There are men who invent, and there are men who inhabit what they invent. William S. Harley belonged to the latter kind—the sort who pressed his thinking into metal until it carried a pulse of its own. He was not a showman. He did not chase legend. But the machines he helped create would come to speak in a voice that outlived him—a low, unmistakable thunder.
Born Dec. 29, 1880, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Harley grew up in a city already fluent in industry and identified as a principal manufacturing hub. His father, an immigrant from England, worked as a railway engineer.
