Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 11, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Front-page notice that the 1905 subscription of L. 6 (L. 8 for members living abroad, the extra two lire covering foreign postage on the club's publications) must be paid by 15 January. Members are asked not to send foreign stamps or banknotes in ordinary letters, and those in England and America to use international money orders.
- Opening article on how the Touring Club Italiano marked the close of its tenth year in 1904 — a commemorative medal to every member, a dinner for past and present councillors, and a batch of new publications — ahead of the main decennial festivities set for May 1905 in Milan.
- Description of the bronze pendant medal offered to every member by director-general Federico Johnson: as La Stampa Sportiva of Turin puts it, a young athlete's head with the motto vi et mente, and on the reverse a vigorous fruiting tree recalling the club's fifty thousand members. Silver strikings went only to capoconsoli and consuls, so the Council refuses members' requests to exchange the bronze for silver or gold.
- Corriere della Sera's account of the dinner of 29 December at the Orologio, at which the serving Council entertained some fifty former councillors. Johnson distributed commemorative silver medals and gold ones to conte Giulio Venino, A. G. Bianchi, cav. Vigliardi-Paravia, Alfredo Zaffaroni and ing. Alberto Riva, while L. V. Bertarelli handed round the first copies of the Abruzzi e Molise guide and prof. Brentari's six railway guides.
- Presentation of L. V. Bertarelli's new regional road guide, a 228-page volume describing 386 stretches of road with 558 gradient profiles, covering the country from Norcia and Monteleone di Spoleto down to Tufara and Sepino and from Ancona and Serracapriola west to Arsoli and Sora. It goes free to every member in good standing for 1904.
- Notice of dott. Achille Bertarelli's monograph La Via Monte Napoleone nella Milano vecchia, printed in 300 copies out of commerce and given to the Touring's councillors. It traces the street where the club's new seat stands in palazzo Taverna — the house where Carlo Porta died in 1821 — through its monasteries, the Marliani palace, Pietro Verri, Romagnosi and Cattaneo, and the Franchetti diligence company that ran coaches to Rome, Venice and Paris until after 1865.
- The six new railway guides compiled by Ottone Brentari and distributed at the councillors' dinner: Milano-Genova, Genova-Spezia, Genova-Ventimiglia, Verona-Venezia, Venezia-Bologna and Bologna-Firenze. Each runs to at least forty pages with a three-colour cover, an Istituto Geografico Militare map and vignettes of churches, monuments, bridges and viaducts.
- Programme for the decennial celebrations fixed for the last weekend of May 1905 in Milan: a congress on roads and transport, railway concessions for passengers, luggage, bicycles and cars, motor fuels, and reform of the bicycle tax (the last two to be argued by on. avv. Fausto Massimini), plus a national muster of volunteer cyclists and motorists, shooting at the new Boldinasco range, a banquet, and five caravans — cycling, motorcycling, motoring, rail and cycle-rail — running Milano-Varese-Laveno-Pallanza-Domodossola-Iselle to the Simplon works.
- Geographical and historical account of the Somali coast under Italian protection, from Brava, Merca and Mogadishu to the reef and surf that make landing impossible during the south-west monsoon. It recalls captain Antonio Cecchi's 1885 mission, the 1889 treaty paying the sultan of Zanzibar 400,000 lire a year, the 1896 massacre of Cecchi's caravan near Gheledi, and the Chiesi-Travelli enquiry into surviving slavery, illustrated with Gustavo Chiesi's photographs of the Menara tower, the camel market and freed slaves of the Dinle and Uadalan tribes.
- The railway department for January 1905, reporting the new Piedmont lines feeding the Simplon route and the state of railwaymen's uniforms.
- The 51 km single-track line along the Piedmont shore of Lake Maggiore through Lesa, Stresa, Baveno and Feriolo, built under ing. Ferrari of the construction office, tested on 29 December and due to open on 15 January. Also reported are the inspection of the Santhià-Borgomanero section, the 65 km Santhià-Arona line with its ten stations, and works on the new Arona station and the Italo-Swiss customs house at Domodossola.
- Inauguration on 27 December of the new electrically worked Varese-Luino line, with engineers Campiglio of the Ferrovia Nord and Mantovani of the Mediterranea, press and guests aboard the first train, which reached Luino to public acclamation.
- Reprint from Cronaca ferroviaria deploring the worn, torn and half-civilian dress of Italian station and train staff — service caps worn with civilian coats, crooked caps and coloured shirts — and urging the companies to clothe their men properly as foreign railways and much of the Rete Adriatica already do.
- The roads department, conducted for this number by ing. Massimo Tedeschi of Turin.
- Summary of ing. E. Dacorsi's paper Polvere e materiali d'inghiaiamento, arguing that good quarried metalling, not watering, oiling, tarring or westrumite, is the first remedy for road dust, with four rules on selecting, inspecting and rejecting road stone. It closes with Gautier's complaint in La France Automobile that Italian dust is a hurricane beside the French drizzle, and with the 26 November meeting at Victoria Hall of the Swiss anti-dust league founded by the T. C. Suisse under F. Raisin, with Navazza, dott. Christiani and ing. Rochette.
- Cartoon taken from La Vie pour rire: a man admiring a splendid full moon and regretting that he hesitated to put on his straw hat.
- Signposting department reporting that Rome, Pisa, Rovigo and Porto Maurizio have joined the provinces already carrying Touring road signs, with an elenco of positions to follow. New donations from the Touring committee at the Spezia tourism congress, ing. Luigi Devoti of Piacenza, the province of Porto Maurizio, the municipality of Florence and Silvio Armando Neri of Turin bring the running total to 1,074 signs and L. 14,550.
- The cycling department, whose technical articles in this number are signed by ing. Effren Magrini of Turin.
- From Der Radtourist of 22 December, the project for a bust of baron Karl von Drais modelled by Theodor Weyltihner of Karlsruhe, with F. M. Feldhaus of Heidelberg's notes on the inventor. Born in 1785 and dead in 1851, Drais was jeered and stoned in his last years, and soldiers guarding the town hall in 1848-49 amused themselves by making him ride his machine down the three steps into the square.
- Signed appraisal by ing. Effren Magrini of the Pedersen frame patented by the English engineer of that name and built by the Georges Richard firm, first seen in Italy on the Mantovani stand. All its tubes work purely in tension or compression, so they can be small, equal and equally stressed; the fork is of four tubes and the saddle a taut net slung on a strap and seven spiral springs.
- The Velotrab of prof. dott. Hoff of Berlin, a wheel-less bicycle on a fixed stand for winter training indoors, whose saddle is given movements imitating track, torrent gravel, gentle and steep climbs and descents, and even the trot of a horse. It needs no maintenance and serves children, ladies, trained riders and beginners alike.
- From Tribuna-Sport, the candidacy of the Roman pharmacist Lodovico Ramorini, eighty years old, first out on the opening day of the shooting season and last to leave it, and riding out to the Castelli most mornings during the close season. The Rivista corrects the article's statement that he served with Garibaldi in the Tyrol, where Garibaldi never was, rather than in the Trentino.
- History of the cyclist company of the 12th Bersaglieri, formed experimentally in May 1900, made an organic administrative unit on 1 August 1902 and at once sent to the Po valley scouting manoeuvres, then reorganised under its commander capitano cav. Giovanni Berutto in colonel cav. Ernesto Chiaria's regiment and used in the grand manoeuvres of 1903. It now works as a fighting and signalling arm, laying its own telegraph and telephone lines from material carried on the machines.
- Notes drawn from capitano Angherà's pamphlet Il ciclismo nella difesa nazionale and from The King and his Navy and Army. Besides sections attached to the non-permanent volunteer battalions, a permanent Cyclist Corps of three companies is based in London with a field officer, three captains, three subalterns, an instructor, eight NCOs, three trumpeters and 98 rank and file; training covers marches, sketching, signalling and marksmanship, and local detachments are now proposed along the coast.
- Communication from the Regio Ufficio metrico of Milan that the Ministry of Finance holds cyclists riding in January and February without a plate not to be in contravention of the velocipede tax law, and that 1905 plates and payments will be available from 2 January.
- Reminder that steam tramways will not always take bicycles on the car platforms, especially on Sundays and busy days: a machine occupies the room of four passengers and blocks the gangway, so bicycles travel as ordinary goods in the wagons provided, or by special concession in the service compartment when there is room.
- Cartoon from Sans Gêne: a stout mother says she would like to try cycling if she were not so big, and her child replies that she can well try, having seen the elephant ride a bicycle at the circus the night before.
- Long illustrated report on the seventh Paris motor and cycle Salon held in the Grand Palais from 9 to 25 December 1904, opened by president Loubet, with the industrial vehicles and motor boats pushed out to the Ville de Paris greenhouses for want of room. The Touring Club Italiano had a place of honour next to the Automobile Club de France, and the Italian exhibitors Fiat, Isotta Fraschini, Reina Zanardini, Florentia and Reinach are singled out; alcohol fuel has vanished, steam and electric cars stand still, and petrol makers are settling on one- and four-cylinder engines, shorter piston strokes, cone-and-leather clutches, train baladeur gearboxes, ball bearings and the magneto.
- Figures for the Paris Salon: 1,200 exhibitors on 22,500 square metres, 150,000 lamps for the general lighting alone, 180 guards paid fr. 5.50 a day, fr. 5,000 rent to the city of Paris plus three per cent of takings, sixteen central stands of 80 sq m let at fr. 50 the metre, and about fr. 700,000 spent by the organisers on lighting, decoration and upkeep.
- Figures from Le Figaro on the growth of French motor manufacture, from 3,000 cars worth 15 million francs in 1897 to an estimated 21,000 worth 160 million in 1904. The trade employs 50,000 workmen, 25,000 clerks and 30,000 mechanics, supports 300,000 to 400,000 people in all, pays over a hundred million francs a year in wages, and represents 500 to 600 million francs of cars on the road at 1 January 1904.
- French press notices of the club's Paris stand. Gastone de Pawlowski in the Journal de l'Automobile (Le Vélo) calls the T. C. I.'s work the greatest and most difficult undertaking of its kind in Europe, achieved against public authorities, terrain and habit, and notes its 42,000 members and its charge of the cycle and motor section of the 1906 Milan exhibition; a second notice of 11 December praises the soft carpets, art furniture and the panoramic relief map of Italy shown beside the Touring Club de France and the Club Alpin Français.
- The motoring department for January 1905.
- Announcement of the second Turin international motor show, opening on 21 January and running to 6 February 1905 in the Valentino park under the King's patronage, with its poster reproduced. A Turin correspondent of the Giornale di Venezia argues that the motor car has replaced painting and sculpture as the winter exhibition of the great European capitals; the sections take in cars, motorcycles, bicycles, motor boats, chassis, accumulators, brakes, sporting dress, books, plans and inventions, with French, English, German, Swiss and Belgian exhibitors alongside the Italians.
- On women drivers, under the sub-heading La moda nell'automobilismo. It follows Camille du Gast, the only woman among the drivers of the big cars in Paris-Vienna and Paris-Madrid, quoting her answer to the journalist Lefèvre on curbing speed at corners and keeping cool on descents, and reports the women's motoring clubs of England and America and the grand one she is organising in Paris. Since dust coats hide the figure, fashion has turned to small hats and floating veils; a Ladies' Journal pedal car for children is also shown.
- The Scuola Italiana per Meccanici e conduttori di Automobili opening in early January at corso Regina Margherita 128 in Turin, conceived by ing. Emilio Marenco, carried through with the help of capoconsole cav. A. Rostain, presided over by avv. Cesare Goria-Gatti under the honorary presidency of senator Secondo Frola, mayor of Turin. Two courses — one for drivers, mechanics and servants, one for gentlemen — each in theoretical and practical parts, with a full syllabus from thermodynamics to carburettors, ignition, clutches, steering, brakes, road law and first aid.
- Forecast that ninety per cent of 1905 motorcycles will use magneto ignition, followed by a description of the Simms-Bosch magneto built for motorcycles. Its heavy primary and fine secondary windings are mounted in series on the armature so that the high-tension current is brought down from the 15,000 volts of car magnetos to about 5,000, which can be insulated in so small a body; a shaped disc on the armature shaft works the make-and-break lever.
- Survey of Italian motor-coach services and of the government regulation on subsidies then before the Consiglio di Stato. Working lines include the Ossola-Canton Ticino service joining the Simplon to the Gotthard by Locarno, Intra, Pallanza and Gravellona, Pont Saint Martin-Gressoney, Spoleto-Norcia since 1902, Pitigliano-Orvieto and Pitigliano-Orbetello; projects cover Palau-Tempio Pausania-Sassari, Elba, the sub-Apennine group round Lucera, Lucera-Riccia-Campobasso, Cesenatico-Bibbiena, steam cars in the Cadore, the Valdarno Superiore, Thiene-Bassano, the province of Lecce, Tricase and Ravenna-Faenza.
- Motoring miscellany: Simms's British armoured car, a four-wheeled machine sheathed in 6 mm Vickers steel, armed with a 37 mm Maxim gun forward and two Maxim machine guns aft, driven by a 6 HP paraffin engine good for 15 km an hour and 330 km on one filling, and recommended by the War Office for coast defence; and an article in the Berlin Automobil-welt claiming that Siegfried Marcus, born in Hamburg about 1845, ran a petrol car in Vienna from 1875, four years before Selden.
- Cartoon from the Munich paper Schnauferl showing an alpenstock used as a practical way of taking dangerous downhill bends by car, with a note on the ferocious Austrian bill on injuries caused by motorists.
- The boating and inland-navigation department.
- dott. Ferruccio Truffi, writing in the Ateneo Veneto, on the importance of river navigation for Venice and the Po valley: ing. Alessandro Moschini's steam trial on the Po four years earlier, and the 1900 government commission's plan for 3,400 km of waterways costing over 80 million lire. With the Simplon about to open, Truffi urges an immediate start on the Venetian canals and part of the Po as far as Cremona, whence 100-ton barges could reach Pavia, Milan, Lake Maggiore and the Alpine passes.
- The aeronautical department, whose article in this number is signed by ing. Effren Magrini of Turin.
- Magrini's review of Italian airship projects, invoking padre Lana of Brescia and Leonardo as forerunners. Conte Almerico da Schio's ship, built by the Brigata Specialisti of Rome and at Schio for a 258-member company that includes the Queen Mother and three ministries, has an elastic rubber-panelled hull of 1,000 to 1,200 cubic metres, a 17.60 m aluminium car, a 12 HP Buchet motor and a 4.50 m Tatin screw for about 28 km/h; also described are Ottaviano Pacini's flattened areovado with vertical-lift screws, Giuseppe Pezzi's areodonno, Francesco Favata's twin-hull design, capitano Frassinetti's engine that runs in any position, and shorter schemes by de Micheli, Daina and Giuliani.
- The runs and meetings department.
- The Turin consulate's second winter outing, to be run at the end of January or the beginning of February: train from Turin to Oulx, sledge to Cesana for lunch and on by Clavières to Briançon for the night, ski practice next morning, and back to Turin the same evening. The cost is L. 28 to 32 a head excluding the rail fare, places are limited to eighty, and bookings go to capoconsole cav. Rostain in via Pisa 5.
- Short notice, received as the number went to press from consul rag. F. Trasatti, of the banquet given to on. Brunialti on his return from America at the Bertolini Splendid Hotel in Rome by the Roman consulate of the Touring, the Società Italiana degli Albergatori and the national association for foreign travel, with ministro Rava, on. Biancheri, on. Maggiorino Ferraris and ing. A. Riva at the top table.
- Club news: in Milan the new physical-education society Costanza has taken rooms in the school gymnasium of via Galvani and elected prof. G. Osculati president; at Pieve di Cadore the growing Club Ciclistico Cadorino has elected the town clerk and Touring consul rag. Augusto Zuliani, and is planning a 1905 experiment in volunteer cyclist dispatch-riding towards the frontier to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Pietro Fortunato Calvi's death.
- Book notices: A. Solitro's three-volume school reader I Rinalducci (Trevisini, Milan, 1905), praised for teaching practical everyday life and for devoting several pages to the Touring itself; and a pamphlet by V. Frey and A. Fasoli on using the waters of the Brenta in the Canale di Rienza, some 1,000 horsepower that could serve industry or the projected electric tramways of the Valsugana.
- Notices of other periodicals: the Corriere della Sera's Lettura on tourist associations by A. G. Bianchi, with a photograph of the decennial medal; the Illustrazione Italiana's Christmas number on Genoa and the two Rivieras, with De Amicis on Bordighera and Achille Tedeschi on his rides from Genoa to Spezia and Nice; Emporium on the new underground railways of London and Berlin; Vita Trentina, Sicula, Il Buon Cuore, L'Esplorazione Commerciale, the Riga Radfahrer-Vereinigung Union's road lists, Wandern und Reisen's closure, and the Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung's enquiry on the Austrian motorists' liability bill.
- The club's legal advice department, signed by the head legal consultant avv. Bernardo Garbati.
- Two judgments of the Milan urban magistrate avv. B. Severgnini. Cav. Augusto Massoni, president of the Automobile Club di Milano, is acquitted of exceeding fifteen kilometres an hour at Dergano because the delegate of Affori's report is contradicted by the witnesses and even the car's colour was wrongly given. Alfredo Singrossi is acquitted both of riding an unplated motorcycle — he held a permit — and of insulting the constable who thrust his stick into the wheels to stop him.
- Circular obtained from the Milan Intendenza di Finanza at the Touring's request, telling mayors, revenue guards and carabinieri that since the tax roll is only published in January and payment is due in the following month, bicycles may circulate in January and February without a plate; thanks are given to avv. cav. Cesare Olmo, chief secretary of the Intendenza.
- The club's own news and communications department for January 1905.
- Resolutions of the council meeting of 28 November: a single decennial festivities commission of Candiani, Guastalla, Favari and Silvestri with Cuneo and Mercanti of the office; formal note of the national committee for autonomous corps of volunteer cyclists and motorists, first meeting in Rome 17-19 December; comm. Giovanni Silvestri added beside dott. Guastalla at the head of the motoring section; Gola's proposals on road maintenance, road literature and the 1906 transport exhibition; the silver medals for councillors and deserving newspapers; and L. 20 towards the Paris monument to Sargent, inventor of the bicycle chain drive.
- The Touring Club Italiano has been awarded a diploma of high merit for its publications at the Romagna exhibition in Ravenna.
- Complete list of the national committee for the volunteer cyclist and motorist corps, from prof. Giuseppe Cesare Abba and senator Graziadio Ascoli to capitano Angherà, colonel Ernesto Chiaria and capitano Berutto of the Garda exercise, prince Prospero Colonna, Vincenzo Florio, the Ginori Lisci marquesses, comm. Fausto Massimini, cav. Augusto Massoni and conte Rinaldo Taverna of the Italian Red Cross. The Audax Italiano formed its own committee in Rome and is negotiating a fusion.
- General Pedotti, receiving the club's vice-director, asked that the national committee's meeting be put back to the end of January so that the war ministry's own studies could be ready; the committee will therefore meet at the Touring's Milan offices on 8 January and in Rome later in the month.
- The hotel-improvement commission, meeting under ing. Ferrini, notes the warm welcome given to its propaganda pamphlet but the very few requests for advice from hotelkeepers, and orders an enquiry through the consular corps. After L. V. Bertarelli's report on the Automobile Club de France's exhibition of hygienic bedrooms at the Paris Salon, it votes to fit a model hygienic room at the Touring's own premises and sets out three types — luxury hotel, secondary-town hotel and small inn — with dimensions, steam heating, electric light, telephone, varnished walls, movable carpets and posted furniture prices.
- What members received during 1904: the monthly Rivista of over 32 illustrated pages, the 696-page Annuario, the 228-page Abruzzi e Molise guide and the second (Swiss) sheet of the Carta dei Confini d'Italia, of which too few copies were printed and a second run is now ordered for some 3,000 members. The promised Stelvio and Moncenisio profiles and road monographs are set up and will follow in the spring for all who pay the 1905 subscription.
- The 1905 issue to members: the Rivista (commercial value L. 5), a wholly renewed Annuario (L. 4), the Puglie regional guide with profiles (L. 4), the first sheet of the frontier map covering the Italo-French border (L. 2.50) and some monographs (L. 2) — L. 17.50 of publications post free for a subscription of L. 6 in Italy or L. 8 abroad.
- Dispatch of L. V. Bertarelli's Abruzzi e Molise guide has begun at some thousands of copies a day; it will be put on sale to non-members at L. 4 only after every 1904 member entitled to a free copy has received his.
- The new edition of Bertarelli's Guida della Lombardia in three cloth-bound volumes of over 1,000 pages, with 1,000 profiles and itinerary descriptions of 2,300 road sections, and its six-sheet 1:100,000 topographic map of 90 by 60 cm. Members pay L. 8 at the Touring's office, up to L. 9.75 post free abroad; non-members L. 16. Many Lombard communes have bought it and made the sheets into a large wall map.
- Work on the 1905 Annuario is under way with considerable additions on the 1904 volume. Circulars asking for corrections and additions are going out and members are urged to answer promptly rather than complain later of errors, and to accent all place names — a point argued by L. Cesarini Sforza in the Bollettino dell'Alpinista of the Società degli Alpinisti Tridentini.
- Copies of the club's motoring yearbook remain, at L. 2.50 to members and L. 5 to others, orders and postal notes to the Direzione at Monte Napoleone 14, Milan.
- Answer to a frequent question: a member who has already paid the L. 6 for 1905 may become a five-year member by sending a further L. 24, receiving the badge free and enrolment through the whole of 1909.
- Seven rules for members writing to the club, to speed up replies: write as briefly as a telegram, address the Direzione impersonally rather than a named official, use a separate slip for each subject so the sections can work in parallel, sign clearly with the membership number, enclose a stamp for private business, look in the Rivista and Annuario first, and be patient with an office handling several hundred letters a day.
- Instructions to contributors: write at once after the event, keep it short and to what is genuinely new or important, send clear lively photographs, write on one side of the sheet only, and remember the magazine wants news of roads, railways, hotels and fine arts as well as of outings and banquets. Manuscripts are read and used but never returned.
- Request that members notify changes of address at once, since copies of the Abruzzi e Molise guide and decennial medals are coming back undelivered because the recipients no longer live at the addresses given.
- Warning that letters reaching the office unstamped or insufficiently stamped will in future be refused.
- Page of specimen vignettes from the Touring's railway guides, including portraits of the architect Michele Sanmicheli and of Antonio Fogazzaro. Nine guides are out in three groups — Milano-Torino, Milano-Bologna, Milano-Verona; Milano-Genova, Genova-Spezia, Genova-Ventimiglia; Verona-Venezia, Venezia-Bologna, Bologna-Firenze — at 50 cent. each, or a whole group post free for L. 1 to members ordering direct.
- Terms of the petrol and lubricant affiliation scheme: fixed maximum prices published in the Rivista and Annuario and entered in a book held by each affiliate, cans kept ready at a set price, at least one Touring-approved lubricant stocked, opening hours advertised, and scales, a gauze funnel and a Touring-marked thermometer-densimeter available to buyers. Changes are notified at Genova (De Pasquali ceases), Ottone and Pieve di Teco.
- List of candidates for membership who applied between 15 November and 15 December 1904, divided into life members — among them Duca C. Caracciolo di Castagneta of Rome and Augusto Guerra of S. Paulo, Brazil — and annual members opting for 1904 or for 1905, arranged by province and town from Alessandria and Aquila through to the foreign sections in England, Austria-Hungary and Uruguay.