Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 10, No 2
Articles in this issue
- Front-page editorial urging every member to recruit another, restating the 1904 subscription (L. 6 in Italy, L. 8 abroad, L. 30 or L. 40 for five-year membership) and listing the rewards for soci benemeriti: silver and gold medals, a Reinach carnet, Botticella's railway timetable and a prize draw whose donors include Edoardo Bianchi (a motorcycle), Tofani e Masetti for Stucchi (a bicycle), Bayer photographic sets, a Fusi Browning pistol and Ottone Brentari's four-volume Guida del Trentino.
- Notice that more than 20,000 members have already paid the 1904 dues, and that the Direzione Generale has deferred the late surcharge (L. 0,20 for Milan, L. 0,55 for the rest of Italy and abroad) until 1 March; remittances should go by cartolina-vaglia to the Direzione Generale, Piazza Durini 7, Milan, in return for the violet sticker that validates the card.
- Illustrated report of the Touring's sledge outing over the Mont Cenis on 10-11 January, organised by capo console cav. Alfredo Rostain with consuls G. M. Aymale of Susa and Cesare Grosso of Turin. Fifty-eight people (including Novara members and several ladies) went up from Susa through Molaretto and the Bard customs post to the Ospizio, where ski-running alpini of the 4th regiment and captain A. Zincone of the 1st bersaglieri met them; prof. Ettore Stampini replied to Zincone's patriotic toast, and the military authorities forbade cameras on the pass.
- Long commentary on Maggiorino Ferraris's Nuova Antologia article "Pel movimento dei forestieri in Italia", which called for a state grant of a million lire a year to the Associazione nazionale, collective advertising abroad and an Italian display at the St. Louis exposition; the Touring answers that its own commission's pamphlet on improving second-category and small-town hotels, covering cleanliness, service, prices, heating, kitchens and bathrooms, is already at the printer.
- Hotel department opening with extracts from Saraceno's Tribuna article on the multiplication of hotels in Rome and Naples, then notes on a new hotel to be built at the corner of via Veneto and via Boncompagni in Rome, the new Grand Hotel Baglioni in Florence with its garage, cycle store and Touring-benzina depot, and the fire that destroyed the Grand Hotel du Pelerin above Vevey.
- The Touring-sponsored Esposizione dell'industria italiana per il materiale turistico will be held in the Montagnola gardens at Bologna in May and June 1904, with sections for motor cars, bicycles, carriages, railway and photographic material, under Golinelli, Sanguinetti, Johnson, Olindo Guerrini and prince Astorre Hercolani; and the Milan international exhibition is put back irrevocably to April 1906 because the Simplon line will not open in 1905.
- Preview of Turin's international motor exhibition opening on 6 February, at which the Touring occupies stand 63 with statistics, its Riviste, Annuari, maps, guides and road profiles, a sales and membership desk and a reading room. The hall plan and the full stand list are printed, naming F.I.A.T., Isotta Fraschini, Matteo and G. B. Ceirano, Mors, Serpollet, De Dietrich, Michelin, Pirelli and Continental.
- Railway department covering projected lines (Bassano-Trento through the Valsugana, Belluno-Cadore, Cuneo-Tenda-Nizza, the Roma-Napoli direttissima, the Castelli Romani lines and Radcliffe Ward's electric Torino-Martigny scheme), progress on the Simplon tunnel where the hot spring at Brigue has halted boring, the revived Channel tunnel project and a Bering Strait proposal, new luxury trains, and statistics on German electric railways and European route mileage.
- Dr Reichel's first-hand account of the record run at 210.8 km/h on the military electric railway between Berlin-Marienfelde and Zossen, in a railcar drawing 14,000-volt three-phase current from three overhead wires through triple trolleys to four motors developing 2,600 hp; a bird smashed the cab window at full speed and the 93-tonne car covered the run in eight minutes.
- Argument for Milan's new municipal regulation, in force from 1 January 1906, fixing minimum tyre widths of 6 to 12 cm according to the load carried, so that narrow iron tyres stop cutting up the macadam; L. V. Bertarelli argued the case at the council, the Deputazione provinciale has adopted it, and the Touring will print thousands of copies for Lombardy's 1,895 comuni and any other Italian commune that asks.
- The public works minister on. Tedesco, speaking on the budget in the Chamber, gives formal assurances about every class of road from national to vicinal and promises a series of legislative measures to improve them.
- Ing. M. Tedeschi reports F. Caumont-Caimi's open letter to the minister in the Rassegna Nazionale, which draws on the Touring's 1903 Annuario to show that Italy still has no general traffic code: local custom decides how vehicles pass and overtake, and a single national regulation on the French model should be drafted rather than one confined to motor cars.
- Progress of the Touring's signpost campaign: through console comm. Oreste Lattes the King sends L. 1,000, asking that the signs go preferably to the province of Rome, which has none; the provincial deputations of Rome and Verona and the municipalities of Alessandria and Treviso subscribe, three new commissioners are appointed, and the donor list brings the totals to L. 8,960 and 748 signs, with the first two erected at Rapallo.
- Roberto Durantini's illustrated ascent of the Corno Grande (2,921 m) from Aquila by Bazzano, Paganica and the Madonna d'Appari sanctuary to Assergi, noting that the road is rideable as far as the sanctuary; then on foot by the Portella pass, the Calderone glacier that Stoppani called the only Apennine glacier, and the Club Alpino refuge built in 1886, to a summit panorama reaching from the Maiella to the Adriatic.
- Alpine club news: the C.A.I.'s central offices move to via Monte di Pietà 28 in Turin; the Escursionisti Milanesi vote to enlarge their Grignetta hut and open a ski section; the Unione Escursionisti Torinesi re-elect their committee under Fiori; a new excursionist society is founded in Venice; the Swiss Alpine Club moves its seat to Solothurn; and the Turin section announces an exhibition of original mountain-landscape sketches.
- The editor explains why the many accounts of last summer's and autumn's cycle tours cannot be printed in midwinter, when the talk must be of sledges and skis, and asks members to send their reports as soon as a ride is over, keep to what is little known, always enclose photographs of monuments, bridges and costumes as well as scenery, and prefer routes inside geographical Italy.
- Minister Tedesco's decree setting up the commission to revise the July 1901 motor-traffic regulation and to draft a law on public motor transport between places without a railway or tramway; the full membership is listed, including the Touring's Giovanni Silvestri and avv. Cesare Agrati, count Cacherano di Bricherasio of the Club Automobilisti d'Italia and Augusto Massoni of the Automobil Club di Milano.
- The Club Automobilisti d'Italia of Turin will convene the leading Italian motor clubs during the motor exhibition of 6-21 February; the Touring, invited, will be represented officially by one of its directors and two delegates.
- Programme of the Milan motoring meeting of 11-15 May: Milano-Bergamo-Tirano-Sondrio and back, speed trials on the flat and the Sondrio-Aprica hill climb, and runs to Brescia and Cremona, 766 km in all, restricted to touring cars in four load classes and judged on comfort, braking, consumption, price and chassis weight.
- Survey of the touring caravans fixed at the calendar congress called in Paris by L'Auto: the Gazzetta dello Sport's winter Milano-Genova-Nizza-Torino run, a Parigi-Torino caravan with the France Automobile that crosses the Cenisio by sledge, a party coming up from Cannes, the France Automobile's caravan to Rome by Cuneo, Firenze and Civitavecchia, and an Italian group going to the Gordon Bennett Cup at Homburg where three Fiats will race.
- The caravan of some sixty motorcycles leaving on 27 January over Milano-Genova, Oneglia, Nizza and the Colle di Nava to Turin, with the first Italian competition for motor lorries alongside it; described and illustrated are a 9 HP Daimler light van and 20 HP omnibus from Canstatt (the latter for the Genova-Torriglia diligence service) and a 24 HP four-cylinder Fiat lorry. The Touring offers a gold medal for the most regular running.
- The Voghera mechanic Ferlini's new stand, a two-legged telescopic prop fixed under the motorcycle's saddle pillar, which holds the back wheel clear of the ground so the rider can pedal the engine into life while seated and then retract the legs by a lever at the handlebar or under the saddle - a particular help to older riders and to restarting on a hill.
- The self-propelled steam fire pump built by C. D. Magirus of Ulm and on trial with the Cologne brigade since 1 October 1903: kept warm on gas in the shed, switched to petroleum on the alarm and at full pressure in under two minutes, it delivers 2,000 litres a minute with a 65-metre jet, runs 30 km on its water and 80 km on its fuel, reaches 40 km/h and climbs 12 per cent gradients at about L. 0,37 a kilometre.
- Some fifty motorcyclists meeting at Milan's Hotel Sport under avv. Miglierina vote to found a Motociclo-Club d'Italia devoted to touring and a club garage rather than to speculative racing; and a "Club international des chauffeurs" is constituted with headquarters in via Principe Umberto 16, Milan, and branches in Paris, Frankfurt and New York, with Zecchinato as president.
- Statistics on motoring abroad: Belgium had four cars in 1896 but by 1903 had 84 factories with 32 million francs of capital and 15,400 employees and 3,300 registered vehicles, a rate at which Italy would own 16,477; and Mexico, where cars arrived in 1900, now has about 150, with a club formed to press for better roads to Mixcoac, San Angel, Coyoacan and Tlalpan under the honorary patronage of president Porfirio Diaz.
- Comm. Costantino Arlia argues that the French chauffeur should be rendered in Italian as macchinista or conduttore rather than riscaldatore, and the Rivista adds the dispute carried on in the Secolo by Edoardo Garbarino and Arlia over whether automobile is masculine or feminine, coming down on the side of writing "un automobile".
- Captain Romeo Frassinetti of the 1st infantry, who has worked on the problem for twenty years at Bitonto, Bari and Ravenna, demonstrates in Milan and at the Veloce Club a model airship steered by two 24 hp propellers turning on all axes instead of by a rudder; over 800 shares of L. 25 have been subscribed under the paper La Lombardia to build a full-size one. Notes follow on Santos Dumont at Saint Louis, count Almerico da Schio's ship at Schio, a Michigan aeroplane and Jacques Balsan's 1,295 km balloon flight.
- Miscellany of Italian curiosities: the threatened collapse of Spoleto cathedral and the removal of Fra Filippo Lippi's tomb, whose bones were not found; the disputed house of Dante in Florence and Luca Beltrami's reading of the newly found coat of arms; where to read about the Ladin people between the Rienz and the Avisio; the sale of Bologna's leaning Garisenda tower; the Grande Chartreuse and the Italian certose; a plea for marking the stress in Italian place-names; and the condemned campanile of San Siro at Genoa.
- The Direzione grants "general" status to the touring rally that the Florence consulate will hold at the end of May, alongside the federal gymnastic congress, in concert with the city's cycling and sporting societies.
- After the national tours of Italy, Sardinia and Sicily, the Rome consulate under on. Attilio Brunialti, on a proposal by consuls avv. Carlo Schupfer and rag. Fernando Trasatti, plans a fortnight's outing in July: Rome to Brindisi through the Puglia towns, by steamer to Scutari, then by bicycle to Cettigne, Ragusa, Spalato, Sebenico and Zara, returning via Venice or Ancona.
- Club notes with photographs: the Unione Ciclistica di Bassanello near Padua inaugurates its banner after two years and thirty members' worth of Colli Euganei outings; the Società Ciclistica Casalese at Casalpusterlengo reaches nearly 100 members including the five-year-old Pierino Bellini; and the Sporting Club of Turin opens new premises, with capo console cav. A. Rostain among the speakers.
- Reviews of Ottone del Grande's Il Congo, vita, usi e costumi, the third volume of Adolfo Venturi's Storia dell'Arte Italiana for Hoepli (with the pulpit of Barga's duomo reproduced), Continental's Handbuch für Automobilisten which omits the Turin and Padua motor clubs, Thirion and Bonnet's digest of French motoring patents, Reynaud's Aosta et sa vallée and Clerici's account of excursions round Siena and Monte Amiata, followed by notes on new periodicals including Italia Alpina.
- Digest of judgments affecting cyclists and motorists: the Bergamo case of Mario Crespi, defended by avv. Agrati, holding that the prosecution must prove excess speed; French rulings on late delivery of cars and cycles; and liability for falsely advertising a race win. The full text follows of the Bologna tribunal's judgment of 2 August 1903 in Contini v. dott. Sanguinetti, which blamed a collision on the carter's thirteen-year-old son pulling the wrong rein.
- Avv. Cesare Agrati, the Touring's chief legal adviser, answers members: count Sigray di S. Marzano on the impossibility of recovering costs after acquittal, cav. Pepino on the Savona ruling that a bicycle without its number plate may still be wheeled by hand, and ing. Jerabol, console of Cremona, on the weak prospects of his appeal to the Cassazione.
- The government commission on the customs tariff proposes raising the duty on cycle parts from about L. 25 to L. 250 a quintal, which would favour Italian makers of part sets but reduce the protection on complete machines from L. 42 each to some L. 25-30; the Milan importers' committee replies in a memorandum by avv. Federico Guasti, and the Unione delle Camere di commercio asks for a compromise.
- The Direttore generale delle Gabelle again refuses to let a foreign cyclist's three-month circulation permit cover repeated entries into Italy, holding it is not a customs document; he concedes, however, that officials must issue it as often as it is asked for, each crossing requiring the yellow temporary-import plate and 25 centesimi.
- Council business and club notices: on. Attilio Brunialti withdraws his resignation as capo console for Rome; a first budget balancing at 350,000 lire covers the Rivista, the 1:100,000 corographic map of Switzerland, the Annuario 1904, the Guida-itinerario degli Abruzzi and the Stelvio and Moncenisio road profiles, and provides for the move to via Monte Napoleone 14 and the club's tenth anniversary; 1,049 new members and 48 life members joined in January; and Brentari's first three railway-line guides (Milano-Torino, Milano-Verona, Milano-Bologna) are ready.
- Members' births, marriages and deaths: the newborn Augusto Buzzati, son of prof. Giulio Cesare Buzzati of the University of Pavia, enrolled as the club's youngest member; the marriage of the veteran long-distance cyclist Luigi Masetti to Lina Garda; and the deaths of Ignazio Ottolini, cycle maker turned early motorist, and of Enrico Piselli, console at Pontassieve.
- Sixteenth list of affiliated hotels, giving category, room and meal prices, servants' rates, the usual 10 per cent discount and garage capacity, for Acqui, Bognanco Dentro, Brunate, Casalmonferrato, Ferrera Cenisio, Erba, Mira, Morgex, S. Maria Maggiore in Val Vigezzo, Salò and Trescore Balneario.