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Ebykr celebrates classic and vintage lightweight bicycles through provoking imagery and opinion. Ride along with us.
Cycles Alex Singer began as one man’s answer to bad roads and long distances, a tiny Paris-area atelier built on the conviction that a touring bicycle should be designed entirely around the rider who will use it. What started as a shop producing touring tandems for randonneurs grew into one of the most revered names in the constructeur tradition, its lightweight frames, integrated racks and delicate derailleur mounts still referenced by builders around the world eight decades on.
Here is a chronological timeline of key founding and innovation events at Alex Singer, spanning from 1905 to 2002, based on the sources used for an accompanying Ebykr article on its history, “Cycles Alex Singer: Ageless Grace.”
1905
Founder Born
Alex Singer is born, at the tail end of the first bike boom, and soon becomes a club rider with Clignancourt-Sportif, a Parisian roadie group later uniquely involved with bicycle polo.
1938
Company Founding
Alex Singer opens a bicycle atelier under his full name at the current 53, rue Victor-Hugo address in Levallois-Perret. The first five bicycles he produces are all touring tandems.
1939
Competition Entry
Just a year after opening his shop, Singer and his wife enter a competition on a tandem weighing 12.975 kg, or 28 lbs, complete with fenders, racks and even working lights.
1945
Newspaper Advertisement
A small advertisement in the daily Parisian newspaper Ce Soir (formerly Paris-Soir), dated October 2, 1945, shows Alex Singer marketing both singles and tandems made by builders named Billiet, Routters and Czukaa.
1946
Product Milestone
Singer‘s atelier produces a single bike weighing but 6.875 kg, or 15 lbs, and also offers a production, non-custom tandem weighing a feathery 15.94 kg, or just 35 lbs.
1949
Patent Application
Singer applies for a patent on a cartridge-bearing bottom bracket that greatly improves the component’s reliability, designed so one could easily convert existing bottom bracket shells to accommodate his improved solution.
1964
Succession
Two years before passing away, Singer accords construction duties to longtime apprentice and nephew Ernest Csuka and his brother Roland Csuka. By then Ernest had been working with Singer for twenty years.
c. 1966
Founder Death
Alex Singer passes away, reportedly two years after according construction duties to Ernest and Roland Csuka in 1964 (the source states this relative interval rather than a standalone death date).
1994
Death
Roland Csuka passes away.
2002
Succession
Ernest Csuka entrusts the operation to his own son Olivier Csuka, who continues building bicycles that merit the reverence the world has bestowed upon Cycles Alex Singer creations since their inception seventy-plus years ago.
early 2006
Shop Visit
A French writer visits the shop and describes it as welcoming visitors to “the kingdom of leather, rubber and steel,” also referring to Ernest Csuka as a “living treasure.”
Join the Alex Singer Heritage Discussion!
Have thoughts on the Csuka family’s stewardship of the marque or on Singer’s 1949 cartridge-bearing bottom bracket patent, share them in the Ebykr forums.
