Sound interesting, got photo’s?
Cable control systems virtually didn’t exist on the earliest American made motorcycles and in their place mechanical linkages were used.
As you can imagine anything passing by the steering/ head tube would become complicated and the very earliest bikes simply didn’t add controls to the handle bars at all.
But for the sake of ease of control & safety concerns many manufacturers did soon move controls to the bars and came up with complex systems that used tiny u-joints, sliding rods/barrels, centerline pivots, etc...
That all changed with the invention of the Bowden cable...
Bowden cable - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Curtiss was one of the first Yank’s to make the switch in 1907- And they caught on very quickly, Harley Davidson changed over in 1909.
However a couple of the era’s big dogs: Indian & Excelsior kept their old linkages well into the teens.
1911 Excelsior head tube attached...
-Kirk
Edit:
Curious, The Wiki article claims Hendee used cables on Indian’s in 1903...?
I just did a Google image search and found Indian linkages still being used until at least 1916, attached a clear photo from a ‘15 Twin
