Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 11, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Leading article explaining why the Touring, on behalf of its 50,000 members, devotes several pages of this number to the Italian Alpine Club's 36th congress, organised by the Venice section for 4-10 September 1905. It praises an itinerary through the Belluno valleys, Trentino and Tyrol that can be followed by train, carriage, motor car or bicycle before turning to mule tracks and summits.
- Venice unveils the young sculptor Achille Tamburlini's marble monument to Lieutenant Francesco Querini, lost in 1900 on the Duke of the Abruzzi's Stella Polare polar expedition after Captain Umberto Cagni sent his party back from the ice. A bronze plaque also names the guide Ollier and the Norwegian sailor Stökken who died with him.
- Ottone Brentari recalls twenty-five years of solitary wandering in the Cadore, Bellunese and Trentino while gathering material for his guidebooks, and mourns dead companions including the photographer Angelo Binetti, Dr Carlo Zasso of Agordo, Achille Vecelli, Prof. Antonio Ronzon and Major Davide Menini, killed at Adua. He contrasts the 7,100 members of the C.A.I. and the Società Alpinisti Tridentini with the 63,077 of the German-Austrian Alpenverein, and argues that cycling and motoring over the passes have spread alpinism rather than killed it.
- An account of the Antelao (3255 m) and the Marmolada (3494 m), the two peaks chosen for the Venice congress, with the geology and disputed limits of the Dolomites named after Déodat de Dolomieu. It records Paul Grohmann's first ascents of 1863 and 1864 with the guides Ossi, Lacedelli and Angelo and Fulgenzio Dimai, Lord Douglas's second ascents, and the Venice section's Rifugio Venezia, Rifugio San Marco and Rifugio Tiziano.
- The full day-by-day programme of the congress, from the Querini monument and the delegates' assembly at the Bauer Grünwald in Venice through Agordo, Falcade, the Passo San Pellegrino meeting with the Società Alpinisti Tridentini, the Passo Pordoi, Fedaia, Cortina, Misurina and the Rifugio San Marco to Pieve di Cadore and Belluno. Two variants offer ascents of the Marmolada and the Antelao.
- Pier Ruggiero Radice describes the cycling rally and outing of 22-23 July promoted by the Touring's local consulate and the "Pro Valsassina" committee, following the Pioverna from Lecco through Ballabio, Barzio, Introbio and Primaluna to Bellano. He dwells on the Troggia waterfall, the Tartavalle mineral springs, Carlo Agazzi's paintings of the valley, the two Grigne with the Moncodeno ice cave, the Pizzo dei Tre Signori and the Legnone, and names the Touring consuls Angelo Tomè and Virgilio Vicanoni.
- Vincenzo Perogio traces Macerata's descent from Roman Helvia Recina, destroyed by Alaric, through papal rule to 1860, and presents its first regional exhibition as proof that the Marche belong among Italy's leading agricultural and industrial regions.
- The same author laments the apathy of the Marche towards sport and urges young men into the saddle across a countryside of Apennine ridges and Adriatic beaches. He points to the magnificent Sferisterio, built in 1829 to the design of the engineer Franco Aleandri of San Severino for the game of pallone, now left to a caretaker and his owls.
- The Sporting Club Helvia Recina and the local T.C.I. committee announce a national touring rally at Macerata on 17-19 September 1905 under the executive president Marchese Francesco Bourbon Del Monte S. Maria, with badges by the Johnson works and a poster by the painter Mario Ellero. The programme includes a parade, rifle practice for the volunteer cyclist and motorist corps, an endurance cycle race, a cycle-motor gymkhana and an excursion to the Castello della Rancia and Tolentino, with railway fares cut by 40 to 60 per cent.
- The standing department of outings and rallies, reporting the Unione Sportiva Albenganese's cycle-motor meeting with clubs from Ventimiglia to Genoa, the international rally set by La Rola at Cuneo for 8-10 September, postponements at Desio, the Unione Sportiva of Fiorenzuola d'Arda's ride to the Castello di Vigoleno, and meetings at Mestre, Saronno, Schio and Pieve di Sacco.
- The Routier Italiano, presided over by Edgardo Bonesi, completes its first year with 600 members in 60 sections, its riders having lately distinguished themselves in the cavalry manoeuvres.
- Como's Feste Lariane will include a great cycling rally on 24 September with a muster of the Volontari Ciclisti ed Automobilisti and a flower parade, for which Queen Elena has sent a silver jardinière and the Queen Mother a bronze bust as prizes.
- Notices of newly founded and reorganised clubs: the Ciclo Sport Albese at Alba, the Velo Sport Baveno, the Veloce Club Alpino of Belluno (traced back to its foundation as the Veloce Club Bellunese in 1886 by Giuseppe De Lago and friends), and the Juventus Sport at Mondovì under Vittorio Turco.
- Hotel news: a one-million-lira company formed at Genoa to enlarge the Kursaal at Rapallo and build the Kursaal Hôtel; the Corso Hôtel rising on Milan's Corso Vittorio Emanuele to Giacomo Santamaria's design and to be run by Tommaso Merli; a 250,000-lira Kursaal planned on the Colle Campigli at Varese; and the Fratelli Omarini's new Grand Hôtel beside the Isole Borromee at Stresa.
- The Touring's standing roads department, carrying this month a technical survey of the Great St Bernard road and a Neapolitan prefect's circular on road maintenance.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi of Turin gives a kilometre-by-kilometre survey of the road from Aosta over the Great St Bernard, with widths, gradients, curve radii and the dangerous stretches at Variney, Gignod, Etroubles and the Vallone La Clusa, using figures supplied by the chief engineer of the Turin Genio Civile, cav. Arimondi. He adds Valais public-works data for the Swiss descent to Bourg St Pierre, Orsières and Martigny, and calls for warning signs.
- The text of a circular from Marchese Cesare Saibante, delegate councillor of the Naples prefecture, to the province's sub-prefects and mayors, blaming neglect and unenforced contracts for the wretched state of the roads and threatening to use every legal means to bring them up to the demands of modern traffic.
- The tenth International Navigation Congress will open at Milan on 24 September 1905, with senator Giuseppe Colombo and rear-admiral Count Camillo Candiani d'Olivola as general presidents and Edmondo Sanjust di Teulada as secretary-general. The government contributes 100,000 lire, some 2,000 delegates are expected, and excursions are planned to Paderno on the Adda, Vizzola, Genoa, Spezia, Naples and the Venetian lagoon.
- The standing cycling and touring department, this month reprinting an Aosta glacier ride and a French essay on tourism as a modern conquest.
- Reprinted from the Domenica del Corriere: during the Aosta festivities for the new Great St Bernard road the Augusta Praetoria Ciclo gathered about twenty clubs and 300 members, and 52 cyclists rode from Courmayeur up to the Brenva glacier at 1,516 m, climbing some 300 m over ruined tracks without once dismounting.
- A digest, taken from Rome's Minerva, of E. De Morsier's article in La Revue arguing that steam, the bicycle and the motor car have made tourism a physiological necessity for city dwellers, citing Max Nordau on the modern workload and crediting the French and Italian Touring Clubs with its spread.
- The standing motoring department, opening with the French industrial-vehicle trial and continuing with sparking plugs, hubs and tyres.
- Ing. Gino Galli previews the Automobile Club de France's trial of industrial vehicles and military lorries, 28 July to 8 August 1905, run over about 600 km in seven stages from Paris through Compiègne, Amiens, Dieppe, Le Havre, Rouen and Mantes, with 62 entries, an eleven-point marking scale and Longuemare of carburettor fame checking fuel consumption. He sketches the class from the Richard-Bardon vans of the 1901 Paris-Roubaix and the Société Nancéenne lorries of 1902 to the De Dion vans of the Potin stores and the Valentin Purrey lorries of the Say refinery.
- A notice of the Sauser sparking plug, which can be taken apart by hand, uses no mastic, is hermetically sealed with double insulation and has a sprung insulated lead attachment so cylinders can be tested without shocks or unscrewing.
- Ing. Effren Magrini explains the pawl and epicyclic principles of free-wheel and variable-speed hubs and reviews the leading types: the Sun of the Sun Cycle Fittings Co. of Birmingham, the Star of Wolverhampton, the springless Simplex of Hall and Parkes, The Micrometer of Coventry, the Saroléa of A. and D. Friedenhain, the Abingdon, R. T. A. Delacroix's patent, the Eadie, the Morrow of London, the Atla of Dürkopp at Bielefeld, the B.S.A. and E. A. Winholt's bevel-gear bottom-bracket design.
- Ing. Effren Magrini describes the substitution of leather for rubber in the Pneu-cuir Rossel, built up of glued chrome-leather and canvas strips with a studded tread, and two anti-skid devices: the Skerwood spiked metal band of A. F. Skerwood of Peekskill, N.Y., and G. Pilkington's patented wire-rope and metal-band armouring.
- The Touring has had a combined thermometer and hydrometer made for its members to test petrol, reading densities from 660 to 720 in a test tube after ten minutes, with a correction of 8/10 of a degree of density for each degree away from 15°. It costs 4 lire at the Milan office and 4.60 carriage paid in Italy.
- The department devoted to the Ligue Internationale des Associations Touristes, of which the Touring Club Italiano is a member.
- A report, taken from the Belgian Touring Club's bulletin, of the seventh L.I.A.T. congress held at Liège on 8-11 June 1905 with all fifteen confederated clubs present and 293,850 tourists represented. Debate turned on Austrian customs proof of re-export, the Automobile Club de France's monopoly of the motor triptyque, Luigi Cuneo Vidal's explanation of the permit issued to foreign cyclists entering Italy, and German import freedom; Milan was chosen for the eighth congress of 1906.
- The standing book department, noticing new guides, periodicals and touring literature received by the Rivista.
- A review of the handbook written for the newly constituted national corps of volunteer cyclists and motorists by Captain Angherà, one of its chief advocates, and Captain Ferraro. Its first part traces military cycling in Italy and abroad, above all in England, and prints the corps statute; its second gathers map-reading and drill instructions drawn from army regulations.
- The Touring's standing legal advice department, conducted by avv. Bernardo Garbati, comprising reported judgments and answers to members' queries.
- Reports of court decisions of interest to cyclists and motorists, with headnotes on a broken-down motorcycle, a bicycle wheeled by hand and a carriage horse frightened by a motor car.
- Sentence of 12 July 1905 by the Milan vice-pretore avv. Motta acquitting Renzo Ricchetti, defended by avv. B. Garbati, who was caught pedalling a motorcycle with a broken engine along the Corso Sempione without certificate of fitness or plate: with the motor dead the machine was held equivalent to a bicycle.
- Sentence of 15 July 1905 by the pretore of Mantua, avv. Igino Ceccato, holding that Carlo Nicolini, who cannot ride, committed no offence in wheeling an unplated bicycle by hand, since the law punishes the use of a machine, and that producing the tax certificate later sufficed.
- Judgment of the Bologna tribunal of 27 April-11 May, drafted by avv. Mario Galassi, in Muratori v. Contrada on appeal: Lieutenant Contrada was not liable when one of Muratori's young horses shied at his car in the public gardens, the evidence showing he sounded his horn, kept two metres away and drove no faster than a trotting horse.
- Avv. Bernardo Garbati answers members on when a policeman may report a motorcyclist and seize the machine under the 1905 road regulations, whether land subject to a right of way counts as public for the bicycle plate law, the case for plates on all carriages and carts, and motorcycles wheeled by hand.
- The club's own news pages, with the new Annuario, the twenty-seventh list of consuls, medical and legal representatives, mechanics and garages, honorary and five-year members, and an obituary.
- The Touring announces its Annuario dell'Automobilismo per il 1906, a closely printed volume of over 700 pages revised and enlarged on customs and transport, with international road signs and an alphabetical gazetteer of Italian and foreign places. It costs 5 lire, or 2.50 to members.
- Notice of the death at Venice, aged 31, of Agostino Zanirato, a member since the Touring's foundation and a supporter of every kind of sport; one of the Venetian clubs he helped found will name an annual swimming race the Gara Agostino Zanirato.
- The monthly list of life and annual membership applicants arranged by province, from Alessandria to Vicenza and abroad in Austria-Hungary, France, Monaco, Germany, England, Romania, Switzerland, Argentina and Chile. Totals at 31 July 1905 stand at 47,910 annual and 883 life members, 48,793 in all.