Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 13, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Notice that the 1907 subscription must be paid by 15 January — L. 6 for members in the Kingdom, L. 8 for those abroad — with a five-year option at L. 24 or L. 32 carrying a silver badge. The few 1906 defaulters are warned they will not receive the first four sheets of the Carta d'Italia distributed during January.
- Ottone Brentari on the 28 November banquet at the Cova, given by the Milan section of the Club Alpino Italiano to Celestino Usuelli and Carlo Crespi, first men to cross the Alps by balloon; he interviews Usuelli, 29, survivor of the 2 June Adriatic crash that drowned Nazzari and Minoletti, and captain Frassinetti on the aeronautical field and pilot school being built at Villapizzone. Alarmed alpinists complain that cyclists, motor cars and now balloons have stolen their mountains.
- The standing motoring department, opened by a boxed masthead, running from the Turin and Paris exhibitions through the French heavy-lorry trial to motor-circulation law in England, the Grisons and France.
- The fourth international motor exhibition opens at the Palazzo di Belle Arti al Valentino in Turin on 16 February and closes 3 March, with a new building added in prolongation of the palace. It is run by the Automobile Club di Torino under marchese Alfonso Ferrero di Ventimiglia, with sen. conte Biscaretti di Ruffia and ing. Arturo Ceriana as vice-presidents and Mario Montù as secretary-general; the Touring's comm. Federico Johnson sits on the honorary committee.
- The Turin exhibition committee announces a double art competition to encourage Italian motoring prints of the kind English artists make for horse sport: L. 500 and L. 200 for artistic prints, L. 250 and L. 100 for picture postcards.
- A free competition for detachable wheel rims at the February Turin show, entries closing 31 January 1907. Each competitor must show a pair of pneumatic-shod rims fitted to the rear wheels of a car of at least 24-40 HP; the contest lapses if fewer than four enter.
- Mario Morasso's survey of the ninth Paris Salon, 7-23 December 1906, split between the Grand Palais and the Invalides esplanade: no flying machine or gearless change-speed, but omnibuses, camions, town fiacres, marine engines and generating sets from De Dion, Panhard, Mors, Renault and Darracq-Serpollet. He judges the six-cylinder vogue, rating the Fiat, Itala, San Giorgio and Spa engines above the French Bollée and Mors.
- Extracts from ing. Andrea Maggiorotti's report on the French War Ministry's heavy-lorry trial, 21 machines over 1800 km in eight stages from Paris to Marseilles and back. A table gives crew, load and weight for the Darracq-Serpollet, Peugeot, Cohendet, Turgan, Janvier, Mors, De Dion, Orion and Berliet entries; the prize was divided among the ten that finished within the programme's time.
- Maggiorotti on the commercial-vehicle show on the Invalides esplanade: steam wagons from Surrey, Chaboche and Darracq-Serpollet, the growing divergence of lorry chassis from touring-car practice, pressed versus rolled-steel frames on the Bretin, Cohendet and Société des Automobiles Commerciales, and the untested multi-axle Brillié, Borderel and Janvier.
- A new English regulation will limit cars under 20 quintals to 20 km/h at dangerous crossings, descents, curves and through villages, and machines of 20 to 30 quintals to 8 km/h. Drivers must stop after any accident, produce their tax receipt on demand, and carry plates issued by the local authority.
- The Grisons Gran Consiglio has authorised motor vehicles on the roads near the St Gall, Liechtenstein, Thusis, Landquart-Davos, Coira-Lenzerheide and Castasegna-Vicosoprano frontiers under conditions still to be fixed, with temporary passes possible elsewhere — a first step toward the free circulation motorists want throughout Switzerland.
- The Touring Club de France has lodged a reasoned protest with the Finance and Treasury ministers and the president of the Budget Commission against a bill taxing foreigners who enter France by motor car.
- The sixth Belgian cycle and motor show will be held at the Palais du Cinquantenaire in Brussels from 12 to 27 February.
- Report of the A.C.I. council held at Turin on 25 November 1906, which reconfirmed principe Piero Strozzi as president, marchese Ferrero and on. Silvio Crespi as vice-presidents and M. Montù as secretary, drew conte Oldofredi, ing. Cavalchini, marchese Dal Pozzo and cav. Florio for the sporting commission, and read a 1907 budget closing with L. 4293.95 in hand. Delegates to the Paris conference were told not to press the boycott of Switzerland if real guarantees were obtained.
- The standing cycling department, its title hand-lettered inside an Art Nouveau engraving of a rider against a rising sun, carrying this month the bicycle-tax referendum, the carriage of machines by rail and a tour of Switzerland.
- Progress report on the Touring's referendum for cutting the bicycle tax to L. 5, which has met unexpectedly wide sympathy among deputies. A second and longer list of parliamentary replies gathered by the consular corps is promised, and consuls who have not yet answered are pressed to do so.
- On the damage done to bicycles loaded loose among the goods in railway luggage vans, and the claims that have forced the railway administration to pay. France has built wagons reserved for velocipedes; the State Railways' rolling-stock studies and testing office has now asked the Touring for drawings of fittings to secure machines in Italian brake vans.
- Mario Matucci (tessera 40321) rides some 1200 km from Tortona through Alessandria, Vercelli and Ivrea up the Valle d'Aosta, walks the thirty-two km of the Gran San Bernardo, then runs down the Rhone past Chillon to Montreux, Lausanne, Yverdon, Neuchâtel and Bern. He goes on by Interlaken, the Brünig, Lucerne, Zurich and Rapperswyll, crosses the Furka past the Rhone glacier, and returns over the Simplon by Domodossola, Pallanza, Stresa and Arona to Milan.
- The roads department, opened by an engraved masthead of a road gang at work, given this month to tar-spraying against dust and to a retrospective on the Milan road exhibition.
- Signed "X.", an account of road tarring: ing. Rimini's 1901 oil-solvent method applied at Ascoli, Bologna, Livorno and, through ing. Rimondini, at Lugo; and the Lassailly plant of the Société générale de Goudronnage des routes, watched at Nice by the Touring's ing. Emilio Gola with ing. Guido Grandi of Como, which lays 2000 square metres an hour on the Avenue Félix Faure and the Promenade des Anglais.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi's retrospective on the road exhibition at Milan 1906: the road services shown by the provinces of Torino, Campobasso, Trapani and Rovigo, Milan province's ten test sections and complete stone-crushing yard, sixteen firms paving the experimental street and twelve more the footways. He singles out Savio Alfredo of Costanzana's rut-levelling machine and the Izar-Schieppati "trokodon", an elliptical wheel that lays its own track.
- The legal-advice department, headed by an Art Nouveau engraving, gathering reported court judgments and members' queries on bicycle, motorcycle and motor-car law.
- Three reported judgments: the Badia Polesine magistrate held that selling a tax plate together with a velocipede needs no government licence; the Vigevano magistrate acquitted Sironi Rosolino of Abbiategrasso, who produced his motorcycle plate from his pocket on demand; and the Siena criminal tribunal cleared conte Gherardo Raffa Spannocchi Piccolomini of the injuries suffered by Sati Modesto when a bullock bolted at his car near Rapolano.
- Replies to members on recovering a stolen bicycle from an innocent purchaser, the impossibility of refunding an unused tax plate, liability when a horse shies at a cyclist, riding on after a lampless-bicycle summons, settling motoring contraventions before the prefect, hotel-keepers' liability for a dishonest page-boy, and the subscription still owed by a member who resigned after 31 October.
- L. V. Bertarelli sets out the despatch, from about 15 January, of the first four sheets of the Touring's Carta d'Italia — Milano, Torino, Genova and Venezia — at 3000 to 4000 sets a day, with prices, folding, parchment envelopes and a celluloid pocket for motorists. The second batch will be Civitavecchia, Roma, Frosinone and Napoli, the third Como, Brescia, Pisa and Bologna-Firenze.
- Notes on other journals: Treves's Milano e l'Esposizione on the Trentino, a Salon special of L'Automobile, Lino Vaccari in L'Alpe on Italy's historic trees and the horrors of deforestation, Georges Leroy on Sardinia in the Belgian Touring bulletin, the Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung on colonel Schleyer's field-telegraph motorcycle, and Gino Valenti in Nuova Antologia on the threatened heritage law of 1902.
- The club's news department, carrying the council's resolutions, the Rome consulate, the medical section's lists, signpost subscriptions, affiliated hotels and petrol depots, obituaries and the roll of candidate members.
- Council decisions: a commission of cav. Alfredo Zaffaroni, dott. Gildo Guastalla and cav. Felice Pizzagalli to test the colouring and night lighting of level crossings around Milan and Turin; Touring participation in the 1907 Milan cycle and motor show and in the Paris Salon; L. V. Bertarelli made vice-director general and ing. Gola delegate councillor for roads; and the Rome consulate for 1907-08 formed under principe Lanza di Scalea and don Prospero Colonna.
- Deaths of Pier Eugenio Radice, 23, once of the Touring staff and latterly of the Corriere della Sera, mourned in a letter from console Angelo Tomè of Introbbio for his propaganda for the Valsassina; of Ernesto Stellari, 26, the Touring's mechanic at Castelleone, buried at the club's expense; and at Florence of conte Giovanni Gigliucci, life member.
- Forty-second list of affiliated professionals and premises: the Tesini pharmacy of Pavesi Alberto at S. Giovanni in Persiceto, second-category mechanics at Aquila (Scipioni Augusto) and Pancalieri (Gramaglia Vincenzo), and garages at Pisa (Auto-Garage Etruria), Milan and Santa Margherita Ligure.
- New subscriptions for Touring signposts, headed by L. 700 from the Ministry of Finance for customs boards and thirty signs from the province of Firenze, with gifts from the municipalities of Rovato, Rapallo, Torre Pellice, Milano and Corte de' Cortesi and from conte Alvise da Schio, Ernesto Reinach and Edoardo Nava. The running totals reach 1975 signs and L. 27,148.
- Newly affiliated or amended hotels with their room, meal and garage tariffs: the Stella d'Italia e Aquila Nera at Bologna, Hotel Gallo at Brescia, Scudo di Francia at Ivrea, Scudo di Savoja at Leyni, San Michele at Madonna di Tirano, La Minerva at Pontedera, Le Jardin at Prato, the Caffè Borra at Salò and the Terminus at S. Michel de Maurienne.
- Petrol-supply affiliations: dealers dropped and replaced at Domodossola, Granarolo Emilia, Messina, Palazzolo sull'Oglio and Sondalo; price cuts at Avezzano, Bozzolo, Ceva, Colle Val d'Elsa, Desenzano, Fivizzano, Grosseto, Montebello Vicentino and Oderzo; rises conceded at Casarza della Delizia, Cittadella and S. Michele Extra. A twenty-second list gives new suppliers nos. 421-437, from Argegno to Varallo Sesia.
- Members proposed between 1 and 30 November 1906, from life members such as ing. conte Federico Annoni of Milan, Carlo Wedekind of Nice and principe Pietro Lanza di Scalea of Rome to annual members listed by province, with foreign entries from Fiume's Club Alpino Fiumano, Berlin, London and New York.