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Details of the Twindian's history are sketchy at best. By the time the cycle was discovered in 1986, its builder and most of those who had ridden with him were deceased. Mr. Arnold, born and raised in the East Bay, was a machinist by trade, last working for the Friden Calculator Co. of San Leandro.

According to his widow Martha, who sold the Twindian to the present owner in 1986, Bill had probably purchased the cycle in the late teens and rode it for a while on the Bay Area streets as a single engine. Bill told his daughter Mitzi that during his youth he had serviced a paper route in the Oakland Hills on the Indian.
Sometime during the late teens or early twenties, Mr. Arnold decided to make more power for the street and/or to go racing at either the Elmhurst or Emeryville board tracks. At this time, he added a second engine and widened the original gas/oil tank design. The replacement fuel/oil tank was made from one piece of metal, "tinned" with solder, and the seams "sweated" together with the oil/gas divider in place.

By the time the Arnolds were married in 1929 the Twindian had been well worn and permanently parked amongst Bill's horde of old treasures at the site of what was until recently the Lyons Restaurant in Castro Valley.
According to Mrs. Arnold their only son Bob, a local motorcycle dealer (Cycle Stop in Oakland) and racer, put some gas in the Twindian in the 1960's and started it, incurring the wrath of his father.

After Bob's untimely death in the 1970's Bill ran Cycle Stop in Oakland at High and E.14th Sts. for several years until his retirement. With Bill's passing, Mrs. Arnold and her daughters Mitzi and Betty were faced with the monumental task of sorting and disposing of a 60 year collection consisting of a Tucker car, Aerial Square Four cycle, new Lambretta scooter, many BSA cycles, several old cars and trucks, and tons of scrap metal covering nearly an acre of land.
Doug King, present custodian of the Twindian, was enlisted to help sort out the cars and parts. He developed a fondness for the Twindian and was lucky enough to have Mrs. Arnold entrust it to his care. After having Pleasant Hill metal fabricating wizard Bob Munroe form a new tank and exhaust headers, cleaning the carburetor, and replacing the aging tires and spark plugs, the Twindian breathed life again in 1987. It was displayed at several cycle shows prior to being dismantled and restored between 1989 and 2003.