author
Julius Wilcox
A 19th-century journalist, bicycle businessman, and amateur photographer, he moved easily between reporting on modern technology and making striking images of New York. His work captures a moment when city life, cycling, and photography were all rapidly changing.
1 Audiobook
The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories
by Alex Schwalbach, Julius Wilcox
About the author
Born in Vermont in 1837, he later settled in Brooklyn and built a varied career that touched journalism, business, and photography. Brooklyn Public Library describes him as a writer for the New York Evening Gazette and part owner of a bicycle business, showing how closely he was connected to the fast-changing urban world of the late 1800s.
He also wrote about technology and culture. His name appears on The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories, a detailed 1898 reference work for riders, dealers, and makers, and on The Piano and Its Antecedents, an earlier piece on the history of keyboard instruments. Together, those works suggest a writer with a practical curiosity about how things were made, used, and improved.
Today, he is also remembered for his cyanotype photographs of New York, many of them preserved by the Center for Brooklyn History. Those images, often focused on Manhattan street life and architecture, give his legacy an added dimension: not just a commentator on modern life, but an observer who recorded it with unusual care.