Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 10, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Illustrated feature on Lake Iseo (the Sebino) built around the Touring's 29 August steamer excursion from Paratico to Lovere, Marone and Iseo, taking in the Lantieri castle said to have sheltered Dante, Montisola and the 429 paintings of the Tadini gallery at Lovere. Cav. Rossetti greeted the 200 excursionists for the 'Pro Sebino' society and the party sang the Inno di Mameli entering Iseo harbour.
- Report of the 11 September outing to Lake Orta, organised to publicise the little subalpine lake: the party was received by mayor Benedetto Ragazzoni, lunched at Carlo Mazzola's villa above Carcegna and crossed to Omegna and the island of San Giulio in boats lent by avv. Secondo Durio, ing. Nigra and count Gaudenzio Tornielli.
- Text of the lecture given at Orta by cav. dott. Ettore Candiani, Touring councillor and vice-president of the Lombard section of the association for attracting foreign visitors, arguing that Italy neglects its own 'permanent exhibition' of scenery while Italians spend abroad, and citing the 400 million lire brought in yearly by tourists.
- The Orta banquet for about 120 guests at signor Ciana's Albergo Belvedere, with toasts from mayor Ragazzoni, cav. Candiani, on. Curioni, cav. Pugliesi of the Commercio of Milan and the mayor of Omegna, and a telegram voted to on. Maggiorino Ferraris.
- Prof. Rodolfo Namias's monthly photography department.
- Reviews of new apparatus: the German folding 'Nixe' camera for 9x12 plates and films with double extension and Bausch & Lomb shutter, the American 'Wizard' cameras by Gundlach Manhattan Optical of Rochester with diagonal rack and bascule movement, the 'Antinous' cable release, cav. Rossi of Genoa's rapid bromide printer (250 copies an hour) and a cast-iron collotype press for amateurs.
- Notice that the T.C.I. will supply members with the number plate every car must carry under the decree of 5 March 1903, price 4 lire post free; unplated cars risk fines of 100 to 600 lire.
- The standing department of club outings and rallies, with reports from Brescia, Gemona, Pinerolo, Vittorio and Agnone and short notices from towns across Italy.
- The national Touring rally held during Brescia's automobile week: cyclists left their machines at the San Barnaba schools, paraded behind the Istituto Pavoni band to the town hall where mayor count F. Bettoni received them and capoconsole avv. Tarenzi replied, and the evening closed with capt. Annibale Emilio Angherà's lantern lecture on motorcycles and cars in war service.
- The Unione Ciclistica Gemonese, founded in March, received its banner (painted by decorator Ugo Brollo) from the ladies of Gemona and held a rally of 400 cyclists; console Ermes Edoardo Disetti spoke for the Touring and prizes went to Codroipo, Pordenone and Udine among others.
- The Veloce Club of Pinerolo marked its tenth year with a rally attended by Touring councillors Oreste Gorla and avv. Federico Guasti; president cav. avv. Amedeo Brignone unveiled the club standard, 500 cyclists, 30 motorcyclists and 8 cars paraded, and La Lanterna Pinerolese noted that only 35 of the town's 450 cyclists belong to the Touring.
- Rally at Vittorio, the town formed in 1866 from Serravalle and Ceneda, where prof. Ottone Brentari stood godfather to the Club Sportivo's standard, some 600 cyclists paraded five kilometres through the streets, and avv. Guido Ehrenfreund drove mayor Wassermann and Brentari up the Fadalto road to the Negrisiola lake in his Serpollet.
- A marble tablet given by console Tirone and inscribed by dott. Alfonso Savastano was unveiled on corso Vittorio Emanuele at Agnone to commemorate the regional Touring rally of 14, 15 and 16 August 1904; console Riccardo Guglielmetti praised the precedent of recording rallies in stone.
- Rag. F. Trasatti, console at Rome, describes the Rome consulate's 491.7 km bicycle tour to the Agnone rally with Righetti, Guglielmetti, Stefanini, Pollastri, Cuore and Barone, out by Frascati, Frosinone, Cassino, Venafro and Isernia and home by Roccaraso, Sulmona, Popoli, Aquila, Rieti, Piediluco and Terni.
- Editorial against prizes at cyclists' rallies after the uproar at Latisana, printing the motion of the Vittorio jury (avv. Guido Ehrenfreund, avv. Giuseppe Segatti and Santino Castani) that awards for squad size and distance breed ill feeling and only the commemorative badge should be given.
- The customs department, carrying notices on triptyques, frontier passes and the Swiss and French customs regimes for cycles and cars.
- Motorists are warned that triptyques and the special frontier card exempting them from a deposit cannot be issued the same day but only five days after application, unless the corresponding duty is paid at once into the club's treasury.
- The Swiss federal customs will not accept T.C.I. cards for the temporary import of cycles and motorcycles that lack a maker's mark and original serial number; manufacturers are urged to mark and number every machine, as the Ligue Internationale des Associations Touristes had already recommended.
- The signpost department lists new offers and placements at Belluno (avv. Spartaco Zugni Tauro), Catania (comm. Johnson), Como (Società Pro-Como, seventeen signs), Arquata Scrivia (Luigi Passadore) and Treviso, bringing the running total to 989 signs worth L. 13,390, and corrects a report about the Genio Civile of Turin.
- The mountaineering department, reporting the Italian Alpine Club congress, the Monte Rosa memorial, the Società Alpina Friulana's meeting at Sauris and the Federazione Prealpina's outing to Riva and Bezzecca.
- The C.A.I.'s 35th congress, organised by the Turin section under comm. avv. Antonio Grober, cav. Francesco Gonella, count Cibrario and ing. Pomba, with guides including Fabien Croux, Alexis Fenoillet and Laurent Petigax; it ran from 31 August to 5 September by way of the Ciamarella, the colle d'Arnas, Lanslebourg and Moncenisio, where Grober announced 5500 members in 31 sections.
- On the anniversary of the accident on the cyclo-alpine outing offered by comm. Johnson, a wrought-iron memorial cross was inaugurated on Monte Rosa for dott. Giacomo Casati and rag. Antonio Facetti; a blizzard on the Indren glacier forced comm. Grober's party to turn back, and two members returned by night to lay the edelweiss and rhododendron wreaths.
- The cycling department, with notes on cyclist patrols, bicycle lighting and the Brescia motor-mobilisation experiment.
- The Bologna section of the Touring, on console Filippo Buldrini's proposal, is forming special cyclist patrols to extend into the suburbs the watch service that the city patrols under comm. Cesare Sanguinetti already provide inside the walls.
- Lodovico Formigoni of Mantua writes to claim that he devised the method of lighting a bicycle electrically from its own motion as early as 1900, but could not afford to patent it; the invention had been credited to sig. Stolka in the August number.
- Account of the experiment of 30 August at Brescia in mobilising private cars for the army, run by the III Corps command and a committee under nob. Camillo Martinoni with maggiore Maggiorotti, capitano Guglielmotti and rag. Arturo Mercanti: 49 owners entered, 28 started, machines ran from 5 to 100 HP, each carried a tricolour pennant, and Touring guides were the authority for routes and distances.
- The Touring representative's ride on the longest route of the mobilisation test, Brescia to Codroipo and back (540 km), in a Fiat driven by tenente Umberto Emanuele, refuelling at the Touring-affiliated Arrivabene pharmacy at Desenzano and returning to Brescia at 22.55.
- Technical department on motorcycles.
- Technical review of the twin-cylinder Republic type CC 3½ HP of Laurin et Klement of Jungbunzlau, explaining how cranks set at 180 degrees and the flywheel damp the vibration of a single-cylinder four-stroke, describing the firm's elastic front fork and its B, BZ, L and CC range, carburettor choice and trailer attachments; Italian agent Rodolfo Billiter of Venice.
- Ing. Ferdinando Borrino's technical miscellany of novelties, fine points and practical advice: the 1903 fashions for vertical engines, water cooling and three or four speeds; paraffin as a starting aid; accumulator and dry-cell ignition; wind, skidding and speed; transmission efficiency from 100 to 50 per cent; catalytic platinum-sponge ignition; a statistic of breakdown causes; and lubrication at engine temperatures reaching 1300 degrees.
- The miscellany department of Italian curiosities and notes.
- History of the 4.20 m gilt Madonna crowning the Duomo of Milan, modelled by the sculptor Perego, raised and gilded by the goldsmith Bini in 1774 at a cost of L. 14,750, regilded in 1830 and again in 1904, with the dialect verses of Giuseppe Borgomanero and Vespasiano Bignami quoted in Gaetano Crespi's lecture at the Scuola del Libro.
- The casa Piazza at Lorenzago di Cadore, the smoke-blackened wooden house that survived the fire of 1855 which caused the village to be rebuilt in stone on a chessboard plan, has now been demolished by royal decree as a danger to public safety.
- Istrian papers respond to the Touring's article on the region: L'Egida of Capodistria supplies the Italian forms of Slav place-names (Taiano, Alpegrande and Sega for Slavnik, Planik and Zaga; Laura for Labor; Cosliaco; lago d'Arsa for Cepich) and gives 240,348 Italians among 398,258 inhabitants, while L'Idea Italiana of Parenzo calls the questions idle.
- Book notices: Alessandro Malladra's Il Traforo del Sempione, Ermenegildo Maina's I nostri esuli on Italian workmen abroad, Guido Ottorogo's Berlino, 'Febo' (avv. Fabio Glisenti)'s Dal Cadore al Trentino, L. Baudry de Saunier's Les Motocyclettes, the yearbooks of the Regio Yacht Club Italiano and the Automobile-Club de Suisse, and Alfredo Rostain's L'educazione industriale dell'operaio.
- The Regio Istituto Geografico Militare announces that its 1:75,000 map, a photozincographic reproduction of the 1:100,000 model, is no longer kept up to date and will disappear; remaining sheets are on sale until stocks run out, after which the 1:100,000 sheets will be supplied instead.
- The legal advice department, carrying members' queries, administrative notices and reports of court judgments affecting cyclists and motorists.
- Replies to members on the bicycle tax plate: any metric office may fit a plate to any machine brought to it (signor Sensi); a certificate is due even when the plate was changed late (Mariano De Angelis); the brake is a required organ and not an accessory in a sale (dott. cav. Natalucci); and whoever takes charge of machines at a rally is answerable for the accessories left on them (prof. Corio).
- A note commending the Touring's new motoring yearbook to members as interesting and useful to all and virtually indispensable to motorists, the writer stressing that he had no hand in compiling it.
- Reminder that under the statute the annual subscription falls due before 15 January and resignations must be sent by registered letter by 31 October; payments after 1 November count for the following year, and members in arrears receive only the Rivista, not the other publications.
- Members are advised that the royal decree of 16 September extends the amnesty to offences against the law on the annual bicycle tax, extinguishing pending prosecutions and halting the execution of sentences already passed.
- Sentence of 25 August 1904 of the Pretura of Abbiategrasso (pretore avv. Bianchi) acquitting the student Agnesini, holding that piazza Garibaldi's tree-lined walk is neither a footway nor a public-garden avenue reserved to pedestrians, so cycling on it was lawful under the decree of 16 December 1897.
- Bologna judgment of 18 July 1904 (pretore avv. Randaccio) in Muratori v. tenente Contrada, defended by avv. Succi: a motorist who sounds his horn, keeps his distance and drives at a trotting horse's pace is not liable when horses shy, the accident being put down to the four-year-old colts and the coachman's mishandling of the reins.
- The club's official communications and news section.
- The national congress in the central hall of the Castello exhibition, opened by mayor count comm. F. Bettoni and attended by deputies Bonardi, Castiglioni and Massimini, prefect comm. Cataldi and others; capoconsole avv. Tarenzi proposed on. Bonardi as chairman and cav. Luigi Caldera acted as secretary.
- On. avv. Massimo Bonardi's opening address, invoking Rome as the goal of every road and of every member's loyalty, recalling the monuments raised there to Victor Hugo, Goethe and Byron, and praising the youthful ardour and concord of the association.
- Dott. Piero Favari ('Doctor Petrus'), head of the medical section, on Italy's small hotels: he contrasts them with the good large hotels, points to the Touring's pamphlet for innkeepers with its decalogue, and calls for a nationwide inquiry fed by members' reports; his motion was carried by acclamation on dott. Anselmi's proposal.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi, editor of Le Strade of Turin, on the road question: the effect of cycling and motoring in exposing bad roads, rules on cart-tyre width, the signpost campaign begun with the King's own subscription (50 provinces of 69 now in negotiation), the 1900 competition on road maintenance and the new commission's three aims; the Genoa congress motion was confirmed.
- Avv. Mario Tarenzi, capoconsole at Brescia, argues for a removable tax plate and the abolition of the tax roll, and for a lower tax paid by quarters: Italian machines rose from 143,918 in 1901 to 174,507 in 1903, while in France cutting the tax from 10.80 to 6 francs raised registrations from 483,414 to 838,856 in a single year. His motion was approved.
- Colonel Chiaria of the bersaglieri moved that the Touring help form permanent units of volunteer cyclists for national defence, recalling the Bologna consulate's despatch-rider trials; carried amid several minutes of applause, after which telegrams were voted to cav. Bertarelli and comm. Johnson and the congress closed.
- Programme for the tenth anniversary of the club's founding on 8 November 1894, put back to Saturday and Sunday 26-27 November: official opening of the new premises in Palazzo Taverna, via Monte Napoleone 14, a congress, an exhibition of the club's publications, medals of merit for the consular corps and a commemorative medal for every member from comm. Federico Johnson.
- Council decisions: to exhibit at the Paris Salon of December 1904, to fund the prizes for the 'Monografie stradali' and 'Manuale pratico ad uso degli stradini' competitions, praise for the motoring yearbook and for the Brescia consulate, a special commission on volunteer cyclist battalions, thanks to the Lago d'Orta committee, and gold medals for the resigning councillors Oreste Gorla and Stanislao Parboni.
- The Touring was awarded the grand diploma of honour at the Brescia exhibition.
- Members are asked to send the 1905 subscription early - L. 6 for the kingdom, L. 8 for abroad - to avoid the year-end pile-up of correspondence and payments.
- The roads commission has appointed three sub-commissions - for a technical deputation in every province, for a monograph on the Italian road network, and for manuals for roadmen - with about L. 5000 in prizes voted unanimously by the Council, part of it offered by commission members themselves.
- The hotels commission reports many letters of approval for its pamphlet on improving hotels, of which 10,000 copies were distributed, asks members and commercial travellers to report on its effects, and plans an exhibition of furniture and utensils suitable for small hotels at the club's premises.
- The Touring's motoring yearbook, the first of its kind in Italy, is praised by the Club Automobilisti d'Italia of Turin and by the Automobile Club de France, the Touring Club de France, the Deutscher Automobil Club and other foreign bodies; about 600 pages, L. 5 to non-members and L. 2.50 to members.
- The general depot granted to G. B. Paravia covers only the guides, monographs, profiles and other works produced directly by the Touring, not the maps published with the Regio Istituto Geografico Militare, which continue to be sold by the Touring to its own members alone.
- Only 37,000 copies of the second sheet of the map of Italy's frontiers were printed last January, when membership stood at 37,000; membership is now 42,000, so 5000 entitled members must wait for the reprint being made by the Istituto Geografico Militare.
- Subscriptions remain open for the second group of railway guides (Milan-Genoa, Genoa-Spezia, Genoa-Ventimiglia) and the third (Verona-Venice, Venice-Bologna, Bologna-Florence), awaiting only the maps from the Istituto Geografico Militare; 50 centesimi each or L. 1 for a group of three.
- Instructions for members writing to the Direzione: use reply-paid cards or enclose a stamp, give name, titles, address and membership number legibly, use a separate sheet for each subject, and write on one side of the paper only for the Rivista.
- Carlo Sandoni, console of the Touring at Bologna and president of the successful tourist exhibition there, has been made a Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia for his work in sporting and charitable committees.
- Recruiting appeal for the club's first decade: every member is asked to present one new member before mid-October, which would turn the 40,000 members into 80,000.
- Rewards for recruiting: a silver commemorative medal for ten new members, a large silver medal for fifty and a gold medal for a hundred, a gold medal for the 1904 'recordman' of propaganda, an elegant carnet offered by Ernesto Reinach and the firm Torriani e C., and E. Botticella's monthly railway timetable.
- Prize draw for members presenting at least ten new members between 1 November 1903 and 31 October 1904: a free Milan-Paris return ticket from the travel firm G. Sommariva & C., twelve Bowden brakes, ten Carloni brakes, a 'Nixe' pocket camera from Mario Ganzini, Pocket Poco and Premo Film cameras from M. De Mattia & C., AGFA photographic products, Cappelli plates, a set of eighteen Brentari guides and a hand-worked leather magazine case by Secondo Zanandrea of Bassano.
- Obituary note for the patriot senator Giuseppe Mussi, former mayor of Milan and a life member of the Touring who always showed the club a courteous sympathy.
- Baron Prochazka, secretary general of the Oesterreichischer Touring Club and a chief architect of its growth, has died after an accident while travelling by motorcycle.
- Twenty-third list of affiliated hotels with room and meal prices, discounts and garage space: the Grand Hotel Mella at Collio with its hydrotherapy establishment and electric light, the Europa at Conegliano, the Lovere at Lovere, the Cremona already Due Spade at Marone, the Posta at Sale Marasino, the Croce d'Oro at Schio, the Vittorio at Vittorio, and houses at Bassano, Bellinzona and Brusimpiano.
- The special motor lubricants of the firm Emilio Foltzer of Rivarolo Ligure are added to the approved list, and the T.C.I. thermometer-densimeter for measuring petrol is described: graduated from 0.660 to 0.720 density and from -6 to +30 degrees, good petrol reading between 670 and 700 at 15 degrees, price L. 4 at the club's office.
- List of candidates who applied for membership between 15 August and 15 September 1904, the life members including count Febo Borromeo and rag. Domenico Gambini of Milan, ing. Adriano Scognamiglio of Naples, prince Philippe d'Orléans at Palermo and ing. Adolfo Pouchain of Rome, followed by the annual members by province and by those abroad.