history of triumph bikes
The company began in 1885 when Siegfried Bettmann emigrated to Coventry in England from Nuremburg part of the German Empire In 1884 aged 20, Bettmann founded his own company, the S. Bettmann & Co. Import Export Agency, in London. Bettmann's original products were bicycles, which the company bought and then sold under its own brand name. Bettmann also distributed sewing machines imported from Germany.
In 1886, Bettmann sought a more universal name, and the company became known as the Triumph Cycle Company A year later, the company registered as the New Triumph Co. Ltd.now with financial backing from the Dunlop Pneumatic Company. In that year, Bettmann was joined by another Nuremberg native, Moritz Schulte.
Schulte encouraged Bettmann to transform Triumph into a manufacturing company, and in 1888 Bettmann purchased a site in Coventry using money lent by his and Schulte's families. The company began producing the first Triumph-branded bicycles in 1889. In 1896 Triumph opened a factory in Nuremberg for cycle production in Bettman's native city.
In 1898, Triumph decided to extend its own production to include motorcycles and by 1902, the company had produced its first motorcycle - a bicycle fitted with a Belgian Minerva engine.In 1903, as its motorcycle sales topped 500, Triumph opened motorcycle production at its unit in Germany. During its first few years producing motorcycles, the company based its designs on those of other manufacturers. In 1904, Triumph began building motorcycles based on its own designs and in 1905 produced its first completely in-house designed motorcycle. By the end of that year, the company had produced more than 250 of that design.
In 1907, after the company opened a larger plant, production reached 1,000 machines. Triumph had also launched a second, lower-end brand, Gloria, produced in the company's original plant.
Confusion between motorcycles produced by the Coventry and Nuremberg Triumph companies led to the latter's products being renamed Orial for certain export markets. However there was already an Orial company in France so the Nuremberg motorcycles were renamed again as"TWN", standing for Triumph Werke Nürnberg
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