The inspiration for the earliest dirt bike, and arguably the first motorcycle, was designed and built by the German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Bad Cannstatt (since 1905 a city district of Stuttgart) in 1885.

However, if one counts two wheels with steam propulsion as being a motorcycle, then the first one may have been American. One such machine was demonstrated at fairs and circuses in the eastern US in 1867, built by Sylvester Howard Roper of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

In 1894, the Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first motorcycle available for purchase. In the early period of motorcycle history there were many manufacturers as producers of bicycles adapted their designs for the new internal combustion engine. As the engines became more powerful and designs outgrew the bicycle origins, the number of motorcycle producers increased.

Until the First World War, the largest motorcycle manufacturer was Indian. After that, this honour went to Harley-Davidson, until 1928 when DKW took over as the largest manufacturer. BMW motorcycles came on the scene in 1923 with shaft drive and an opposed-twin or "boxer" engine enclosed with the transmission in a single aluminum housing.

Today the Japanese manufacturers, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha dominate the motorcycle industry, although Harley-Davidson still maintains a high degree of popularity in the United States. Recent years have also seen a resurgence in the popularity of many other brands including BMW, Triumph and Ducati, and the emergence of Victory as a second successful mass-builder of big-twin American cruisers.

Modern motorcycles normally have five or six forward gears. Only the largest touring motorcycles (most prominently, the Honda Goldwing) and a few models that are routinely used with a sidecar or converted to tricycle configuration are fitted with a reverse gear. On some, it is not really a reverse gear, but a feature of the starter motor which when reversed, performs the same function. These motorcycles' weight (in the region of 300 kg) means they cannot effectively be pushed without the motor engaged.

The clutch is typically an arrangement of plates stacked in alternating fashion, one geared on the inside to the engine and the next geared on the outside to the transmission input shaft. Whether wet (rotating in engine oil) or dry, the plates are squeezed together by a spring, causing friction buildup between the plates until they rotate as a single unit, driving the transmission directly. A lever on the handlebar exploits mechanical advantage through a cable or hydraulic arrangement to release the clutch spring, allowing the engine to freewheel with respect to the transmission.