Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 11, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Leading article on the September 1905 Calabrian earthquake: the Touring declines to open a separate members' subscription but director-general Federico Johnson appeals for donations at the Macerata banquet, and, quoting Luigi Barzini's Corriere della Sera dispatches from Monteleone on villages such as Parghelia and Drapia reachable only by goat tracks, announces an inquiry with local consuls into the region's roads.
- "Un Routier" climbs Monte San Giuliano (Erice) above Trapani on 29 July with the cyclist company of the 9th Bersaglieri, comparing its clean narrow streets to Volterra and describing the view over the Egadi islands, Ustica, Pantelleria, Capo Bon, Capo S. Vito and the Trapani salt pans.
- Avv. Paolo Tommasini, Touring consul for Soave, with Prof. Edoardo Sperotti of Sondrio and his eleven-year-old son Niso at the tiller, rows an outrigger canoe some 180 km down the Adige from Count Luigi Sparavieri's villa at Ronco all'Adige, via Legnago, Badia Polesine, Boara di Rovigo, Cavarzere and the Brondolo canal, reaching Chioggia after fourteen and a half hours.
- The rallies department, with full reports on the meetings at Macerata, Albenga, Belluno and Cavalese-Predazzo followed by shorter notices from Bagni di Casciana, Bedizzole, Conegliano, Fano, Loano, Maniago, Mestre, Pontremoli, Primiero and Rimini, whose council formally apologised to visiting cyclists for a badly run festival.
- The Touring's national tourism convention held at Macerata on 17-19 September, organised by a committee under Marchese Francesco Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria with avv. Mario Moschini-Antinori and consuls Ferruccio Micciani and Vincenzo Perogio, and attended by director-general Federico Johnson; the full illustrated account is deferred to the next number.
- The young Unione Sportiva Albenga's July rally, prepared by a committee under president avv. Luigi Sola and T.C.I. consul Giuseppe Viziano: a banner inauguration in piazza XX Settembre with Marchese Domenico Del Carretto di Balestrino, a parade of more than 400 cyclists and a banquet of nearly 200 covers, closing with a telegram of greeting to Federico Johnson.
- The rally of 13-14 August at Belluno, where squads from Trieste, Padua, Vittorio, Conegliano, Bassano, Feltre, Sospirolo and Auronzo - close to a thousand riders - attended the inauguration of the Veloce Club Alpino's gonfalon, a gift of the ladies of Belluno, and of the Società Ginnastica Alpina's new flag, with the Universitas Mearostorum cup awarded.
- The mid-August Trentino cycling rally at Cavalese and Predazzo, joined by the Veloce Club di Primiero and the Alto Avisio, Basso Avisio and Trento clubs - about 140 riders - with speeches by Francesco Brigadoi, Augusto Stenico and Giuseppe Leitempergher and a toast to a future Trentino cycling federation.
- Under the Ferrovie heading, results of the German Public Works Ministry's high-speed trials on the almost level 23 km Zossen-Marienfelde line near Berlin: compound locomotives of 2/4, 2/5 and 2/6 axles ran safely at up to 120 km/h, reduced to 110 on curves, with four-cylinder machines and superheated steam found preferable.
- The photographic column, carrying Prof. R. Namias's paper on boric acid as a restrainer and a notice of the Milan magazine Il Progresso Fotografico's new annual prize competition for artistic prints reproduced in its supplement L'Arte fotografica.
- Prof. R. Namias recommends boric acid, dissolved in 10 per cent potassium bromide, as a restrainer far more effective and more stable than the alkaline bisulphites he studied in 1903: it rescued a plate exposed thirty times normal in a hydroquinone-metol developer, and added to hypo it keeps the fixing bath clear for weeks.
- The Touring's hotel-improvement commission and the Milan 1906 Exposition announce a national competition for model hotel bedrooms in three classes - C for grand hotels in cities and spas, with hot water, low-pressure steam or radiator heating and electric light and bells - closing 31 October, at L.20-30 per square metre, judged by a jury drawn from the Touring, the Italian hoteliers, the Automobile Club and the Club Alpino Italiano.
- The roads department, running from the Milan 1906 road-metal competition and the paracarri controversy through national road statistics and the projected Apennine highway to the Gran San Bernardo road, Milan's electric water-cart and paving works, and the Touring's own two road prize competitions.
- The ordinary-roads commission of the Milan 1906 Exposition announces a prize competition for monographs on the rocks of a given Italian region usable as road metal, funded by asking road authorities for L.20 per 100 km of network and divided into three regional groups so every part of Italy has an equal chance of an award.
- Prompted by a fatal crash against a kerb-post on the Strada di Francia near Turin and the ensuing referendum in La Stampa opened by the abolitionist engineer V. Croizat, the writer argues paracarri no longer protect either vehicles or pedestrians and should give way to a raised-verge road section or continuous pillar-and-bar barriers in the mountains.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi summarises Oreste Rizzini's London letter to La Patria of Rome on the "sixth sense of traffic" needed to cross streets packed with drays, omnibuses, motor cars, hansom cabs and bicycles, noting that City men and errand boys possess it and women least of all.
- Figures from the director-general of bridges and roads' report to the Ministry of Public Works on Italian roads at 30 June 1904: 138,096 km of public carriage roads, densest in Lombardy at 784 m per square kilometre and sparsest in Sardinia at 183 m, with national roads cut from 13,499 to 6,655 km as railways took over their traffic.
- A complaint that the Farnese milestones of the Via Emilia in the old duchies of Parma and Piacenza are now illegible even near the towns, with an appeal to Parma's mayor Senator G. Mariotti, and the tale of a decaying arch a kilometre outside Parma left unrestored while Parma, S. Lazzaro and the province argued over jurisdiction.
- Dr Francesco Bonacini of Casinalbo near Modena proposes an almost level road between the Abetone and Cisa passes to link the national roads and trans-Apennine railways of eight provinces, fit for steam tramways and motor cars and doubling as a 1,300 m climatic resort; the prefects of Florence and Modena authorised survey work in June 1904.
- A warning that the old Aosta to Saint-Rhémy road has very dangerous points at the 19th kilometre, where two paths join and one turns off for Etroubles, and lower stretches too narrow for two cars to pass; the T.C.I. will press for the road to be rectified and meanwhile urges members to drive it with the greatest care.
- Milan's electric watering car, a tram-like 5,000-litre tank drawing water from the street main and current from the tramway line, sprinkles a band about twenty metres wide and covers 30,000 square metres an hour against 5,000 for an ordinary horse cart; three are now in service, the last two built in Italy.
- Milan's paving programme ahead of the 1906 Exposition: granite slabs on the south side of piazza del Duomo, compressed asphalt with raised pavements around the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, granite in via Manzoni and via Principe Umberto, while the cathedral frontage stays cobbled and the via Orefici clearance is postponed by an expropriation suit.
- Twenty-six entries were received for the Touring's competition for a practical handbook for roadmen and sixteen for its competition for a road monograph on an Italian region; special juries have been appointed for each and the awards will be reported once decided.
- Federico Johnson, driving Milan-Bologna-Ancona-Loreto-Macerata-Gubbio-Assisi-Arezzo-Abetone-Modena to reach the Macerata convention, reports milestones still marked in miles between Florence and Arezzo and almost no signposts in the Marche, and offers two signposts for the notoriously dangerous bend at Sieci near Pontassieve where he nearly collided with a runaway cart.
- New signposts recorded: numbers 293-302 at Alessandria, given by the municipality and erected under capo-console prof. Luigi Ricci at Porta Torino, Porta Alessandria, bricco Fassio, Quarto Astese and Isola d'Asti, plus two "slow" danger signs at Fino Mornasco near Como, bringing the running total to 1,300 signs and L.17,100 subscribed.
- Correspondence from Venice on the Italian Alpine Club's 36th congress in the Dolomites, organised by the Venice section under Dr Giovanni Chiggiato with president Giovanni Arduini: 307 members enrolled and 247 completed the whole circuit, among them ten women, and the meeting brought the C.A.I. at last into the Trentino valleys long dominated by the German-Austrian Alpine Club.
- The motoring department, opening with the Brescia speed week and continuing with Cogliolo on the courts, Magrini on petrol traction and the Meyan-Siddeley touring match, then short notes on Colonel Roma du Boccage's Portuguese motor artillery battery, New York's municipal motor fleet, a Mors London-Paris coach service and the King of Siam's ministers begging him to give up motoring.
- The Brescia circuit, won by Itala against older foreign makes; the Touring dwells less on the racing than on the S.A.B. committee's tonnes of "Fix" oil laid against dust at level crossings and through villages, and on the road education it gave carters, cyclists and pedestrians across the provinces of Brescia, Cremona and Mantua, with priests reading the traffic notices in dialect from the pulpit.
- Prof. Pietro Cogliolo of Genoa University, reprinted from La Stampa, argues that Italian judges treat the motor car with the same inherited hostility once shown to the cyclist - the "arrotino impazzito" jibe wrongly attributed to Carducci - citing a Turin Court of Appeal case near Farigliano where a driver was imprisoned after a horse bolted and killed its carter.
- Petrol traction on the railways: Oldsmobile inspection cars from Detroit supplied by Charles Jarrott and Letts of London for British railway inspectors, and Wolseley of Birmingham's 90 HP petrol-electric railcar with Westinghouse dynamo tested on the North Eastern Railway, plus a 20 HP narrow-gauge petrol locomotive for farms and mines.
- Answering a Times article claiming British touring cars were superior, Paul Meyan of France Automobile drove a 24 HP De Dietrich against a rival's 18 HP Siddeley over 4,461 km from Paris in fourteen days, winning in 100 h 30 m against 119 h 4 m; Ing. E. Magrini adds that Meyan now plans a great touring circuit of France for 1906.
- Results of the Automobile Club de France's trial of industrial vehicles and military wagons, 28 July to 8 August 1905, with entry weights and payloads by class - Mototri Contai tricycles, Krieger, Gardner-Serpollet, De Dion-Bouton and Mors omnibuses - and Delahaye, De Dion-Bouton and Gillet-Forest taking the first three places among the army wagons and being bought by the government.
- Miscellany: the Società Dantesca Italiana's purchase and Attilio Formilli's restoration of Florence's Palagio dell'Arte della Lana, the erosion pillar Fungo di Piana Criscia on the Bormida di Spigno, a bust planned at Rovereto for Clementino Vannetti, Trento's new Filarmonica palace by Emilio Paor, Carducci photographed in a motor car at Madesimo, and the new Photo-Touring de France.
- Book notices on Maria Alinda Brunamonti's posthumous Ricordi di viaggio (Barbèra, 1905), Alessandro Chiappelli's Pagine d'antica arte fiorentina, Candiani and Castiglioni's Richiamo alla questione ferroviaria milanese, and Carlo Stiavelli's L'Arte in Val di Nievole, the first of Lumachi's Toscana illustrata series, whose author's death is announced with the review.
- Reported judgments on motoring liability: the Perugia magistrate Camillo Sassi dismissed both claims in Ranieri and Gori v. Ricciarelli over a shying mare on the tram rails; the Turin Court of Appeal decided Sacco v. Barbero against the motorist; the Rome Cassation freed Count Stefano De Asarta over an unlit lamp; and a Rennes appeal made a cowherd's employer pay 65 francs for a collision with a straying cow.
- Legal consultant avv. Bernardo Garbati answers members on unlit cycle and motor lamps, the new tax bill on cars, motorcycles and cycles, whether cyclists may still use a soft-toned horn, Messina's attempt to revive numbered cycle plates, detachable sidecar machines wrongly classed as cars, and speeding charges based only on a policeman's word.
- The law of 6 July 1905 sets import duty on motor cars at L.200, L.400 or L.600 according to weight; since many frontier offices still lack weighbridges, members should enter the exact weight on their T.C.I. triptyque or carry an authentic certificate of it to avoid being turned back.
- Belgium's ministers of finance and public works have extended to motorcycles the frontier facilities already granted to cycles, so a T.C.I. card bearing the holder's photograph, the club's dry stamp and the machine's details admits a member's used - not new - machine, subject to re-export.
- The month's newly affiliated hotels and restaurants with room and meal prices, garage space and the 10 per cent members' discount - Arona, Auronzo, Crema, Gavirate, Rovereto, Savona, Sorrento, Stresa, Tirano and Verona - with price corrections for Perugia and Arona, followed by the thirteenth list of affiliated petrol dealers and the new consular, medical and legal appointments for 1905-1906.
- The roster of members who applied between 1 and 31 August 1905, listed by province from Alessandria to the Colonia Eritrea and abroad - Trieste, Rovereto, Lille, Paris, Dresden, London, Cairo, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Iquique, Montevideo, Smyrna and Bangkok - closing with totals of 48,542 annual and 896 life members.