Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 12, No 10
Articles in this issue
- The Touring's Commissione Strade ran dynamometer trials at the Milan Exposition on 12–13 September 1906, with Gondrand's carts and horses and the Piacenza Consorzi Agrari's recording dynamometer, to prove whether wide wagon tyres really demand more draught effort than narrow ones. Public Works minister Gianturco contributed L.200 and delegated ing. Sanjust di Teulada; Federico Johnson led for the club.
- The Touring's pavilion by the via Domodossola entrance was visited by Queen Margherita, Princess Letizia and the Dukes of Aosta, and by the King, who was guided by L. V. Bertarelli and lingered over the charts of petrol supply and of cycling's spread by province, regretting how little cycling has taken hold in southern Italy.
- Under the Automobilismo banner, a costing for motor-omnibus services to Italian villages left hours from the railway: three 16-seat omnibuses at L.18,000 each, 12% and 10% depreciation, and 37.5 kg of petrol at L.0.80 per 100 km, arguing the motor coach must finally replace the diligence.
- Ernest Archdeacon of Paris mounted a two-blade airscrew ahead of a petrol motorcycle, ridden by Anzani, which was timed at some 80 km/h on its first public run — a propeller-thrust experiment he means to apply to airship and aviation work.
- F. S. Bennett's tests on Cadillac bodies, reported to The Auto Car, show that body form A keeps dust off the rear seats while forms B, C and D give no protection at all — happily, the shape already preferred for elegance.
- An interview from L'Auto, given at Montréal, in which Edison says he wants to replace petrol, alcohol and steam with electricity and is hunting cobalt — from his small North Carolina mine — for an accumulator good for 500 miles instead of today's 75.
- Ing. Giuseppe Spera's project for a 206 km motor-only road from Rome to Naples by Albano, Cisterna, Terracina, Gaeta, Formia, the Garigliano, Mondragone and Capodimonte: 8 m wide, with 60 keepers' huts, telephone-linked stations, flyovers over every railway and vestrumite dust-proofing.
- The Turin school for mechanics and chauffeurs, founded in 1905 under senator Secondo Frola and ing. Emilio Marenco, gave 34 lectures in 1906 by staff of Fiat, Fiat-Ansaldi, Pirelli and Rapid; prize-winners included dott. Francesco Povoleri and mechanic Giovanni Gabri, and the war ministry means to send officers next year.
- Prime minister Giovanni Giolitti was driven from Turin to Rivoli by cav. A. Rostain, the Touring's capoconsole, for the Orto-agricola and Sacred Art exhibition — only the third motor journey of his life, and one he pronounced himself well pleased with.
- Avv. Carlo Valle describes the State Forest Administration's reafforestation of the Rivolto basin at the head of the Val d'Illasi near Verona: over half a million seedlings from a nursery at 1,300 m, torrent and landslip works, and the purchase of 427 hectares from Austria taking in Monte Turcato, Campo Bruno and the Carega with the Cima di Posta.
- Department of club runs and rallies: Cagliari's consulate rode to Capoterra and Su Loj with capitano Ceccherini's bersaglieri cyclists; Pallanza's meet, run by consuls Carlo Eugenio Erba and Emilio Guglielmo Alewyn, drew clubs from Borgosesia, Intra, Varallo and the Swiss Velo-Clubs of Biasca and Brissago; Vicenza's brought squads from Trento, Trieste and Pirano.
- The two banks of the Po at Piacenza, now joined only by a pontoon bridge, will be linked within a year by a great iron bridge, and the Touring will hold a large rally at Piacenza when it is inaugurated in 1908.
- Switzerland opens three Alpine roads to motor cars — Iselle and Gondo over the Simplon (2,008 m) to Brig, Airolo over the Gotthard (2,114 m) to Göschenen, and Brienz over the Brünig (998 m) to Giswil — on weekdays only, between 9 and 16, by free permit, with a 10 km/h limit between Alpnachstad and Giswil and L.200 fines.
- The CAI congress ran from Milan on 3 September to Tirano on the 8th by way of Como, Sondrio, the Val Malenco and the Passo del Muretto to St. Moritz; Luigi Brioschi reported on the grey-uniform trials that produced the Morbegno battalion's plotone grigio, and a wreath was laid on Segantini's tomb at Maloja.
- Standing department on cycle and motor taxation, traffic rules and customs formalities, running here from the French bicycle-tax reduction through Swiss policing complaints to the reformed French triptyque.
- France is about to cut its bicycle tax, having first turned it from a direct into an indirect levy; Italy has taken only the first step, the movable targhetta, and the Touring argues that the administrative savings will eventually justify a reduction here too — if members keep recruiting.
- The Automobile Club Suisse asks motorists to send documented complaints of police abuse rather than air them in the press, and recalls the intercantonal conference decision of 23 April 1906 forbidding cantons to levy on-the-spot fines on drivers or let agents take a share of them.
- A numbered list of what the triptyque saves the touring motorist, ending with the removal of the risk of being unable to re-export a car through minor frontier posts too short of funds to refund the deposit.
- The French finance ministry has accepted the L.I.A.T. associations' reform, so from 1 October the Touring will issue a new French triptyque valid for a year from the car's original date of importation and good for several successive entries.
- Court reports: the Senate's Alta Corte acquitted senator conte Nicolò Papadopoli of speeding at Cittadella because a policeman's unaided impression proves nothing; the Pretore of Fiorenzuola d'Arda acquitted ing. Gino Turrinelli, whose car had been off the road since February; and Pretore Pola of Turin acquitted avv. Achille Cerasole over cycling on the banchine.
- Readers' legal queries answered on cycling on town footways, stolen tax plates, an innkeeper's liability for a bicycle stolen by his own waiter, why a cycle plate cannot be used on a motorcycle, carrying a revolver across the frontier, and an owner's liability when a car meets a shying horse.
- Prize draw for members introducing ten or more 1907 subscribers: Hensemberger accumulators, Festina chronometer watches, a Bellani "Cosmos" 9x12 folding camera, Marucelli pocket first-aid cases, Miolatti Moeris watches, Caimi acetylene lamps, Carloni and Tolusso brakes and a Vigor back-pedalling brake.
- Board resolutions: a gold medal to cav. Giovanni Borella for the hotel-bedroom competition, September's Rivista given as Exposition guide to the engineers' and Club Alpino congresses, a cast-iron standard signboard for communes, a mid-price first-aid case at L.30, new consuls listed and the 1907 Annuario commissions named.
- Minutes of the 1906 ballot: of 1,502 voters, 1,488 approved the 1905 accounts; Binda, Riva, Favari and Zaffaroni were confirmed as councillors and Turrini, Soffredi and Magnocavallo as auditors, signed by Johnson, Zaffaroni and Barutta.
- Circular to the provincial deputations and Genio Civile offices asking that gravel re-metalling be laid in two halves so one lane stays open, never on bends or the banchine, that works be signposted at the preceding crossroads, and that head road-keepers be given bicycles to patrol on.
- The 1907 Annuario Generale (free to members) and Annuario dell'Automobilismo (L.2 to members) are to appear by April, with town plans redrawn from municipal engineers' returns; only a third of the 5,000 questionnaires sent to consuls come back, and diligence will weigh at the biennial reappointment.
- The information office reports that a third of its post asks what the Annuario and guides already answer, that non-members use borrowed tessere to get service, and that Milan's hotels are full since 1 September; members are asked to quote their card number, enclose return postage and write eight days ahead.
- Rules for sending money to the club: always by registered letter, vaglia cambiari or cheques for large sums and payable in Milan, stamps only for fractions of five lire, and sender's name and reason stated on international orders.
- The executive committee of the XI congress of Italian engineers and architects, chaired by senator prof. Giuseppe Colombo, was received at the Touring's premises on 24 September, with champagne and speeches by Federico Johnson, L. V. Bertarelli and vice-president Edgardo De Capitani.
- The special September issue was such a success that duplicate requests poured in and congress committees handed it to alpinists, engineers, jurists and lawyers as the best Exposition guide; spare copies can be had at the office for L.0.50.
- Reminder, quoting the 1902 ministerial circular in the Bollettino delle Poste of 26 April 1902, that the membership card — with photograph, dry stamp and full signature — identifies a member at any post office for parcels, insured and registered items and immediate payment of postal orders.
- Reprinted comment from La Perseveranza all'Esposizione and Il Nostro Giornale on the Touring's hotel-bedroom competition: good furniture and fittings but too much superfluous luxury, and not one entrant designed a sanitary closet for small towns without piped water — the reform of small inns, the writer insists, must begin with the latrines.
- Jury report by Bertarelli, Corazza, Balsari, Beretta and Poggi on the 1904 competition for a road-keeper's manual: 26 anonymous entries under mottoes such as "Labor omnia vincit" and "Strada buona non fu mai lunga", judged in four sittings, with L.5,000 in prizes and complaints of prolixity and missing illustrations.
- Fortieth list of affiliated chemists at Isola della Scala, Rivarolo Ligure and Valstagna, second-category T.C.I. mechanics at Acquanegra sul Chiese and Osimo and a garage at Belluno, followed by the new quinquennial and benemeriti members.
- Obituaries of Giuseppe Giacosa, poet and dramatist of the Valle d'Aosta mountains who spoke at the unveiling of the Dante Alighieri banner during the Touring's festivities, and of Walter Erich Jacob Kees of Gautzsch near Leipzig, one of the club's foreign consuls.
- Province-by-province list of those applying for membership between 1 and 31 August 1906, opening with life members including war minister Ten. Gen. Ettore Viganò of Rome and conte Orazio Oldofredi of Brescia.