Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 11, No 11
Articles in this issue
- Notice reminding Touring Club Italiano members that the 1906 subscription — 6 lire in Italy, 8 lire abroad — must be paid by 15 January, by postal money order to the club at via Monte Napoleone 14, Milan. Members prepaying a five-year block (30 lire, or 40 abroad) receive a silver badge reserved to them and never sold.
- Ottone Brentari's illustrated account of Monteleone di Calabria — Greek Hipponion, Roman Vibo Valentia — at the centre of the 8 September 1905 earthquake, covering Murat's use of the town as his Calabrian headquarters, Garibaldi's entry in 1860, the 300-room Gagliardi palace, Antonello Gagini's statues in Santa Maria Maggiore, and the wretched eleven-and-a-half-kilometre diligence road up from the railway station.
- Notes on the issue's engravings: the antique panorama of Monteleone reproduced from Giuseppe Bisogni de Gatti's 1710 Hipponii seu Vibonis Valentiae... Historia, with the Pignatelli three-pot arms in the corner, and the modern two-page panorama photographed by Francesco Saverio Francica, marchese di Panaya.
- The touring-and-rally department for November 1905, carrying the Touring's national meet at Macerata, the two gatherings held during Como's Lariane festivities, the Santa Maria Capua Vetere convegno, and shorter cycling rallies at Aosta, Bedizzole, Cesena, Desio, Mirandola and Saronno.
- The Touring's national meet at Macerata on 17-19 September, where a procession of over 300 cyclists closed by the Macerata squad and six cars paraded to the regional exhibition; the six-man Giovane Roma team rode from Rome in twenty hours of continuous marching, a ladies' committee presented a banner to the Sporting Club Helvia Recina, and director-general Federico Johnson drove up from Milan by car via San Marino, Loreto and Recanati.
- Two meets during Como's Lariane festivities: a gymnastics gathering of about 300 Italian and Swiss gymnasts, in which Cavalli of Labor Seregno, Cibeo and Bisio of Cristoforo Colombo Genoa and Gagnola of Forza e Coraggio Milan stood out, and a cyclo-moto-automobile convegno of some 800 entrants from 49 societies, with a lake trip, a Pro-Calabria collection and a flower battle won by Luigi Garrè of Como and the cyclist Carlo Sereni of Tavernola.
- The Sporting Club and the local Touring consulate held a cyclo-automobile meet on 1-2 October for the unveiling of the ossuary monument to the dead of the Volturno, attended by war minister Pedotti as the King's representative; teams came from Rome (Forza e Coraggio with its band, the Routier), Naples (Unione Velocipedistica Napoletana) and Caserta, but rain cancelled the second day's parade in favour of a banquet in the Teatro Garibaldi.
- The Routier Italiano was founded at Aosta on Sunday 30 September with a 101 km Aosta-Chivasso ride inside five hours; all five starters — Ettore and Pietro Molinari, Roberto and Giuliano Marguerettaz and Angelo Negri — finished in time despite tyre damage caused by the bad road between Aosta and Ivrea.
- The cycling meet of 8 October at Bedizzole doubled as the unveiling of a tablet to the Chiodi brothers, killed on the barricades in Brescia's Ten Days of 1849; capo console Mario Tarenzi led the parade in his car, the Unione ciclistica bergamasca and Veronese clubs from Castelnuovo and Poiano Valpantena took part, and following the Direzione's advice individual prizes were replaced by a fine commemorative badge and collective medals.
- Cesena's cyclo-automobile meet drew few cars but many cyclists, with squads from Ravenna, Cesenatico, San Mauro, San Marino, Mercatino Talamello, Fano and Fossombrone, and the cycling company of the 5th Bersaglieri from Bologna; the Bersaglieri squad and Clemente Ricci's flower-decked car from Ostra Vetere drew the loudest applause.
- The cycling meet of 1 October run by Desio's Touring consulate together with the agricultural and industrial exhibition committee, at which young women of Desio presented a standard to the new Unione Sportiva, with speeches by Fanny Gavazzi and dott. Gaetano Citterio; console Alberto Marcili chaired the organising committee.
- More than four hundred entrants and four competing bands at Mirandola's late-September cycling meet, with riders from Bologna, Milan, Modena, Florence, Turin, Genoa and as far as Chiavari; the town flew its great flag from the municipal tower and offered a vermouth d'onore at which Federico Johnson and capo console E. A. Musto of Chiavari spoke.
- Over 500 cyclists and clubs from across Italy at Saronno's meet of 8 October, attended by deputy Dell'Acqua, the sub-prefect of Gallarate and general Marini; after the parade the riders visited the Casa dei Veterani at Turate, where Dell'Acqua left 500 lire for the veterans.
- Massimo Tedeschi reprints ing. Enrico Dacorsi's article from Le Strade urging that Italian roads stop changing name and kilometre count at every administrative boundary — the Turin-Cuneo-Nice road carries five names and five separate kilometrages over barely 138 km — and that the names the Touring has already fixed on its guides and signposts be officially adopted.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi describes the moving streets of the large Australian cities, where each half of the roadway is divided into five platforms running from a fixed footway up to 14,481 metres an hour, the fastest fitted with three-seat compartments; the same travelling-platform principle is applied to help heavily loaded vehicles up steep or snow-choked gradients.
- Press complaints about Calabria's roads after the earthquake: Olindo Malagodi in La Tribuna on fourteen-hour carriage journeys over mud and stones, and Enrico Caviglia in the Nuova Antologia arguing that Catanzaro province's 1,700 km of carriage road and Calabria's 820 km of railway are already superfluous. The Touring adds five findings of its own, among them that Martirano, a mandamento capital, still has no carriage road at all, and that the roadman is a myth.
- Extracts from an open letter by "l'Assiduo" in the Cronaca di Lecco showing that every approach to Lecco deteriorates as it nears the town — the Bergamo road beyond Vercurago, the Como road as far as the Santa di Civate, the Milan road to Airuno — and urging steam rolling of the metalling as already practised at Milan, on the Turin-Pinerolo road and over 200 km in the southern provinces, 90 of them in Caserta.
- A "neoautomobilista" argues for a general code of road discipline: wire fencing instead of hedges and battered embankments on blind bends, a single rule of the road for all Italy, milestones and place names (almost wholly lacking outside Lombardy, Liguria and the Veneto), and plainclothes police patrols on motorcycles or in cars to catch stone-throwers, unlit carters and obstructive drivers.
- New road surfaces, opening with the compressed asphalt-and-caoutchouc paving being laid in via Legnano, Milan: asphalt powder is wetted with rubber solution in a mixer and spread cold in a 3-4 cm layer over the concrete base, which avoids the blistering that hot-laid asphalt suffers from evaporating moisture.
- Mr Labadens describes in Les travaux publics a road tested at Maintenon in which iron straps 3 mm thick and 30 mm deep are laid across the concrete base and tied with 4 mm wires, the asphalt or cement between them wearing away to leave drainage channels; the surface is said to carry over six tonnes per axle without deformation at 6 to 10 lire the square metre.
- Road miscellany: Bologna province extends its tarring trials to 1,353 metres of the Galliera road and the Corticella built-up area at 0.093 lire the square metre, using 1.08 kg of tar and 0.108 kg of anthracene oil per square metre; and the Milan provincial council, split between Sperati and Gattoni on one side and Negroni-Prato, Morosini and ing. Oliva on the other, postpones its wheel-tyre regulation to 1907 for ordinary vehicles and 1908 for farm carts.
- The Touring's signpost department announces that it will plot every sign it has erected on 1:25,000 sheets, and that donations will now be steered towards completing the great through routes — Turin-Venice, Milan-Rome, Ventimiglia-Genoa-Pisa-Florence — before secondary roads, with level crossings the first warning signs to be posted.
- Article 38 of the road police regulation makes keeping to the right the general rule but lets communes over 25,000 inhabitants impose keeping to the left, provided they post signs at the town entrances; the Touring's enamelled iron plates have been adopted at once by Milan, Turin and Rome, while Brescia has posted "tenere la destra" at its five gates for the benefit of Milanese motorists used to the left.
- Newly erected signposts: two put up at his own expense near Varallo by Oreste Lattes, the club's consul at Rome; a direction sign at Feltre and a "discesa pericolosa" plate given by Pneu Michelin above the Scala di Primolano at Arsiè, both installed by the club's lawyer Spartaco Zugni-Tauro; a "svolta pericolosa" at Fortogna near Longarone; and one at Besozzo.
- List of fresh donations towards signposts, headed by the Società Automobili Lombarda with 17 signs and 350 lire, followed by the municipalities of Caravaggio, Castelleone and Rivoli, the Montecatini spa concession, ing. Oreste Lattes and ing. Steno Sioli Legnani.
- "radix" reports the X Navigation Congress held in Milan from 25 to 30 September, where 1,300 of 2,200 registrants debated combined rail-and-water transport, the effect of deforestation and marsh drainage on river regimes, ways of overcoming great differences of level in canals, and shallow-draught boats; excursions took delegates down the Adda to Paderno and to the Vizzola Ticino power station, and the organisation was credited to ing. Sanjust di Teulada with senator Colombo and admiral Candiani.
- The motoring department for November 1905, carrying prof. ing. Effren Magrini's technical notes on petrol caps and steam generators, the accumulator-charging series by "Il Dottore", and reports on the Turin motor show, the motoring schools of Turin and Milan and a road-going steam locomotive in Caserta province.
- Two designs of quick-release petrol filler cap meant to do away with the screw caps that so annoy chauffeurs: the first locks by spring-loaded rods engaging a groove in the fixed part and is freed by pulling up the central rod C, the second by three small springs held apart by a disc on the same rod, with a small chain to stop the movable part being lost.
- Prof. ing. Effren Magrini describes the steam generator for cars devised and built by the Romanian C. D. Géraki: a rectangular steel drum divided into two chambers feeding two banks of Field tubes, in which rapid circulation prevents solid deposits and gives lightness, safety and quick raising of steam.
- A summary of the debate in the English press on whether petrol omnibuses can replace electric tramways: purchase costs are comparable once the overhead installation is counted, but running costs and the need for skilled men tell against petrol, so the motor bus cannot yet serve dense city routes with closely spaced stops though it can replace other traction on main country roads.
- The permanent commission has resumed work on Turin's third international motor show, expected between 3 and 18 February 1906 at the Valentino palace of fine arts with a new hall of over 1,500 square metres as its clou; the commission — march. Ferrero di Ventimiglia, avv. Goria-Gatti, conte Gastone di Mirafiori, cav. Nino Caimi, cav. Rostain and cav. Scarfiotti — will be enlarged by four elected manufacturers.
- Turin's school for motor mechanics and drivers, the first in Italy, enrolled 160 pupils in its opening year and restarts its gentlemen's and mechanics' courses in December under teachers including ing. Michele Ferrero and cav. Rostain; in Milan the Società d'Incoraggiamento d'Arti e Mestieri in via S. Marta repeats its 40-place course of machine drawing and evening lectures from 7 November.
- A road locomotive listed as motor vehicle no. 1 of Caserta province: two compound steam cylinders give 75 effective horsepower, enough to haul four stone wagons — 32 tonnes net — on the level at 6 km an hour on about 40 kg of coal an hour, carrying the 80 cubic metres a day of road metal that the firm of ingg. Gola and Conelli uses for steam rolling.
- "Il Dottore" explains how to charge motor and motorcycle accumulators without a mains supply, using eight Daniell cells, six or seven Bunsen or Cupron cells, and how to tell direct from alternating current and find the polarity with phenolftalein paper, lead strips or a pole finder; he warns that leaving a battery discharged over the winter causes sulphation, curable only by a 24- to 36-hour overcharge with fresh acid.
- Loose dogs are the most dangerous animal on the road for motorists, who often kill them to avoid worse and are then met with inflated compensation claims; article 55 of the public hygiene regulation obliges owners to keep them in, as the club member A. Olivieri, mayor of Cavazuccherina, has reminded his townspeople by public notice.
- Plan and key of the 1906 Milan international exhibition, spread between the Parco (fine arts, architecture, modern decorative art, the retrospective transport show, the congress hall) and the Piazza d'Armi (motoring and cycling, coachbuilding, the 45,000 square metre Galleria del Lavoro, and the German, French and Austrian sections), linked by an elevated electric railway, with an 80-metre lighthouse tower rising at the marine section.
- The miscellany department for November 1905, with items on the rebuilding of the Mole Antonelliana's spire in Turin, Pope Pius X's birthplace at Riese, the Calvi commemoration at Noale, the castle of Pizzo where Murat was shot, and the relief huts going up after the Calabrian earthquake.
- The council of the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento has agreed with Turin's municipality to rebuild the spire of the Mole Antonelliana, wrecked when the winged genius fell in the hurricane of 11 August; ing. Ernesto Ghiotti of the municipal public works office directs the work and a great gilded star will replace the angel, while prof. Annibale Rigotti's decoration of the great hall proceeds from the dome down to the side walls.
- Riese, a commune of 4,872 inhabitants in Treviso province eight kilometres from Castelfranco station, where Giuseppe Sarto — Pope Pius X — was born on 2 June 1835; a bust by prof. Guido Giusti of Venice on a Verona-stone base designed by prof. Antonio Bon was unveiled on 22 October before six bishops and an immense crowd, and the pope's sister keeps the Albergo alle due Spade beside the house.
- The commemoration held on 24 September at Noale, in whose hamlet of Briana Pietro Fortunato Calvi was born, for the patriot who led the defence of the Cadore in 1848 and was hanged at Mantua on 4 July 1855; his bones, brought from Mantua to Noale cemetery in 1867, were reinterred in a new tomb after an oration by avv. Battista Pellegrini, and the magazine reproduces a photograph of the procession supplied by the member Pedenin.
- The castle where Joachim Murat was shot on 13 October 1815 was declared a national monument by ministerial decree in 1862 and carries a memorial tablet placed by the commune in 1900, but the earthquake has left it uninhabitable and unsafe; its ditches have been turned into public latrines, and the writer asks the government to repair the building and the commune to move the latrine somewhere less historic.
- Some 170 Calabrian villages are destroyed or must be pulled down, and wooden huts are being run up beside the ruins while rebuilding is considered; the magazine prints a photograph of Engineer Corps soldiers building barracks near Comerconi, one of the worst-damaged places, under lieutenant Giovanni Ferreri.
- The club's official bulletin, carrying the council's resolutions of 4 October, news of the Guida delle Puglie and the Stelvio and Mont Cenis pass profiles, the new life-member badge, earthquake relief subscriptions, the road and photographic competitions and consular business.
- At the council meeting of 4 October under director-general Federico Johnson, ing. avv. Bernardo Garbati was made head of office and general secretary, the 1906 Annuario Generale was ordered begun at once for April publication, 1:100,000 maps were bought to update the signpost chart, the Stelvio and Cenisio profiles were reported ready, and 500 lire were voted to the road-metalling competition at the 1906 Milan exhibition.
- Dispatch begins of the Guida delle Puglie, the latest in L. V. Bertarelli's nearly complete series of regional guides; it goes free to every member who has paid the 1905 subscription, with a fuller account promised in the next number.
- Over 7,000 copies of the first sheet — the French frontier — of the Istituto Geografico Militare's map of Italy's borders have reached the club and will be sent out at once, with the hope of supplying every 1905 subscriber who has not yet received one.
- The illustrated itinerary monograph accompanying the Stelvio pass profile is printed and the Mont Cenis one is in the press; both booklets, in elegant covers, will be sent to all members before the end of 1905.
- The Direzione approved on 20 October a badge reserved for life members: an oval similor plaque with an olive-green enamel ground, gilt leaf border and the legend "socio vitalizio", carrying the gilt mignon Touring badge on blue enamel at its centre; made as pin or button and sold at 3.50 lire.
- The eighth international motor and cycle exhibition organised by the Automobile Club de France and the trade chamber opens in Paris in December, with the first congress on touring and road motor traffic at the Grand Palais from 11 to 16 December; the club's director-general has joined the honorary committee and the Direzione is negotiating reduced fares and easier issue of tickets for members travelling to Paris.
- A. Pedrini, the Touring's consul at San Francisco in California, sends 855.65 lire collected among members there for the victims of the Calabrian earthquake; the sum is passed to the Corriere della Sera, which will publish the donors' names.
- Count V. Bettoni, mayor of Brescia, writes thanking the Touring for its share in the success of the motoring week and promising that the city's public and private initiatives will follow the club's teaching in improving services, so that Brescia may deserve the favour of tourists.
- Warning that a firm has been sending consuls a glass-bead picture bearing the Touring arms and then demanding payment; the club has had nothing to do with the speculation, has protested at the misuse of its emblem, and tells consuls they are entitled to refuse the unsolicited present.
- The mottoes of the 26 entries for the Touring's practical manual for roadmen and the 16 for its monograph on the roads of an Italian region, together with the two juries, both chaired by cav. Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli and including ing. Corazza of Turin province, ing. Sanjust de Teulada and prof. Massimo Tedeschi.
- The jury of Rodolfo Namias, Giulio Rebuschini, G. Fumagalli and Alfonso Valeri found the entries of 54 competitors so poor in technique and artistic taste that it advised withholding the prizes and giving only encouragement medals — large silver to Scotto of San Remo, small to Bianchi of Monza, bronzes to eleven others — though the Direzione decided to distribute the announced prizes all the same.
- Extracts from the study commission's report on the 1906 Annuario Generale, to reach members by April: 55,000 volumes of about 1,000 pages mean the manuscript must be delivered by 31 December, so consuls and secretaries must return the new questionnaire during November. The entry list is to be reordered alphabetically, dropping the fifty-page index and communes lacking a consul, mechanic, petrol store, hotel, station, telegraph or telephone, and adopting the conventional signs already used in the Annuario dell'Automobilismo.
- On the proposal of capo console generale Silvestri, the Direzione rules that consular plates are sold to capo consoli and consuls subject to return, with refund of the sum paid, on resignation or loss of office, and that badges and the official stamp must likewise be given back.
- The list of candidates who applied for membership between 1 and 30 September 1905, arranged by province and by country abroad — life members include the Conte di Torino at Florence and Charles Lowcock at Mongtze in Yunnan, with annual members from Iquique in Chile to Porto Said and San Francisco — closing with totals of 48,927 annual and 901 life members, 49,828 in all, at 30 September 1905.