Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 12, No 11
Articles in this issue
- Members are reminded that the 1907 subscription — L. 6 within the Kingdom, L. 8 abroad — falls due by 15 January, in return for the tag that validates the tessera; those few 1906 members still in arrears are warned they will not receive the first four sheets of the Touring's Carta d'Italia, due for distribution in December.
- Appeal to the membership to complete the Touring's inquiry for the 1907 Annuario Generale, correcting and supplementing its entries so that the volume — the only book in Italy with 60,000 collaborators — continues to serve members, tourists, scholars and public administrations.
- L. V. Bertarelli reports from the Istituto Geografico De Agostini that the first four sheets of the 1:250,000 Carta d'Italia — Torino (9), Milano (10), Genova (16), Venezia (13) — ship at the end of December, with Civitavecchia (27), Roma (28), Frosinone (34) and Napoli (35) to follow by late February. He explains the trapezoidal projection, the graticule marked from both Monte Mario and Greenwich, the two indexes, and the restriction of clivometric colouring to main roads.
- Drawn from the municipal monograph compiled by a committee under ing. Carlo Barzanò and arch. Luca Beltrami, a survey of Milan's recent buildings: the Bagatti Valsecchi palaces in via Gesù and via S. Spirito, Broggi's Palazzo della Borsa, Beltrami's Assicurazioni Generali on piazza Cordusio, Cesa Bianchi's Poste e Telegrafi, Enrico Combi's Ferrovie Mediterranee, Arpesani's Palazzo Principe Gonzaga, the Palazzo Chiesa of Borsani and Savoldi, and Sommaruga's Palazzo Castiglioni.
- The Rivista's railway department for November 1906, given over to the opening of the electric line from Bergamo up the Valle Brembana.
- The new single-phase alternating-current electric railway from Bergamo through the Valle Brembana to S. Giovanni Bianco: 30 km with 20 tunnels, 10 viaducts and 28 reinforced-concrete works, built in under two years by over 2,000 men to ing. Vittorio Gianfranceschi's design, with power from a Brembo derivation at S. Pietro d'Orzio and stations at Villa d'Almè, Sedrina, Zogno, Ambria and S. Pellegrino beside the Grand Hotel.
- The Touring's roads department, this month covering the province of Turin's exhibit at the Milan Exhibition, the club's own interventions on damaged roads, road-mending staff at Bergamo and the international argument over macadam versus paving.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi guides readers through the province of Turin's stand in the road pavilion at the Milan Exhibition, where cav. ing. Cesare Corazza's Ufficio Tecnico shows 22 numbered exhibits: maintenance-cost diagrams from 1866 to 1905, four corographies charting the provincial network's growth from 458 to 906 km alongside 1,270 km of intercommunal roads, road-metal samples with quarry locations, and L. 10,315,270.93 of construction spending.
- Two recent cases in which the Touring's complaints produced results: the Valganna provincial road, ruined by the contractor laying Induno Olona's aqueduct, after which the Como provincial Deputazione called the mayor to strict observance of the contract; and the Sondrio-Morbegno road wrecked by the Tartano torrent, which the Sondrio technical office undertook to restore without delay.
- Extract from ing. Alessandro Giunta's report to the president of the Messina provincial Deputazione, arguing that small southern communes ruined their budgets building compulsory roads across broken mountain ground and numerous watercourses, and now leave them so abandoned that the roadway is indistinguishable from the neighbouring fields, while the well-built old mule tracks have been usurped, sold off or built over.
- Bergamo's Giunta proposes raising its road-menders from ten to seventeen with two foremen for the upper and lower city, lifting pay from L. 700 to L. 900 (and L. 850 to L. 1,081 for the capi) and the charge on the commune from L. 5,850 to L. 13,660. The Rivista adds that the local papers' word stradaiuoli appears in no dictionary, and that even Rigutini and Fanfani's definition of stradino is wrong.
- From the Ligue des Chauffeurs bulletin in Paris, a criticism of French national-road signing: the cast-iron plates at crossroads carry route numbers that only help a driver who has already worked out his itinerary from the regional guides and the 1:100,000 sheets, and kilometre stones become illegible once the paint wears off. Signs should instead 'inform the ignorant', foreigners included.
- Summary of Pol Ravigneaux in La Vie automobile no. 452, who blames the motor car for two scourges, dust and abnormal road wear, and holds that with modern speeds and antidérapants macadam is finished. He urges a return to paving — broad Roman-style flags as laid in Italy, or small setts — but flat-surfaced, not the ridged work of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Napoleon that tourists avoid.
- The Rivista disputes reports that the Circuit de la Sarthe was left in ruins, recalling that after some 600 km of the Coppa Florio on the 150 km Brescia circuit — won by Raggio at 104 km/h with 22 powerful cars running — the macadam was not alarming. With article 67 fixing 40 km/h in open country and fewer than 2,500 cars in all Italy, it declines to contemplate billions spent on paving.
- Ch. Dauzats in the Figaro of 6 August reports Richmond's successful cement road — levelled ground, gravel, a concrete bed, then a triple layer of cement, screened stone and sand — without a word on cost. The Rivista notes that the Touring is instead pursuing cheap remedies: experiments on how tyre width affects tractive effort, and a circular to the Ministry of Public Works and the technical offices against re-metalling across the full road width.
- Concluding instalment of the members' referendum on roadside kerb-stones, printing replies 25 to 38 from Eugenio Torri, Mario Angelo Varesi and avv. E. G. Garibaldi in their favour and from ing. T. Stolcis of Trento, Umberto Zanirato, Alfredo Menni of Siena, ing. Enrico Marcello of Caserta and Pietro Gariboldi against, plus a comic poem by Filiberto Pietro of Turin, who dislocated a shoulder on one outside Milan. The editors close by endorsing the conditional case made in replies 16 to 23.
- Felice Manfredi rides the almost finished road from Locarno through Intragna and Camedo into the Val Vigezzo, reaching S. Maria Maggiore in under three hours without once dismounting, so free is it of counter-slopes. He praises its huge iron and masonry bridges and deep cuttings beneath the Limidario (2,189 m) and the Pizzo Ruscada (2,007 m), and reports the great bridge over the Ribalasca at the Italo-Swiss frontier still under construction.
- Writing from Acquaseria on 20 September 1906, Gerolamo Torri describes the new carriage road cut through the Sasso Rancio from Menaggio past Nobbiallo, Gaeta and Acquaseria to Rezzonico, Molvedo and S. Maria, with its ample dry galleries, lakeside inns and hotels, and the prospect of a complete circuit of the Lario once the extension to Dongo is finished.
- Prof. ing. Effren Magrini's monthly motoring department, reviewing detachable wheels and rims, asbestos-reinforced tyres, sparking plugs, goggles, the Taurinia car, silencers, self-starters, liquid suspensions, friction gearboxes and air-cooled engines.
- From La France automobile, the Michelin jante démontable used on the Sizaire, Lancia and Nazzaro cars that won the Automobile Club de France Grand Prix: an ordinary wood-spoked wheel bored with eight cross-holes, bolted to a detachable iron rim carrying the already-inflated tyre, adding about 10 kg on 135 mm tyres. The American Bryant rim, made by The Bryant Wheel Co. and adopted by The Diamond Rubber Co., is also noticed.
- The Milanese firm U. de Bonmartini, among the first makers of protective anti-skid bands, patented the use of asbestos in car covers two years ago and after more than twenty months of trials reports even circumferential wear and reliable rechapage. The racing and grand-touring type of figure 5, sheathed to the rim in replaceable leather croissants, is the pneumatic used on King Vittorio Emanuele's cars.
- The Luthi sparking plug, designed for the fiercer spark of magneto ignition: its central wire ends in a bell whose saw-toothed rim stands about a millimetre from the plug body, so the spark strikes from one tooth then another and the plug lasts indefinitely. Insulation is by compressed mica discs or a demountable porcelain cylinder; it was lately awarded at the Milan Exhibition.
- Dr Mirovitch's sporting goggles seal the eye against dust, grit and cold air while ventilating it separately through paired flattened tubes bent backwards, the lower admitting air and the upper venting it once warmed, so the lenses never mist. The aluminium frame has an adjustable bridge and knuckle joints that fold the lenses flat into their case.
- The old Turin firm Taurinia's car: elongated steel chassis narrowed at the front with double rear suspension, a four-cylinder vertical Fafnir engine of 10-12 HP water-cooled by pump and honeycomb radiator, magneto ignition backed by accumulators, automatic carburettor and lubrication, four speeds and reverse through three trains baladeurs on one lever, cardan drive and three internal-expanding brakes. It won the Coppa del Vecchio Chauffeur in that spring's Milano-San Remo voiturette race.
- The Austrian Felice Karmeli's silencer, a strongly corrugated outer tube enclosing two inner tubes: the exhaust enters at b, passes through ports into the outer chamber to expand and cool, then through further ports into a second annular space and finally into the inner chamber to escape. A small-engine version replaces the inner tubes with a cone that lets outside air cool the gases further.
- The Renault brothers' self-starter, much admired at the last competition for automatic starting gear: each explosion bleeds a little gas past a one-way valve into a two-litre reservoir, which then drives a compressed-air motor whose pinion is meshed with teeth on the flywheel by the same lever that opens the supply valve, giving three successive starts before the running engine recharges it.
- A liquid elastic suspension: a mineral-oil cylinder fixed to the spring, with a piston rod fixed to the chassis, valved end ports opening only outwards and further ports set midway along the cylinder. The piston meets no resistance on the outward stroke but is damped on the return according to the shape of the ports and the tightness of the valves; it is expected to be among the prizewinners in the French suspension competition.
- Explanation of friction change-speed gears, in which a driven disc shifted radially across the face of a driving disc gives a continuously variable ratio, zero at the centre and reversed beyond it, avoiding the power lost in ordinary toothed gears. The examples illustrated are the gear built by the Gearless Transmission Company of Rochester, N.Y. and the Evansville gear of another American house.
- The Zent engine's air cooling by tubes: the cylinder carries vertical grooves 3 mm deep into which copper tubes are fixed, spaced about their own diameter apart, so that the copper's radiation is reinforced by the movement of air through the insides of the tubes.
- Ing. Dalloglio of Bologna's motorcycle change-speed gear, worked by a single lever with three positions — high, free and low — so that a small engine gains the advantages of a larger one without added cost, weight or petrol consumption. High serves the plains, low the mountain roads, and the free position starting, descents and wheeling the machine by hand.
- New rules under which the Intendenze di Finanza issue standing trial-circulation permits to car makers instead of case-by-case authorisations: the maker registers his factory and up to two testing workmen with stamped, photographed identity cards, completes each numbered permit with the date and the workman's name before use, and the workman must wear a visible band or plate bearing the maker's name and trade mark and surrender the papers to inspecting agents on demand.
- At Los Angeles, California, Dr Carver draws crowds by jumping ten metres in a car: a steeply pitched wooden track curls upward at its lower end, and the machine — a 1905 Cadillac from the Cadillac Motor Car & Co. — flies the gap onto a second track to continue its run.
- Notice of Mario Morasso's new book on motoring, Il nuovo aspetto meccanico del mondo (Ulrico Hoepli, Milan, 305 pp., L. 4.50), by the author of La nuova arma, la macchina; the Rivista promises a full discussion later, and members applying to the direzione can have the volume for L. 3.
- For the Salone dell'Automobile, du Cycle et des Sports at the Grand Palais in Paris from 7 to 23 December 1906, the commissaire général plans a retrospective exhibition of the bicycle, tracing the unbroken line from the draisienne of the revolutionary period through the velocipede and the ordinary; the president of the Touring Club de France has already offered one of the most curious machines of the heroic age.
- The Kaiserlicher Automobil Club of Berlin sends the programme and plan of its motor exhibition of 24 November to 4 December 1906, occupying 13,000 sq m under cover and some 2,000 sq m outside, open to self-propelled vehicles of every sort, motor boats, motorcycles and accessories, with forms and rent to be returned to R. Kosch, Leipzigerplatz 16.
- The Milan chauffeurs' school at the Società d'Incoraggiamento d'Arti e Mestieri, via S. Marta 18, opens its courses again: drawing under ing. Giovanni Alfieri and oral lessons on engines, transmissions, lubrication, brakes and motorcycles under ing. Carlo Leidi. Enrolment is on 18-19 October, the entrance examination on 21 October, places are limited to 40, and lessons run from 6 November to the end of March 1907.
- Pol Ravigneaux's sketch in La Vie Automobile, under the title «La strada è di tutti», of the chauffard: the driver who plays skittles with pedestrians, lets a faster car pass only so as to dust it twice over, slows down to savour his victory, and rides through town with his cut-out open and his horn blaring.
- Notice of Alamanno De-Maria's La vettura automobile, sue parti, suo funzionamento (S. Lattes e C., Turin, 1906, 227 pp., L. 4), a short, clear survey with 121 figures in the text for readers who want an exact idea of the various kinds of motor car without the one-sidedness of existing works.
- The Rivista's cycling department for November 1906, covering the campaign to cut the bicycle tax to five lire, the carriage of members' machines by rail, and prof. ing. Effren Magrini's review of new brakes, saddles and handlebars.
- The finance minister avv. Fausto Massimini called at the Touring's Milan offices on 29 September and was received by comm. Johnson, Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli, cav. Zaffaroni, dott. Guastalla and rag. Mercanti, who gave him a memorial on the bicycle tax and the petrol duty. He confirmed no reduction is possible for 1907, whose budget was approved early in 1906, but declared himself personally favourable; the direzione is now polling its consuls on the views of the deputies of all 508 colleges.
- Answering members alarmed by a Direzione Generale delle Ferrovie circular forbidding the carriage of bicycles fitted with accessories, the Touring reproduces railway letter no. 8090 of 16 October confirming that Order of Service 39-1906, upheld by no. 59-1906, leaves the members' concession untouched, a separate polizzino being required for each machine deposited.
- Prof. ing. Effren Magrini's review of new cycle fittings, written from Turin in September 1906 and taking in the Carloni Duplex rim brake, elastic saddles, the handlebars fitted to nearly all American bicycles and a quick inner-tube repair button.
- The Duplex rim brake of Carloni's Brake Company of Milan: a very light articulated lever clamped to the handlebar by a single screw, with a screw regulator C that both brakes gradually on descents and adjusts pad clearance while the machine is moving. Its stirrup, fixed at D by two screws, works as a second-order lever with the fulcrum at D and the power at H, giving far greater pad pressure than brakes that merely press perpendicularly on the rim.
- Elastic saddles built so that the rear springs, instead of bearing on the seat pillar, rest on further coil springs working in the opposite sense and acting as a check on the rebound, thus keeping road shocks from reaching the rider; the Persoti saddle of figure 3 is the example given.
- Not a novelty but a simple and very useful device: two small aluminium buttons clamped over a punctured inner tube to make a repair that is quick to fit and lasts a long time, its use shown in figure 6.
- Giuseppe Rossi of Parma protests that the Rivista's article on the folding military bicycle — adopted for the Italian army by decree of 19 September 1905, no. 119, and built in his works — credited the invention to captain Beniamino Melli alone. He says the two conceived it together in August 1899 with his foreman Leopoldo Mora, and that both the patent and the label at the Milan Exhibition read Rossi-Melli.
- Nando Bennati argues that the Apuan Alps are Italy's least known range and praises Palagnana below Monte Matanna (1,317 m), where Alemanno and Daniele Barsi keep the Albergo Alpino del Matanna at 684 m, opened in 1889 by the Florence section of the C.A.I., and the Rifugio at Pian d'Orsina at 1,040 m, opened in 1894. He lists the approaches from Viareggio, Lucca, Bagni di Lucca and Pietrasanta and excursions to the Grotta all'Onda, the Procinto, the Pania della Croce and the pierced Monte Forato.
- The Touring's customs and duties department, on the effect of the movable licence plate at the frontier, the campaign to cut the duty on petrol, and the new Dutch triptych arrangement.
- Because the movable plate introduced by the law of 10 December 1905, no. 582 destroyed any secure identification of cycles leaving Italy, the Touring had its Rome console comm. Oreste Lattes press the finance ministry, which by circular prot. 12648, Division III, gave temporary-export bollette a year's validity and allowed repeated re-entry and re-export on the same document, extending the concession to motorcycles and cars.
- Minister Massimini told the direzione that a full cut in the duties on petroleum and its derivatives is impossible for international reasons, but that the ministry has been seeking a denaturant that would reserve benzina for motor use and so justify a separate tariff heading. Meeting treasury minister Angelo Majorana with comm. Johnson and on. Silvio Crespi of the Automobile Club di Milano, it was agreed to form a commission at the T.C.I., which met on 7 October to plan bench and road trials.
- The Touring Club of the Netherlands has been authorised by its government to issue triptychs and special cards for the temporary importation of self-propelled vehicles, and by reciprocity the T.C.I. may issue them to Italian members against a deposit equal to the Dutch entry duty of 5 per cent ad valorem; members are warned to declare their vehicle's value exactly, since the entry office may demand a further 5 per cent on any shortfall.
- The Touring's legal advice department, carrying tourist case law and replies to members' queries on cycles, motorcycles, cars, road classification and membership obligations.
- Two motoring judgments. The Pretura di Varese, on 2 September 1906, voided the speeding charge against Carlo Bocchetta Fino, chauffeur to cav. Giorgio Mylius, because the guards Franzetti and Caravati never ordered him to stop as articles 89 and 91 of the road police regulation require. The Pretore di Omegna acquitted ing. Luigi Borella of Intra, who was in Switzerland when the Locarno–Gravellona Toce omnibus he part-owned was said to be speeding.
- Replies to members: a hired bicycle must be returned as received, save for defects or fair wear; velocipedes fall under the cycle regulation of 16 December 1897, no. 540, not urban police rules on vehicles; good faith is no defence to riding without the tag; an unlit motorcycle lamp carries L. 2 to L. 100; a maker's warranty covers only free replacement of defective parts; the annual motor tax is indivisible; and resignations must be sent by registered letter before 31 October.
- Twentieth register, nos. 390 to 417, of suppliers affiliated for petrol, Oleoblitz, Reinach grease and calcium carbide, from Giorgio Cherubino's cycle shop at Altamura and the English pharmacy at Bagni di Lucca to the Farmacia Cambruzzi at Cortina d'Ampezzo, the Auto Garage at Lucca and the Hôtel Tonale at Ponte di Legno, with prices and hours; a Modificazioni list records price changes and lapsed affiliations at Ardenza, Biella, Busseto, Iseo, Lonato and Varenna.
- The club's official section for November 1906, carrying the board's decisions, the Dante Alighieri reception, the closing of the Milan Exhibition, the foreign-visitors congress, the outcome of the movable-plate referendum, the postal ruling on Touring documents, advice to correspondents and the consular and membership lists.
- Recent board decisions: a new garage plate and the 1907 cost of renewing it; a campaign with the state railways on level crossings, seeking colouring that does not merge with the road, night lighting and warning signs on the French blue-ground, white-lettered model; a reply to captain Gabriello Casalini on publishing plans of Italian cities; reprinting of the Guida del Lazio; and a deputation of senatore Colombo, comm. Johnson and on. Crespi to ministers Majorana and Massimini.
- The Dante Alighieri society, whose programme is the defence of Italian language and culture abroad, closed its annual congress in Milan on 29 October, when the Touring received the delegates at its offices and comm. Johnson gave each a commemorative medal; L. V. Bertarelli spoke of the aims the two bodies share and prof. Romano replied for the Dante.
- With the great Milan Exhibition closing as this number reaches members, the Rivista promises that it will go on echoing in its columns, with articles by competent hands on the exhibition's principal tourism-related displays in the numbers to come.
- The Associazione Nazionale per il concorso dei forestieri met at the Villa Reale from 17 to 20 October, opened by prince Pietro di Scalea with replies from comm. Ettore Candiani, comm. Magaldi and comm. Gamond, the Touring represented by comm. Federico Johnson. On. Maggiorino Ferraris's report carried a unanimous motion for a single flat long-distance railway fare, and on. Attilio Brunialti's, on Italy's artistic and natural beauties, one calling on the government to legislate.
- The referendum produced no workable design, but members' comments are summarised: while most favour the movable plate in principle, all complain that it is too easily stolen, lost or left off, costing the rider ten lire to replace or twenty to thirty in fines. The common wish is for a personal tax assessed on the holder's own declaration and evidenced by a receipt, doing away with the plate and its traditional stigma altogether.
- On the Consiglio di Stato's opinion, obtained through the Rome console comm. Oreste Lattes, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs has ruled that T.C.I. membership cards, certificates of competence to drive cars and motorcycles, and triptychs for temporary importation all travel at printed-matter rates, ending the surcharges some post offices had levied on packets of tessere.
- Advice to members who complain of slow replies: write concisely, register letters enclosing valuables, sign legibly with full name and surname, quote the membership number and the date of a consignment, treat each subject on a separate sheet, enclose a stamp for private enquiries, and give explicit notice of changes of address. Back numbers of the Rivista cannot be supplied even to new members, the print run covering only current and expected enrolments.
- Thirty-ninth list of newly appointed consuls, from avv. Michele Cella at Andretta and dott. Pietro Bianchi at Budrio to Ercole Cavalsassi at Tivoli and Claudio Crastan at Varese Ligure, followed by the five-year and benemeriti membership rolls, now 3,878 and 1,155, and the death at Genoa, aged only 45, of the member Francesco Vittorio Carosini.
- The monthly roll of membership candidates, listing life members such as conte Antonio Valotti of Brescia, Hubert Beaumont M.P. of London and the Federazione Italiana dei Consorzi Agrari of Piacenza, followed by annual members arranged by province from Alessandria to Sassari and by residence in the Venezia Giulia, the Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Vaud, Grisons and Ticino, Colonia Eritrea, North and South America and Asia.
- Members introducing ten or more new members during 1906 enter a draw, one chance per ten, for prizes from Giovanni Hensemberger of Monza (accumulators), the Fabrique Festina of Studly Fils at La Chaux-de-Fonds (three precision watches), Bellani & C. (a folding Cosmos 9x12 camera), U. Marucelli e C. (pocket first-aid cases), V. Miolatti (Moeris remontoirs), G. Caimi (acetylene lamps), Carloni Brake Co. and Tolusso (bicycle brakes) and the Frein Vigor of Lyon.