Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 12, No 8
Articles in this issue
- L. V. Bertarelli answers press claims that the Touring's 1:250,000 map of Italy needlessly duplicates the one begun by the Istituto d'Arti Grafiche di Bergamo, recounting the tender sent to Bergamo in October 1905 and the contract talks with the Istituto Geografico De Agostini; the sheet plan has been recut from 40 sheets to 56 uniform ones of 39 x 52 cm.
- A cycling party got up by the T.C.I. consul at Cetona rides to Rome and, driven on by continuous rain, leaves early for Nettuno along the Anzio road through woods being felled for charcoal, bound for Naples and the recently erupted Vesuvius.
- Touring gathering on Monte Argentario organised by the Grosseto consulate and Catone Porciatti, with riders from Rome, Bologna and Montalcino under consuls Guglielmetti, Moreschi and Padelletti visiting the Etruscan tagliata of Ansedonia and the Spacco della Regina, and hearing Raffaello Del Rosso speak after dinner at Orbetello.
- The Parma club's outing to the Roman ruins of Velleia by way of Borgo San Donnino, Alseno, Castellarquato and Lugagnano Val d'Arda, with the story of the excavations ordered in 1765 by Philip of Bourbon that turned up the Editto Provinciale della Gallia Cisalpina.
- Rag. Antonio Rispoli of Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi describes the springs of the Sele at Caposele in the province of Avellino, over five cubic metres a second and soon to be capped by the Apulian Aqueduct, reached by post coach from Contursi station past Quaglietta, with Lake Laceno and the sanctuary of San Gerardo Maiella at Materdomini nearby.
- Cap. Giuseppe Manzotti complains that neither Baedeker nor any other guide notices Vasto in the Abruzzi; Prof. Anelli's note describes the Caldora palace of 1427, the castle, Santa Maria (with a Veronese and Titian's Spina), S. Giuseppe, S. Pietro and the Carmine, and the townsmen Gabriele Rossetti and the Palizzi brothers.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi tours the province's 200 sq m stand: a Polisius concasseur driven by a 25 HP Gadda e Finzi motor, rotary and oscillating gravel screens designed by Ing. Enrico Pozzoli and built by Gambaro and Genoni of Castano Primo, an Aveling & Porter 16-ton roller, and ten trial macadam sections using stone from Arona, Maggianico, Arcisate, Ispra and Baveno.
- The Commissione Strade, meeting on 14 July under Count Febo Borromeo, resolves to issue regional editions of the prize-winning “Manuale pratico per lo Stradino” and the best road monographs, to test wide wheel rims before the province of Milan's rule takes effect on 1 January 1907, and to convene Milanese motor manufacturers over a radial test road out of the city.
- The Touring's memorandum on revising the road regulations asks that motor cars be freed from the circulation licence and drivers from the certificate of fitness, that motor-assisted bicycles be classed as velocipedes, and that police enforce the lamp and road-keeping rules on carters and pedestrians instead of only on cyclists and motorists.
- Extracts from on. Vincenzo Riccio's Rivista d'Italia article on the Public Works Ministry survey to 30 June 1904: 138,096,678 metres of road in all, 677 m per square kilometre in northern Italy against 347 in the south, 285 in Sicily and 183 in Sardinia, and close to half a billion lire spent under the laws of 1869, 1875 and 1881 against forecasts of 200 million.
- Second instalment of the members' referendum on roadside kerbstones, printing replies 18 to 24 from Luigi Curti (Vigevano), Giovanni Campi (Casale), F. Minoggio (Novara), B. Balsari (Oleggio), S. M. Vaschetti (Torino), Raimondo Braghetta (Padova) and Rinaldo Fontanella (Monza), most in favour where the stones keep carts off the hard verge cyclists use.
- Technical data on the L. Godard dirigible chosen by the American Wellman for his North Pole flight: 50 m long and 16 m in diameter, 6,350 cubic metres, 1,400 kg, a 55 HP petrol engine on a large forward propeller for 24 km/h with a 25 HP reserve motor, hydrogen-filled and flown low on a guide-rope with six men aboard.
- The signpost department lists new signs 525-532 in the province of Arezzo around Castiglion Fiorentino and Foiano, records donations bringing the totals to 1,659 signs and L. 22,079, reports the Touring's offer to signpost the Milan Exposition, and prints on. Dari's letter agreeing that the state will pay for two danger signs on national road no. 21.
- Dott. Ugo Migliavacca, consul at Gozzano, writes that motorists ignore the Touring's “svolta pericolosa” signs — a cyclist at the Buccione point escaped only by throwing himself into the hedge — while consuls Lomboni and Orsolato obtain a signpost for the Tegorzo bridge trivium near Fener.
- Member Ugo Brolio of Gemona complains that Friulian villages post begging bans but not their own names, that milestones give only the distance to Udine, and that the Tolmezzo-Codroipo road uses three different kilometre systems in 70 km; he urges painted municipal signs bearing the Touring's arms.
- The Bergamo consulate reports that a prefectural decree of 3 March 1903 bars vehicles over five quintals from the wooden Barcotto bridge on the Oglio beyond Pisogne, and its keeper stops every motor car; the Touring will place two signs diverting drivers by the Pisogne-Darfo road.
- Avv. Luigi Gasparotto attacks the failed bill granting deputies free tickets for wives, mothers-in-law and nursemaids, and the new “summer excursion” fares that serve Saint Moritz, Bormio and Santa Caterina, demanding cheap returns for shop assistants and cyclists on lines such as the Milano-Lecco-Sondrio, where Dervio has no return ticket at all.
- The jury's full report on the Touring's national hotel-bedroom competition at the Milan Exposition, with the commercial travellers' gold medal going to Ditta Gabev Carlo for its type B room and the Club Alpino Italiano's mountain-room prize reconsidered, followed by Ugo Ojetti's Corriere della Sera notice praising the rooms' comfort and modest cost.
- Dott. Petracchi of Varese's detachable rim, now being worked up by Pirelli: a rim split lengthwise and riveted to the cover, drawn onto a conical ring on the wheel by four dogged bolts, so a damaged tyre can be swapped in two minutes or the inner tube changed while the car is running — set against the Michelin rims used by Renault and Fiat at the Grand Prix.
- The Vinet detachable rim, two conical parts joined by bolts with the tyre fixed in the usual way to an inner iron rim, so spare covers can be carried ready mounted; tried on the Sarthe circuit at the Grand Prix de l'A.C.F.
- A motor horn by the house of A. Daveluy: an aluminium turbine spinning inside an aluminium drum, driven through a flexible shaft off a friction disc, sounding by suction and rupture rather than by air passing over a fan, and audible at very great distance.
- An anti-skid protector by the Wells Light Manufactured of New York, held by hooks fixed to the cover and drawn to the wheel by a metal cable tightened with a special screw instead of the bolts or clips used on other detachable systems.
- The air-cooled 100 HP Premier engine of the Premier Automobile Company of Indianapolis, run in the last Vanderbilt Cup: 177 mm bore, 137 mm stroke, finned cylinders, valves worked by angle levers and cams off the transmission shaft, with a 56.8 mm inlet and an 80 mm exhaust valve.
- Recent American shock absorbers: the air-cylinder Kilgore of Boston and Sheddan of Baltimore, the American Hydraulic Shock Absorber of Easton, Pennsylvania, and the coil-spring Sager of Rochester, N.Y., fitted to the Oldsmobile.
- The Rivista drops the illustrated coverage it had prepared: the Brescia motor circuit has been abandoned, and the paper declines to enter the dispute, thanking the consuls whose offers of help the organising committee felt obliged to refuse.
- Meets and events: Umbria's first auto-garage opened by Luigi Dell'Orso in the Palazzo Orsini at Foligno; a ciclo-automobilistic rally at Grottammare on 19 August; the Garibaldi monument meet at Massa run by consuls Erculiani and Giorgini; Noli's 5 August meet for the S. Eugenio centenary; and the Libertas rally at Viareggio with some 1,000 cyclists parading.
- “Un Routier” describes the cyclist companies of the 2nd and 9th Bersaglieri shipped from Livorno and Naples after the May 1906 riots: Capt. Ceccherini's men rode the 20 km to Villasalto, 8 of them steep climb, in under two hours and later 112 km Cagliari-Iglesias and back, while Capt. Bertoli's company patrolled Monteponi, Buggerru, Domusnovas and the Iglesiente mines.
- The folding army bicycle invented by Capt. Melli and built at the Pavia arsenal: elegant horizontal frame hinged at the centre, 60 cm wheels, saddle position correct for any height — preferred over the French Gérard, the German Steyer, a Belgian machine and the Italian Boselli, Costa and Carraro folders.
- The Director General of Customs and Taxes asks the Touring, through consul comm. ing. Oreste Lattes, what faults members found in the 1906 bicycle and motor tax plate before the 1907 issue is ordered; the Direzione opens a members' referendum with replies due by 25 August.
- V. Bedoni's three rules for tyre pressure: inflate little on rough or soft roads, hard on good level ones, and always pump the rear tyre far harder than the front so that with the rider aboard both rims sit the same height off the ground.
- The Motosacoche clip-on engine: a saddlebag-shaped steel chassis clamped to any touring frame of at least 55 cm by 14 tie-rods and seven leather-lined straps, its 1.5 HP motor giving 40 to 45 km/h and climbing every hill, the whole weighing 30 kg, costing L. 1.50 of petrol per 100 km and detachable in five minutes.
- The Corson sprung handlebar by the Motor Cycle Speciality Co. of Boston, carried on two coil springs fixed to a rod on the fork rather than on the steering column, so shocks from the wheel never reach the rider's hands and no sprung fork is needed.
- New sprung forks: the Thomas, with a small auxiliary fork carrying the spring; the straight Hornecker of Whiting, a rectangular frame on four coil springs; and the Yole of the Consolidated Mfg. Co. of Toledo, Ohio, whose fork mounts on a small lever with the wheel at one end and a coil spring at the other.
- The Touring petitions Minister Massimini against paying for the wanted cut in the bicycle tax (L. 10 to 5) by raising the new motor-car tax; the Finance Ministry circularises frontier customs offices to improve their premises, with a new building agreed at Ponte di Legno; and Austria suspends the deposit exemption after capo-console Ernesto Maddalena of Rovereto withdraws his personal guarantee.
- The Touring failed to get Registry offices to collect the motorcycle and motor-car tax on existing circulation booklets, so owners must both carry the badge proving payment and have it noted on the licence, exchanging pre-July booklets for new ones from the Genio Civile under the law of 10 December 1905, no. 582.
- Reviews of Carlo Sandoni's report for the Bologna visitors' association, the Audax Milanese marching song, Alberto Barbati's Il passaporto for emigrants, the six-language Vocabolario tecnico illustrato (Hoepli, 823 cuts) and Paul Joanne's rewritten Vosges, Alsace et Forêt Noire with road profiles for cyclists and motorists.
- Director General Federico Johnson shares with members the Cavaliere dell'Ordine Mauriziano conferred on him by the King; assessor Ettore Candiani and Alfredo Zaffaroni are decorated with the Crown of Italy; rag. Arturo Mercanti is made Segretario Generale Capo Ufficio after avv. Garbati resigns; and consuls are asked to inventory and revise the signposts already placed.
- Prizes drawn among members introducing ten or more new members during 1906: Hensemberger accumulators of Monza, six Study & Fils chronometer watches from La-Chaux-de-Fonds, a Bellani “Cosmos” 9x12 folding camera, Marucelli pocket first-aid cases, Moeris watches from Miolatti, Carmi acetylene lamps, and Carloni, Tolusso and Vigor bicycle brakes.
- The candidates who applied for T.C.I. membership during June 1906, life members first — among them Sidney Sonnino, Prof. Filippo De Filippi and the Fabbrica Automobili Standard of Turin — followed by the annual members listed province by province.
- The 1906-1907 edition is out: 838 pages and more than 15,000 useful addresses, at L. 2 to members and L. 4 to others, with the letter of thanks sent on the King and Queen's behalf by minister E. Ponzio Vaglia.