was stirred by a high-wheeled bicycle he saw in Paris. Intrigued, he ordered a set of parts from England. After putting together the bike Opel tried it with disastrous results. He decided he'd have nothing further to do with those "bone breakers." Two things changed his mind: he found them easy to sell, with a greater profit than he could earn with the sewing machines; and his sons begged him mercilessly for bicycles of their own. By 1886 the Opels had made a bicycle of their own, and the following year young Carl went to England to study the new industry and bring back samples of the latest designs. This led to serious production of cycles, including low-wheeled and three-wheeled types, by the end of 1887. The growing bands of enthusiasts for the novel means of locomotion knew they could count on Opel for the newest and best ideas in cycling in Germany. In fact, all Opel brothers were outstanding, prize-winning racers. Adam Opel never lived to see the automobiles built by the company he founded. He died in 1895. His will set up a new organization for the company, in which his widow Sophie held the primary interest and his two eldest sons had lesser shares. Their first crisis was a sudden deflation of the boom in bicycles in 1898, a collapse caused by the over-expansion among the many makers of cycles. They managed to carry on. New products were introduced that kept on the more than 1,500 employees, most of whom had grown up in the industry with Opel. The bicycle plant expanded, eventually becoming the largest in the mid-1920s, with a capacity of 4,000 cycles a day, with innovative equipment such as automatic painting and plating equipment in halls pressurized for ideal cleanliness. By the 1930s, times had changed. In a series of transactions between 1929 and 1931, the Opel family sold their business, Adam Opel AG, to General Motors Corporation, of which it became a subsidiary. In 1936, Opel sold its bicycle plant to NSU in Neckarsulm (which had started making bicycles at about the same time as Opel). Under the company's many different names, 2.5 million bikes had been produced in all. See also Fritz von Opel Rikky von Opel Wilhelm von Opel Carl von Opel Sophie Opel Sources Opel's official biography 1837 births 1895 deaths People from Rüsselsheim German industrialists German founders of automobile