Sylvester H. Roper

Sylvester Howard Roper (1823 to 1896) was an American inventor from Boston, Massachusetts, who built some of the earliest self-propelled road vehicles. Mechanically gifted from boyhood, he worked as a machinist before moving to Boston in 1854, where he invented a handstitch sewing machine and later hot air engines. In 1863 he built a steam carriage that he drove around Boston, and his steam velocipede of 1867 to 1869 may have been the first motorcycle, which earned him induction into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. He also invented the first shotgun choke and a revolver repeating shotgun. On 1 June 1896 he rode a Columbia bicycle fitted with a steam engine at the Charles River bicycle track in Cambridge, pacing racing cyclists, and was then found dead after a fall; the cause of death was found to be heart failure.