Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 10, No 8
Articles in this issue
- Illustrated lead feature on Brescia, host city of the 1904 exhibition: its churches, museums and palaces, and above all the Cidneo hill with its castle, now reached by electric tram, looking out to Solferino and San Martino and the Adamello.
- How the 1904 Brescia exhibitions came to be sited on the Cidneo and inside the old castle, decided by the promoting committee on 23 February 1902; La Provincia di Brescia is quoted on the engineers' first dismay at the ruined fortress and the earthworks that followed.
- The exhibition's grandest building, opening with an immense semicircular portico, houses the Touring's own hall of maps and publications alongside the Audax, the Federazione Prealpina, C.A.I. Brescia, the Circolo Speleologico of Udine, and motoring, cycling, hunting, gymnastics, fencing and shooting displays.
- The Audax congress opened on 10 July with 2,234 cyclists, 1,165 of them audaces; Trieste's greeting to the mayor was a blank sheet and Trento's parchment had been seized by the Austrian police. Organiser rag. Arturo Mercanti is congratulated.
- Standing notes-and-jottings column, given over here to the Audax gathering at Brescia.
- The Brescia papers' roll of squads that rode in, from Ala and Bergamo's Soc. Vitt. Em. III through Crema, Cremona and Mantova to Trieste, Torino and Vercelli, many bringing their own fanfare bands.
- Reprinted La Tribuna leader arguing that the Touring's carefully studied itineraries and the Audax's endurance riders complete one another for national defence, and noting that general Pedotti encouraged the scheme and minister Giolitti offered a carbine of honour.
- Lorenzo Venti, who rode Rome–Brescia and then Brescia–Paris, writes to Il Messaggero that the 3,300-strong Audax abandons racing for collective riding on pre-calculated schedules that take gradients, road surface and rest stops into account.
- G. C. Abba, Garibaldian veteran and author of the Noterelle d'uno dei Mille, writes in La Provincia di Brescia that the sport-loving generation of cyclists and alpinists has proved worthy of the men of 1859–70, and that Brescia's very stones proclaimed 'Volontari pro difesa della Patria'.
- Notes on the issue's thirteen Brescia engravings: the Greek Vittoria found in 1826 that inspired Carducci, Tabacchi's monument to Arnaldo da Brescia, the Martinengo mausoleum, Moretto's portrait of Tullia d'Aragona, the Duomo Nuovo, the Broletto quadrifore, Fromentone's Loggia of 1489 and Vantini's cemetery lighthouse.
- Long extracts praising the Sentinella, the Provincia and il Cittadino of Brescia for their coverage of the Audax meeting, with note of the Corriere della Sera's front-page interview by Ottorino Raimondi with captain Annibale Angherà and reports by 'Io Ciclo' (A. G. Bianchi).
- Unable to attend, comm. Federico Johnson telegraphed capoconsole avv. Mario Tarenzi to represent him at Brescia, and gave four gold medals, the largest for the bersaglieri cyclist company and three smaller ones for the jury.
- Ottone Brentari's eyewitness account of the 11 July tactical exercise on Lake Garda, sailing from Desenzano on the steamer Agostino Depretis with bersaglieri and staff while volunteer cyclists beat off a feigned landing at San Felice di Scovolo and then reached Desenzano first, 16 km by road against the steamer's 13 by water.
- Second notes-and-jottings column of the issue, collecting press comment on the volunteer cyclist experiment on Lake Garda.
- M. P. Negrotto in La Provincia di Brescia on Britain's battalion cyclist sections and the permanent London cyclist battalion, and on captain Annibale Angherà, the Africa veteran on the Rome general staff who has urged the same for Italy's exposed coastal railways.
- Ottorino Raimondi's Corriere della Sera interview with Angherà, who would raise companies of 50 to 100 volunteer cyclists from the mobile and territorial militia and from the 70,000 men rejected each year, riding their own machines, rigid until folding bicycles are popularised by a tax exemption.
- A La Tribuna article signed 'Il caporale' argues that cyclist masses could seize a station, cut a railway, surprise convoys or turn a marching flank, and half-jokes that small mountain guns towed by automobiles would complete the combination.
- The Sentinella Bresciana describes the muster at the Crocera di San Luca — model 1891 rifles and blank cartridges issued, red armbands from count Leonardo Martinengo — and lists the four platoons under lieutenants Ricchieri, Bruno, Andriani and Gabbi, with colonel Chiaria reviewing them.
- The Touring's second motorcycle practicality run, held on 3 July under capoconsole cav. A. Rostain with Oreste Gorla for the Direzione; 32 riders lunched at the Colle Sestrières (2,160 m) and Giuppone was first back at the Barriera di Francia in Turin at 15.04.
- Rostain's technical report on the 39 entered machines: 2–3 HP suits a touring motorcycle, no twisted belts survive, and although 25 of the 37 starters used trapezoidal belts nine of them failed while every flat-belt machine finished; only entry no. 19, water-cooled with two speeds and a friction clutch, met his call for a clutch.
- The Touring's severe rules drew a single entrant, signor Paschetta of Turin with the Hine-Watt 'Columbia' acetylene lamp from Chicago; a breakdown 12 km from the finish at Rivoli left the jury unable to judge, and the lamp's water feed, gas valve and interchangeable parts are described.
- Standing department on hotels and hotel-keepers.
- The Hotel Dolomiti Meridionali at the Piano della Fugazza on the Rovereto–Schio road, built to engineer Giovanni Letter's design and opened on 4 July with a speech by president dott. Olinto De Pretto: over 50 beds, concrete terraces, a 22 m building with a 12 m tower, telephone to Valli dei Signori and a spring giving 180 litres a minute.
- The Italian hotel-keepers' congress at Milan and on Lake Maggiore, 24–25 June, under Federico Fioroni: Brunialti's projection lectures for the St Louis exhibition, cav. Bertolini on begging, and honorary membership for ministers Giolitti and Rava and for Touring director Federico Johnson.
- Inserted circular from the Brescia Consolato, signed capoconsole avv. Mario Tarenzi, calling members to the Touring's general meeting and congress during the Esposizione Bresciana; the usual prizes are abolished in favour of a richer individual badge, and the honorary presidency and committee are listed.
- Hour-by-hour programme for 28–29 August: reception and machine store at the S. Barnaba school, vermouth d'onore at the Forza e Costanza gymnasium, the national congress in the exhibition hall on the Cidneo, a horse show, Berlioz's Damnation de Faust, Angherà's lantern lecture on motorcycles and cars in war, and a chartered steamer round Lake Iseo.
- Terms of entry: 5 lire for the meeting or 10 including the Lake Iseo trip with its visit to the Castro ironworks and Riva di Solto lime kilns, entries and fees to reach the Consolato in via Pendente by 25 August, lodgings from 2 to 8 lire, and rail reductions of 40 to 60 per cent.
- Standing department on the tourist trade and the movement of visitors in Italy.
- L. Massuero, editor of La Provincia di Como, notes the founding of the Lombard and lakes section of the Associazione nel Movimento dei Forestieri and objects that it courts only foreigners while Italians go off to Zermatt or the Rigi knowing nothing of the Cuneo valleys or the Val Brembana; the Rivista replies, and Claudio Treves's piece from Il Tempo is added.
- Baron Adolf Ingenhaeff zum Berenkamp, president of the Geselligkeits-Verein der Eisenbahnbeamten in Linz, enrols his society in the Touring and praises the hotels of Como, Maggiore and Garda while criticising town inns whose bills are neither fair nor accurate.
- Standing photographic department.
- Prof. Rodolfo Namias explains orthochromatic plates and yellow filters for landscape and portrait work, praises the new Guilleminot plates, and credits Miethe's ethyl red and the Hoechst 'Ortochrom T' sensitisers with advancing direct three-colour photography.
- Standing railways department.
- Summary of Maggiorino Ferraris in the Nuova Antologia: British third-class travel grew from 200 to 900 million passengers between 1870 and 1900, while Italians make under two journeys a year and third class is kept off the expresses in often indecent carriages.
- The rebuilt Regoledo funicular between Varenna and Bellano on the Ferrovie Elettriche Valtellinesi: 440 m in two 220 m sections at gradients of 57.4 and 35–43 per cent, re-equipped with patent brakes by the Usines de Roll of Bern, which also rebuilt the Vesuvius line.
- A trackless electric tramway proposed from Spezia to Portovenere on the Helios patent was vetoed by the military because the line would pass the Panigaglia powder magazine; two trackless lines already run in Italy, Gallarate–Samarate on the Lombard-Gérin system and Castellammare Adriatico–Pescara on captain Cantoni's.
- Electric traction has opened on the 5 km Mestre–S. Giuliano tramway serving the Venice steamer pier: two motor cars, hourly service, 550 volts from a 55 HP steam plant, and a total cost of over 150,000 lire.
- Prof. P. G. Holden's Iowa 'school trains', provided free by the railways, carried him 450 miles in three days for 60 lectures at 50 stations on selecting seed maize, reaching some 15,000 farmers.
- Charles Linthérie in the Revue des Deux Mondes weighs five Channel schemes — Mathieu's 1802 tunnel, filling the strait for 900 million, a bridge whose piers fell from 340 to 121 to 72, a submerged bridge 15 m down, and a 150 m train ferry costing only about 20 million francs.
- Munsey's Magazine on the newly opened New York subway: five-car electric trains at 26 or 48 km/h on four tracks, stairs lit by daylight, 132,000 horsepower from a works costing 35 million, and 270 million francs spent in all.
- Standing mountaineering department.
- The XXXV congress of Italian alpinists called by the Turin section is put back to 31 August–5 September and will end at the Moncenisio; on 2 September the Rifugio-Albergo Gastaldi at the Crot del Ciaussinè (2,649 m), facing the Bessanese, is to be inaugurated.
- The S.A.T.'s XXXII summer meet at Cavalese on 7 August, with the Latemar and Catinaccio (2,998 m) climbs, the opening of the Taramelli refuge in the Monzoni, and a social tour over the Passo del Pordoi to Ampezzo; the Escursionisti Veneziani will attend.
- A party of young women of the Mediolanum femminile, led by their president Amelia Cavaleri Mazzucchetti, climbed the 1,631 m Punta Rers above Varallo and returned the same day.
- Standing cycling department.
- La Sera of Milan, reviewing the Touring's Annuario 1904, counts 26,468 cyclists and 6,497 Touring members in Milan province; Como gives the highest proportion of members and Pavia the lowest at 8.05 per cent, and Lombardy's cyclists have risen from 31,900 to 54,471 in five years.
- The Austrian electrician G. Straka's self-lighting device: a small roller pressed against the tyre, its friction adjustable, drives a miniature dynamo sufficient for an electric lamp.
- An English paper's list of maimed cyclists: the one-legged American N. Brown who rides 100 km a day, Spread who covered London to Brighton in 6h 26m on one leg, the handless Mr Scott steering with a special fitting, and Macinson who crossed Scotland and England on a hand-driven tricycle.
- A draft regulation for the 'ciclo-saluto': a soldier on a bicycle should slacken pace, sit upright and look his superior frankly in the face, dismount if he must speak, and is excused altogether in traffic where he needs both hands.
- Maurizio Martin in Le Vélo puts France at about 1,750,000 cyclists, 150,000 more than last year, and expects over two million by 1906 — one machine to every thirty inhabitants, with the Loire, Loiret, Ain and Maine-et-Loire highest.
- The St Petersburg post and telegraph administration has bought machines for fifty cyclist messengers, and finds dispatch delivery much quicker.
- Standing motoring department.
- The four-cylinder 14 HP Renault chassis from Billancourt: the side radiators are gone, replaced by one behind a fully closed bonnet with a flywheel fan that draws air twice through the finned tubes, so the pump-less thermosiphon water never reaches 100°; Simms-Bosch magneto with accumulator alternative. Agent A. Fusi e C., piazza Castello 16, Milan.
- Standing motorcycle department.
- The Allright built by the Köln-Lindenthaler Metallwerke around a 2¾ HP Belgian F.N. engine (70 mm bore, 80 mm stroke) in a seamless-tube frame, with a sprung telescopic fork stiffened by a steel blade, constant-level carburettor, two band brakes that cut the ignition, and a choice of 36 mm flat or trapezoidal belt. Agent M. Türkheimer, via Lambro 4, Milan.
- Practical hints for beginners: checking accumulator, petrol tap and oil before starting; never shortening a long belt by more than a centimetre at a time; blowing out a blocked petrol jet with the tyre pump; the three causes of bangs in the exhaust box; and braking gently at speed.
- Ing. Piero Ponci proposes quoting a motorcycle's 'development' — the distance covered per firing stroke — as simply four times the pulley diameter for the usual 0.65 m wheel, so machines and makers' hill-climbing claims can be compared by a single number.
- Standing department of outings and rallies.
- Nearly a thousand took part in the Acqui cycling and motoring rally held by the Touring Consolato and the Audax section during the San Guido fair: 54 motorcycles and 4 cars, fanfare bands from Genoa, Altare and Savona, a carnet-ricordo of city views for the women riders, and a silver cup for the Como squad.
- Console Pericle Razzini of Palermo recounts carrying a parchment to the King for the opening of the Bersaglieri museum: 1,060 km in ten marching days from Palermo through Messina, Monteleone, Cosenza, Castrovillari, Salerno and Capua on 30 kg war-loaded bicycles, and he found Calabria's roads good and its people hospitable.
- New clubs: the 'Vi et Mente' cycling union formed in Milan among the Circolo Popolare cattolico del S. Cuore under Ernesto Colombo, the 'Sporting Club Forza e Vigore' at Nizza Monferrato, and the Club Ciclistico Cadorino at Pieve di Cadore under dott. Arturo Coletti.
- Standing miscellany department.
- Heavy wooden sledges hauled at speed down the steep paved mountain roads at the Sagra di San Michele, Enego and Terragnolo; the Colonia Alpina Bassanese Umberto I now has its thirty sickly children drawn uphill to Enego by mules in the same sledges.
- Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri in Il Marzocco on the restored Loggia degli Osi in Milan's piazza dei Mercanti — five ground arches freed of eighteenth-century pilasters and an upper loggia with the parléra recovered — by architects Savoldi and Borsani.
- Prof. Giovanni Ricchieri's motion, carried at the fifth Italian geographical congress in Naples, calls for the 1900 census returns at the Lincei to be worked through and a standing office founded for Italian place-names; the Touring backs it and asks members to report errors in its guides and its Istituto Geografico Militare maps.
- Dott. Cesare Battisti in Tridentum: woodland covers 3,005.77 of the region's 6,356.53 square kilometres (47 per cent), from 74 per cent in Val di Ledro to 35 per cent at Malè, and is 56 per cent conifer against 44 per cent broadleaf.
- The 13th and 14th infantry, garrisoned at Padua, raised a stone monument on the Colle di San Martino to their dead of 24 June 1859 — 578 casualties in the brigade — and major Ferrari's history reveals that the map name 'Controcania' is Austrian surveyors' mangling of 'Cà del cont Tracagn'.
- The government is said to want to auction the fortress of S. Barbara at Prato for 25,000 lire; Il Marzocco is quoted urging that it be not merely saved from sale but restored to its former dignity.
- Which stream did Caesar cross? The Uso at Sant'Arcangelo, the Fiumicino at Savignano and the Pisciatello at Cesena all claim the honour, and cavaliere Rossetti has lately argued for the Fiumicino on the authority of the Peutinger table.
- Standing department of court judgments affecting tourists.
- Pretura Urbana di Milano, 11 June 1904: signorina Vittoria Brambilla, stopped on the corso Sempione without a licence, was acquitted because the licensed mechanic Mazza Agostino beside her worked the brake and was the real driver.
- Pretura di Abbiategrasso, 9 June 1904: console Antonio Cocini acquitted, since the town's 1878 by-law lapsed on 1 January 1898 and the 1897 decree bans cycling only on pavements and on park or public-garden walks reserved to pedestrians and riding horses; avv. Cesare Agrati closes the column he founded.
- Standing book-review and library department.
- Review of the twelve-chapter collaboration between Giovanni Saragat ('Toga Rasa') and Guido Rey, author of the Monte Cervino book, illustrated with facsimile autographs of Felice Giordano, Tyndall, Quintino Sella, Whymper, Fitz Gerald and the Duca degli Abruzzi.
- Review of Hoepli's 124-page motorcyclist's manual, running from surface and spray carburettors through valves, trembleurs, ignition, vibration theory, two-stroke engines, transmission and lubrication to a chapter on roadside repairs.
- The fortnightly illustrated Rivista dello Sport has begun at Palermo under Dorè Montalbano, and the Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini has issued the first Bollettino dell'Alpinista at Rovereto, edited by Gustavo Chiesa; the S.A.T. gives a silver plaque to any member bringing in five new ones.
- Books received, including Pietro Pascoli on petrol railcars for army service, Fermo Magni's illustrated Valsassina guide, and the yearbooks of the Milan Automobile Club, the Dutch A.N.W.B., the Norske Turistforeningen and the Austrian automobile club.
- Gifts to the library: De Magistris's Bibliografia Geografica della Regione Italiana, Marco Perosa's monograph on Borgo Vercelli, an 1811 Etat général des routes de poste des Provinces Illyriennes given by Vittorio Cavazzocca Mazzanti, console of Verona, and two Wolfgang Vogel motoring handbooks.
- Standing department of Touring communications and news.
- Council business of 16 July: from 1,238 ballots rag. Romeo Riva, rag. Gino Turrini and rag. Attilio Soffredi were elected auditors; avv. Cesare Agrati declined re-election as councillor; a new head of office was created; Bertarelli reported the road-improvement commission constituted; sittings were suspended for the holidays.
- The old offices are cleared and the Touring is installed at via Monte Napoleone 14, to be formally inaugurated in November for the club's tenth anniversary.
- Paravia (Turin, Rome, Milan, Florence, Naples) takes the general depot of Touring publications and will supply booksellers; members presenting a stamped card get 25 per cent off.
- Subscribers who sent only instalments for the new edition are pressed to settle at once so that the three volumes and maps can go out and the club can know how many spare copies it has.
- An appeal for each of the 40,000 members to present one new member before October, which would double the roll in time for the club's first decade.
- Rewards for recruiters: a silver commemorative medal for ten new members, a large silver for fifty, gold for a hundred, the title of recordman for the year's best, plus a Reinach and Torriani notebook and E. Botticella's monthly railway timetable.
- Prize draw for members presenting ten or more between 1 November 1903 and 31 October 1904: a Milan–Paris return ticket for the VII cycle and motor Salon from the travel firm Sommariva, Bowden and Carloni brakes, 'Nixe', Pocket Poco and Premo cameras, ten sets of AGFA plates and developers, and a group of Brentari guides.
- Running list of the Touring's newly erected road signs, numbered from 108: Camonica valley warnings at Pisogne and Corna, a 'dangerous descent' board at Pogno, four pairs of 'slow' and direction signs at Rubiera, a rough-road pair at Polesella given by Pneu Michelin, and a long Siena province series running to no. 197 at Onigo.
- Twenty-first list of affiliated hotels with room and meal tariffs, servants' rates and garage space, from the Albergo Biffi at Clusone and the Leon d'Oro at Iseo to Naples's Grand Hotel du Vésuve and Perugia's Palace Hotel.
- Fourth list of petrol depots, nos. 201–224 from Asti to Velletri, each with the 695/700 grade price (0.95 to 1.40 lire a kilo), weekday and holiday hours and an address for out-of-hours supply.
- Fifteen Italian and two foreign members complete five years' membership, bringing the total of quinquennial members to 1,230 at 15 July.
- Province-by-province list of life and annual membership candidates, from Alessandria and Ancona through Milan and Rome to Trentino, Venezia Giulia, France, Brazil and Uruguay, closing with 40,110 annual and 653 life members, 40,763 in all at 15 July 1904.