whose early extant photographs date to 1890. While being used primarily first for horse racing, the practice then expanded to cycling (as seen in the present photograph), then to a variety of other sports, such as pole vaulting and sailing.

Rowe and Temple were among several racers that competed on high-wheel Columbia Racer bikes in the championship match before almost 4,000 spectators. Although Jack Lee, of Nottingham, England, led the race through the first three quarters, it was Rowe and Temple who managed to break away in the final stretch in a neck and neck pursuit of the finish line. As The Hartford Courant reported the day following the race, "From the third quarter pole Rowe and Temple had it nip and tuck. Up the track came these two great flyers neck-and-neck amid shouts of encouragement. It seemed as if either one might win, but Rowe managed to push his machine over the ribbon ahead of Temple's and won by less than a foot..."

The Columbia high wheel bicycle pictured here was manufactured by Pope Manufacturing Company, based in Hartford, Connecticut, beginning in the early 1880s. As the first and leading mass producer of bicycles in the United States, their design and use of lightweight steel tube construction, pneumatic tires, among other aspects, helped revolutionize bicycle design and contributed to their increased use across the nation.