Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 11, No 4
Articles in this issue
- Programme for the TCI's tenth-anniversary national tourist festival in Milan on 27-29 May 1905, with the Congresso Nazionale in the Castello Sforzesco taking papers from L. V. Bertarelli (tourism and roads), Maggiorino Ferraris (tourism and railways) and Fausto Massimini (tourism and taxation). A colour poster designed by Ballerio and printed by Ricordi, and a matching commemorative stamp, were issued to publicise the event.
- Warning that entries for the Milan gathering close irrevocably on 15 May and are void unless accompanied by payment, after past rallies where committees expecting 300 riders faced over a thousand and ran out of badges, lodgings and refreshments. The dates 27-28-29 May are declared unalterable and latecomers will have no claim to badges, banquet, excursion or free lodging.
- Individual entry fees: L. 3 for the Congresso Nazionale, Convegno and V.C.A. Adunata, and L. 7 for the Banchettissimo, the two being independent of each other.
- Accommodation arrangements for the Milan rally: just over 1,000 paid beds in hotels and private rooms at L. 1.25 to L. 4 a night, plus free military-style lodging for about 2,000 in public buildings, reserved for V.C.A. detachments and for club squads, with priority to those entered for the Simplon excursion. Applications had to be made by societies, not individuals, with a L. 1 deposit per bed.
- Order and route of the 28 May cyclo-automobile parade, forming up at 9 a.m. along the Sempione and Parco avenues and running from the Boldinasco rifle range through the Arco del Sempione, Castello Sforzesco, via Dante and Cordusio to Piazza del Duomo. Associations march grouped by province behind lettered boards, trams and carriages are suspended along the route, and the procession is to be filmed at the Arco del Sempione and in via Dante.
- The seven competitions open to affiliated tourist societies rather than to TCI consulates or sections: Volontari Ciclisti Automobilisti, tourism, bugle bands, motoring, the flower parade, a women's class and photography. Entry cost L. 3 as a guarantee and commemorative gold, silver and bronze medals were struck specially, awarded without ranking.
- The mass banquet on the evening of 28 May in the roofed-over great courtyard of the Castello Sforzesco, catered by the Unione Cooperativa di Milano and seated in blocks of a hundred, with the Milan municipal band playing. Diners received an enamelled flower-holder buttonhole made by the Johnson works bearing the Touring's woman emblem, and the only speech, by the Director General, was to be recorded on phono-cinematograph.
- A committee of Milanese ladies formed under the patronage of donna Remigia Ponti, wife of mayor senator Ettore Ponti, offered a rich standard to every provincial detachment of Volontari Ciclisti Automobilisti bringing at least thirty registered men to the Milan gathering.
- Costed one- and two-day excursions from Domodossola for members staying on after the Simplon outing: the Valle Vigezzo to S. Maria Maggiore (L. 8 with carriage), the Valle Antrona, the mineral springs of Valle Bognanco, the Valle Formazza to the Toce falls and Alpe Devero, and Valle Anzasca to Macugnaga at the foot of Monte Rosa (L. 22-24).
- Rules for the members' photographic competition on the Milan convegno and the Simplon excursion: minimum format 8 x 10.5, at least five mounted prints of different subjects signed on the margin, judging by a five-man commission on both technical quality and artistic choice of subject. Every accepted entrant received a medal and the accepted prints became TCI property for use in its publications and lantern-slide evenings.
- Ottone Brentari's eyewitness report from Isella of the breaking-through of the Simplon tunnel at 7.35 a.m. on 24 February 1905, after a mail-coach journey up the Napoleonic road through the snow. He describes the Brandt water-driven rock drills, the four-stage attacco of drilling, blasting with explosive gelatine, ventilation and mucking-out, the 19,728-metre twin bores costing 77.5 million lire, and the death of agent Carlo Grassi from carbon-monoxide poisoning hours after the breakthrough.
- E. Vanzo's cycling description of the 63-kilometre Napoleonic Simplon road from Domodossola to Brig, stage by stage through Crevola, Isella, Gondo, the Gondo gorge, Algaby, Sempione village and the Hospice at 2,100 m to Berisal, the Ganter bridge and the Kalvarienberg. He notes the road's uniform eight-metre width and gentle gradient, the hospice run by twelve friars where 30,000 travellers a year are received, the badly kept tourniquets, and his own fall when the refuge dogs chased his bicycle; the ride took ten hours.
- Texts of the telegrams exchanged on the opening of the Simplon: Director General Johnson's messages on behalf of the TCI's 44,000 members to Ruchet, President of the Swiss Confederation, and to the Touring Club Suisse, with the replies from Ruchet and from TCS director Navazza.
- Announcement of the international cycle and motor show to be held in the Giardini Pubblici from 11 May to 1 June 1905 under the patronage of the Automobile Club di Milano, the TCI, the Elice Club and the Lombard journalists' association, with sections for cars, chassis, motors, motorcycles, bicycles, motor launches, tyres, sporting dress and aeronautical projects. The executive committee was chaired by conte Febo Borromeo with Achille Fusi as secretary-general and members including Edoardo Bianchi, Federico Johnson and Alberto Pirelli; admission cost L. 1 by day and L. 0.50 in the evening.
- History of the Milan public gardens hosting the show: the eastern part laid out in 1782 to Giuseppe Piermarini's design and enlarged in 1787, the western part added in 1856 to a design by Giuseppe Balzaretto, and the three statues standing at the exhibition's three entrances.
- Note on Luciano Manara, born in Milan in 1825, who fought in the Five Days of 1848, pursued the Austrians with a volunteer corps, commanded a volunteer battalion in Piedmont and was made Garibaldi's chief of staff in Rome, dying of wounds at Villa Spada on 30 June 1849. The statue is by the sculptor Francesco Barzaghi.
- Note on the geologist, patriot and alpinist Antonio Stoppani, born at Lecco in 1824 and died in Milan in 1891, author of the three-volume Corso di geologia reissued with notes by Alessandro Malladra and of the popular Bel Paese. The statue is by Francesco Confalonieri; the bronze plaque placed on its pedestal by the Milan section of the Club Alpino Italiano had been stolen.
- Note on Giuseppe Dezza, born at Melegnano in 1830, an engineer who served with Garibaldi in the Cacciatori delle Alpi in 1859 and among the Mille in 1860, rose to lieutenant-general, was made a senator in 1889 and commanded the Milan army corps until his death in 1898. The statue is by Enrico Cassi.
- The new palazzo of Milan's Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, built 1892-94 and directed by professor Tito Vignoli, holds collections of minerals, Lombard fossils, South American and New Zealand fossils, mammals, reptiles and some 25,000 birds given by conte Turati.
- Professor Rodolfo Namias's photographic column, covering a separate gold toning bath with thiourea for citrate papers (a formula he claims to have introduced in 1893), the double gold-and-platinum toning of Gevaert matt celloidin platinotype-imitation papers with his own oxalic/hydrochloric chloroplatinite bath, gelatine film light filters for the darkroom, orthochromatic work and three-colour separation, and N. Gibson's method of faking candlelight effects with magnesium ribbon on a velvet-covered lath.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi reviews the new Italian law of 30 June 1904 subsidising public motor services on ordinary roads (up to L. 500 a year per kilometre) and weighs the vehicle types against ing. Bret's study in the Annales des ponts et chaussées: steam wagons cheapest above 2.5 tonnes, petrol wagons handicapped by fuel cost, electric accumulator wagons limited in range, compressed-air wagons too heavy, and the Lombard-Gerin and captain Cantono trolley filovie tried at Gallarate-Samarate and Castellammare Adriatico-Pescara. He concludes that Italian road maintenance budgets must rise substantially or the new services will disappoint.
- The Binasco-Coazzano road in Milan province, being rebuilt to cav. ing. Parona's design with a six-metre carriageway and two raised one-metre footways lined with plane trees set quincunx-fashion ten metres apart. The Rivista recommends the arrangement, with 20 cm cement drainage pipes under the footways, as giving shade while keeping the road surface and the pedestrian and cyclist strip dry.
- The Opinione Geografica argues that useful trees should be preferred to ornamental ones along Italian roads: chestnuts in the mountains, carobs, cork oak and ilex on hot southern roads, pears, apples, walnuts and cherries elsewhere, and maritime and stone pines on the coast, adding a plea for planting the sandy shore strips as a national asset.
- The provincial deputation of Trapani approved a seven-year contract to replace ordinary maintenance with progressive steam rolling over 137 km of roads, including the Trapani-Castellammare-Palermo road where a public motor service is also proposed - the third southern province to adopt rational road maintenance on a large scale.
- The Comité de Tourisme Hippique of the Touring Club de France circulated hoteliers on stable design and, with the Société Hippique Française, arranged model stable, carriage, harness and saddlery displays at the 1905 Grand Palais exhibition, besides asking the Paris municipal council for a retrospective museum of transport with old post-chaises and gala carriages.
- Latest list of TCI direction and danger signs erected in Pisa province by the provincial deputation, numbers 262-290, at junctions on the Pontedera-Pisa, Collesalvetti-Cecina, Cecina-Volterra and Cecina-Grosseto roads, donated by Michelin, Ernesto Reinach, dott. Gildo Guastalla, the Automobile Club di Firenze and comm. Federico Johnson. New offers from Ravenna, Osimo and Boves bring the running totals to 1,173 signs and L. 15,610.
- Argument that Italy's high railway fares choke traffic, citing Hungary where passengers rose from 6,179,000 in 1888 to 34,056,000 in 1900 after the zone tariff. The article rejects both the simple abolition of reduced fares and a zone system unsuited to Italy's elongated shape and multiple centres, and backs Maggiorino Ferraris's differential tariff plus a very cheap vicinale fare under 25 km, noting that Milan-Naples costs more than Milan to Paris, Brussels or Vienna and Milan-Sicily more than Milan to Berlin or London.
- With the Simplon open, the Italian committee for the crossing wound up and presented its report, having raised the four million lire promised in 1895 by the interested provinces and communes under the Italo-Swiss treaty. Its president was conte Giberto Borromeo, whose family had been feudal lords along the Arona-Domodossola line for three centuries; the report includes a map of the Domodossola-Brig railway.
- Illustrated survey of 1905 machines: the Peugeot motorcycles built around the sprung front fork Peugeot pioneered (Jeantaud's tests at Valentigny showed unsprung steel degenerating to a cast-iron-like grain within a year), in singles and V-twins of 2.75 to 7 HP with Longuemare carburettor and Bosch magneto; the Neckarsulmer N.S.U. air- and water-cooled singles of 2 to 4 HP and its tricars, with the magneto mounted on the crankshaft in an enclosed case; the Wanderer 3.5 HP with high-tension magneto and its two-speed free-wheel hub; the 7 HP water-cooled Peugeot 'Bebé' voiturette; and the Lorenc coil-spring suspension fitted to any existing fork.
- Review of the Bonmartini firm's anti-skid over-covers and rubber-and-leather covers made in Milan, in which the studded leather bands hook directly to the rims under the tyre instead of being strapped on, and the leather is vulcanised to the rubber and carried into the bead so damp cannot get between them; the studs carry an internal washer to stop them cutting the leather.
- Ing. Ferdinando Borrino on the third motor show of the Society of the Motor Manufacturers and Traders, held for the first time at Olympia in West London in February 1905 under the motto 'Show, by the traders for the traders' after the society broke away from the Crystal Palace and the Automobile Club. Olympia could take only two-thirds of the would-be exhibitors; single-cylinder types dominated for utility and four-cylinders for touring, most cars ran on petrol, and the president was the marquis Sidney Straker of Straker Steam Vehicles.
- Illustration and description of the façade of the cycle and motor pavilion for the 1906 Milan exhibition, designed by engineers Bianchi, Magnani and Rondoni: a 30-metre-wide central gallery flanked by two 8-metre galleries raised 1.50 m, iron centring over the centre and timber trusses elsewhere, trifora windows and a fresco frieze showing every kind of touring and sport served by the cycle or the motor car.
- News of public motor services: a local company licensed by Caserta province for omnibuses linking Maddaloni, Caserta, S. Maria, Capua, Aversa, Caiazzo and Piedimonte d'Alife from June; Serpollet steam omnibuses being built in Paris for the Wagram-Bastille line; a Milan committee with L. 150,000 capital for steam motors in the Cadore; ing. A. Faccioli's Biella-Ivrea proposal approved unanimously by Ivrea town council; the Raffio brothers' 20 HP Gardner-Serpollet plan for Benevento-San Bartolomeo in Galdo; and electric motor fire pumps for Vienna.
- Portrait note on Beatrice O'Brien, the Irish bride of Guglielmo Marconi, who speaks and writes elegant Italian and is a keen and capable motorist; the TCI sends its congratulations to the couple.
- The Deutsche Automobil-Club, after long negotiations with the Prussian war ministry, formed a corps of volunteer motorists to place the most suitable cars and most expert drivers at the German government's disposal in war. Members must belong to the club and undertake unlimited wartime service and ten days a year in peacetime for four years; Prince Henry of Prussia is supreme commander and baron von Brandstein chief of staff.
- Note on motoring dress for the opening season, with two American costumes illustrated - one in yellow leather, one in cloth with the latest veil - and a mention of the many men's and women's cycling and motoring outfits shown at the recent Turin motor exhibition.
- The magazine's standing miscellany department, opening in this number with reports on Capracotta buried in snow, the Colonna Elorina near Noto, the walls of Lucca and improved communications with Corsica.
- Giovanni Paglione, schoolmaster and TCI consul at Capracotta in Molise (1,421 m, between the Sangro and Trigno valleys), describes the January-February 1905 blizzards that buried the town: people leaving by their windows, single-file paths cut above roof level, drifts 9-10 m deep, the post suspended for ten days and salt rationed to two soldi a family, until twenty requisitioned mountaineers took two days to fetch mail and two quintals of salt from Carovilli and Agnone.
- The Colonna Elorina della Pizzuta, six kilometres south of Noto in Siracusa province above the Tellaro, still ten metres high and thought to be part of the monument raised by the Syracusans for their defeat of Nicias's Athenians in 413 BC, with the ruins of Heloros 700 m away. Alessio Giovanni's article in the Club Alpino Siciliano's review Sicilia uses it to introduce Noto, its carob groves, hermits' caves and the legend of San Corrado.
- The walls of Lucca, begun in 1504, remodelled under Vincenzo Civitali and finished in 1645, are 11.95 m high with eleven bastions and run 4,195.80 m, carrying a tree-lined promenade the Rivista calls the finest cycling track imaginable. The consultative commission of fine arts unanimously rejected the town council's proposal to breach them, so D'Annunzio's 'arborato cerchio' survives intact.
- Corsica is becoming a frequent excursion destination now that new steamers run Nice-Calvi in six hours, Nice-Ajaccio in eight and Livorno-Bastia in four, with new hotels and a Syndicat d'initiative forming at Ajaccio. The Joanne guide devotes a volume to the island with a supplement La Corse à bicyclette, and Henri Boland gave an enthusiastic account and itinerary in the February Revue Mensuelle du Touring Club de France.
- Boxed department on the correct geographical naming of Italian places, carrying in this number a protest over the spelling of Isella and a note on Pantelleria.
- Emilio Colombo argues that the Simplon village should be written Isella, as in all old topographical maps and the records of the Novara episcopal curia, not the French form Iselle imposed by the engineers who built the military road and fixed a plaque with that name, and asks that Isella be used in the timetables of the new railway.
- Minister Tedesco promised deputy Pipitone and the mayor of Pantelleria to press on with a radiotelegraph station after bad weather cut the island off from Sicily for 34 days. The note describes the 150 sq km volcanic island seven hours from Marsala, rising to 836 m at Montagna Grande, with 8,682 inhabitants, Arabic place names, a Sicilian dialect, nuraghe-like remains - and not a single Touring member.
- Rally news: a large cycling meeting at Belluno on 13 August organised by the Veloce Club Alpino; consul Antonio Marchionne's announcement of a regional cyclo-motoring convegno at Chieti in the first fortnight of May, coinciding with the opening of the electric railway and the exhibition of Abruzzese antique art; a cyclo-motoring meeting at Sanremo on 30 April promoted by the Unione Sportiva Sanremese; and a Valtellina C.A.I. outing of 6-7 March to the Rifugio Cederna, where six men took sixteen hours through soft snow and had to abandon the Pizzo Scalino.
- Il Routier Italiano of Bologna, founded and directed by Edoardo Bonesi, began a quarterly Bollettino and clarified that its members' medal goes only to full members who ride official marches after the baptismal one; the Audax started a monthly issue under C. A. Pisani; and new clubs were formed at Mariano Comense (Club Sportivo) and Piove di Sacco (a cycling club of about 50 members under consul Mario Solmi).
- The TCI's legal advice department, conducted by chief legal consultant avv. Bernardo Garbati, reporting court decisions of touring interest and answering members' queries on cycle, motorcycle and motor-car law.
- Sentence of 18 January 1905 by the Pretore Urbano of Milan, avv. B. Severgnini, in the case against Ubaldo Olivieri: no offence is committed by riding a bicycle without its licence plate where the cyclist proves he had no intent to break the law, the plate having just been stolen from the machine outside his office without his knowledge. The court ordered the bicycle returned.
- Sentence of 14 November 1904 by the vice-pretore of Serravalle Scrivia, avv. B. Martelli, acquitting Antonio Novo: a policeman's unaided eye cannot establish that a car exceeded 15 km/h, offences must be reported to the driver at once, and the registered owner is not liable unless shown to have been driving. The TCI legal section notes the same points are now covered by articles 89-92 of the new regulation of 8 January 1905.
- Replies to members: the new regulation of 8 January 1905 imposes on motorcycles (articles 84-86) inspection, licence, plate, horn and lamp rules much like those for cars, while the L. 20 cycle tax of the 1897 law stands; the deposit for a motor inspection is fixed by the prefect; and no offence is committed when an unplated bicycle is wheeled by hand rather than ridden, citing earlier sentences reported in the 1903 and 1904 Rivista.
- The Ministry of Finance advised mayors to refuse the denunzia certificate of article 5 of the law of 22 July 1897 to non-residents, to those already on the tax roll, and to suspected tax evaders. The TCI's legal consultant objects that neither article 3 nor article 5 requires habitual residence, that a merely temporary stay suffices, and that one commune's attempt to shorten the statutory fifteen-day term is illegal and void.
- Reviews of René Champly's Les Bateaux Automobiles à pétrole and Théorie et pratique de la Motocyclette (both Paris, H. Desforges, 1905), the Automobile-Club de Nice Annuaire 1905, A. Bertelli's Résumés d'aviation with his self-launching aeroplane project, Philippe Casimir's guide Monaco, Monte-Carlo et les environs, and the latest parts of the ninth edition of Stieler's Hand-Atlas.
- Notes from other journals: J. Grüss on winter gymnastic exercises for cyclists in the Deutsche Radfahrer-Zeitung, the Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung's instalment on Michelin with a portrait of André Michelin, a Genoa-to-Florence motor run in New York's Motor, Egon von Kratzer's Greek cycle tours in Der Rad-Wanderer, a flattering piece on the TCI decennial in La Patria degli Italiani of Buenos Aires, the first number of the Belgian Le Sportman, and a ski trip on Paganella and Gazza in the Mitteilungen des DuÖAV.
- The club's official bulletin section, carrying council and directorate resolutions, publishing plans, membership notices and price lists for TCI plates, booklets and guides.
- At its meeting of 15 March the directive council approved in principle a wholly new club regulation, the existing one no longer meeting the association's rapid growth, and voted for a second edition of the illustrated Attraverso l'Italia and for a group of railway guidine covering the approach lines to the Simplon. The roads improvement commission also met to discuss a large practical experiment in road maintenance.
- Members temporarily importing a bicycle into Italy - on a three-month circulation permit if resident abroad, or a one-year temporary import bill if resident in the kingdom - are urged to re-export it within the term or pay the duty, since defaults bring customs complaints against the Touring and could cost all members the concession.
- The first 2,000-copy Italian edition of Attraverso l'Italia, some 2,000 photographic views with text, being long exhausted, a limited corrected second edition was announced at L. 38 to members and L. 46 to others (L. 46 and L. 54 bound in two volumes), payable in two instalments, ready by June, with an eleventh copy free to anyone ordering ten.
- The fourth group of the club's pocket railway guides, each describing one line with a map specially drawn by the Istituto Geografico Militare, vignettes of the monuments seen from the train and portraits of the figures mentioned. Groups I-III (Milan-Turin, Milan-Bologna, Milan-Verona, Milan-Genoa, Genoa-Spezia, Genoa-Ventimiglia, Verona-Venice, Venice-Bologna, Bologna-Florence) are out at 50 centesimi each, and the Simplon approach lines Milano-Gallarate-Arona, Torino-Santhià-Arona and Arona-Domodossola-Isella follow by 15 May.
- The TCI published a pamphlet with the full official text of decrees 24 and 23 of 8 January 1905 - the road police regulation and the regulation on subsidies for public motor lines - plus the forms and instructions for prefecture applications, all users having to comply by 21 April. It also supplies the new pattern plates at L. 8 the pair for cars and L. 2.50 for motorcycles, and the certificate-of-fitness booklet at L. 1.70 post free.
- Rewards for recruiting members: a silver commemorative medal for ten new members, a large silver medal for fifty and a gold medal for a hundred, a large gold medal for the year's recordman of propaganda, a carnet given by Ernesto Reinach and the Torriani firm to all 1905 benemeriti, and a prize draw whose gifts include a 2 HP Laurin & Klement Republic motorcycle, a Gritzner luxury bicycle from E. Flaig, camera brackets from M. Ganzini and Pirelli tyres.
- Obituaries of ing. Alfredo Biadene of the Pisa provincial technical office, formerly chief engineer of Pavia province, dead at 43, whose monograph won and was published by the Touring's road-maintenance competition, and of cav. Ruggero Benetti, manager of the Lugo Vicentino paper mill, who died at San Remo.
- List of candidates for TCI membership who applied between 15 February and 15 March 1905, arranged as life members (soci vitalizi) and annual members grouped by province and commune, following the totals for the 2,000 five-year members and 855 benemeriti.