Hey cable TV chopper builders: Think your bikes are edgy and dangerous? How about having a steam boiler mounted to a bicycle chassis between your legs and taking it on a 40 MPH blast through Boston?

That's exactly what pioneering car and motorcycle builder Sylvester Roper did at the dawn of the 20th century. The last effort of his life was the bike you see here - not exactly by choice, however.

According to an account in a June 1896 edition of the Boston Daily Globe, Roper died racing his steam propelled bicycle against a cyclist named Nat Butler at the Charles River track in Boston. Bystanders, "observed a strange pallor in the face of the aged rider before he appeared to lose control of the machine." Apparently Roper was stricken by a heart attack but managed to shut down the steam machine safely as his final act on Earth.

The hot rod bike uses a Columbia bicycle frame with a boiler, burner and steam engine on the right side that drives the rear wheel. A water tank sits over the boiler and a water pump was driven off the rear axle.

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