Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 16, No 1
Articles in this issue
- L. V. Bertarelli presents the new Touring/Ferrovie dello Stato monograph Abruzzo by Michele Oro, running through the Gran Sasso, Maiella, Velino and Sirente, the Peschiera spring, the Rocca di Mezzo plateau and Capistrello, and announcing a February ski convegno between Roccaraso and the Piano delle Cinque Miglia with alpine troops and the Norwegian Smith brothers.
- Bertarelli's minute of the 5 December meeting installing the Touring's Commissione di propaganda pel bosco e per il pascolo, which limits itself to six publications in three years, backed by the club's own 45,000 lire and over 100,000 lire already subscribed.
- Notice inviting competent writers to put proposals in writing to the Touring for the planned forest-and-pasture propaganda volumes; approaches made in person will not be entertained.
- The 1910 Brussels exhibition will carry an independent Mostra stradale under the Belgian public works ministry, tied to the II Congresso Internazionale della Strada in July, including a "historic road" built in successive periods to which the Touring contributed studies, drawings and photographs.
- Arturo Mercanti flies the army airship 1 bis at Vigna di Valle and describes Crocco and Ricaldoni's design — 160 g/m² varnished silk, seven independent compartments, a hinged internal keel, Bayard-Clément motor and 53 km/h — against the Lebaudy, Astra, Zeppelin, Gross and Parseval types.
- Forlanini traces the Crescenzago airship back to his own Politecnico article of 32 years earlier on Dupuy de Lôme, and claims a record minimum resistance of about 3.5 grams per square metre of master section against 10 for the Lebaudy and the 1 bis, crediting captain Cesare Dal Fabbro.
- Giuseppe Bevione recounts how skiing reached Italy through the engineer Kind, killed on the Bernina, whose son now presides over the Turin ski club, and describes the Telemark swing and Smith's 43-metre jump on the Oulx piste.
- Silio Carfani argues for restoring an independent Italian fashion, tracing the Roman tunic through Giovanni Musso's 1383 description of the women of Piacenza to Pisanello, Botticelli, Titian and Veronese, and illustrating Rosa Genoni's modern gowns drawn from the Primavera and the San Giorgio.
- Dr Alessandro Clerici sets out the hygiene of winter mountain resorts, contrasting the twelve-hour rail journey to Chamonix with the sledge stages to Saint Moritz, and weighing skating, ski, luge and bobsleigh; he asks why Italy has developed no comparable Alpine winter station.
- News picture page: the Spanish aviator Fernandez killed at Antibes on 6 December, the cyclist Rutt and his partner Clarck winning the American six-day race, royal shoots at Rambouillet and in Silesia, excavations at Ostia and Gorky's villa on Capri.
- Monthly digest of the foreign press and current events, ranging from Italian road conditions and Paris motor cabs to sporting fashion, Latham's flight to a shoot, anti-airship guns and an amphibious military launch.
- Translated from the English The Car: level crossings, sleeping carters, roadside markets and loose livestock hold motorists in Liguria, Tuscany, Emilia and Lombardy to 15-20 miles an hour, though the good humour of country people compensates.
- New Paris cabs bodied like English hansoms, on 8-9 HP Aster engines, seat passengers midway along the chassis to soften the jolting and leave the view clear past the chauffeur.
- Notes on sporting dress, covering how motoring and flying forced an adapted wardrobe on men and women alike and the difficulty of keeping a lady's hat on at speed.
- An English hairdressing arrangement redistributes a woman's hair so a hat stays in balance in a motor car or an aeroplane; the writer commends it to motoring and aeronaut ladies elsewhere.
- A Paris originality contest awarded its prizes to two hats shaped as an aeroplane and a windmill; the writer doubts such eccentricity will outlast the season.
- On 23 November Hubert Latham flew his Antoinette monoplane from Mourmelon-le-Grand to Berru near Reims, steering by the cathedral, to join the marquis de Polignac's shoot and flew his share of the game home half an hour later.
- A symbolic statue is to be raised at Bagatelle outside Paris for Santos Dumont's 1906 flight; the writer grants him the credit for popularising the problem but finds the monument mania and the design's earthbound aesthetic excessive.
- Pierre Girard Bouvet's 8-metre air-propeller boat draws only 15 cm and, with a 20 HP petrol engine, makes 25 km/h with two aboard — proposed for shallow colonial rivers where submerged propellers are constantly damaged.
- Illustrated survey of anti-airship artillery, including a vertical-fire Krupp gun mounted on a Daimler car in German army service and a motor gun carriage adopted in the United States.
- Engineer Ravaillet's amphibious motor launch, submitted to the French war ministry, carries wheel axles in its keel and switches between wheels and propellers, making 40 km/h on land and 12 on water with four aboard on a 14 HP engine.
- Signed G. G., an attack on the new Italian motoring regulation: the walking-pace limit through rural built-up areas, article 58's change from "devono" to "possono" that legalises the contravention on the fly, joint owner liability for a chauffeur's speeding, and automatic seizure of the licence after any injury.
- Hygiene review covering the 1908 malaria season, the occupational complaints of telegraph and telephone staff, and heating and ventilation in American railway carriages.
- Prof. Celli's findings on the 1908 malaria year — mild in northern, southern and Sicilian Italy but worse in the Veronese, Grossetano and Agro Romano and more widespread in Sardinia — with a mortality-by-zone map and advice on early quinine prophylaxis, land reclamation and wire screening against anopheles.
- Telegraphists are prone to rheumatic and digestive complaints and to the "crampo dei morsisti" that ends in an inability to write, while telephone operators suffer ear pain, electric shocks, vertigo and fainting from the right-side headset, per Drs Zevi and Ciancioli.
- The Pennsylvania Railway's combined indirect heating and ventilation draws air through corner wind scoops over steam pipes and under each seat, renewing 1,700 cubic metres an hour — 28 cubic metres for each of 60 passengers.
- Senators and deputies met at Montecitorio on 20 December with Johnson and Bertarelli, electing don Prospero Colonna president, count Gian Giacomo Morando vice-president and Italo Bonardi secretary-general, and next day petitioned for repeal of article 3 of the 15 July 1909 fines law.
- The magazine's world round-up, arranged by rubric from Aeronautica and Alpinismo through Ciclismo and Ferrovie to Podismo and Viabilità.
- At Vigna di Valle on 28 November Piero Moro and Arturo Mercanti presented colonel Moris and the Brigata Specialisti with a Touring gold medal and a silver plaque for the Rome-Naples raid; also Zeppelin's projected Atlantic crossing, Paris's new Scuola Superiore di Aeronautica and the Aero Club of America's Hempstead aerodrome.
- A conference of hoteliers at Lucerne resolved to unite the hotelkeepers of every nation in a single worldwide association with its seat in a Swiss city.
- The Club Alpino Italiano's delegates met in Turin on 13 December, fixed the 41st congress for the coming summer and elected Palestrino vice-president; the Padua section will build a refuge at Prà di Toro in Cadore, to be named Padova.
- Only twelve entries for the revived French Grand Prix; French figures show 8,802 new commercial vehicles in three years against 7,241 touring cars; the Automobile Club d'Italia and the Turin trade both voted protests against the new regulation and tax; Hurth Gross's cigar-box accumulator gives 60 volts at 1,500 grams.
- Fernandez killed at Antibes on 6 December when his machine overturned; Leonino Da Zara flying a Voisin biplane at his own aerodrome near Padua; Latham to 550 metres on 1 December; Blériot blown onto a roof at Constantinople; and 1,300,000 francs of prizes across the 1910 meetings from Heliopolis to Deauville.
- The month's Italian patents of touring interest, including Tassinari's extensible bicycle crank, Guicu's folding bicycle, Dufaux's ladies' motorcycle, Baldi's elastic wheel and several aeroplane and propeller designs.
- Lieutenant Negrotto's photogrammetric survey of the Himalayan region explored by the Duke of the Abruzzi passes to the Istituto Geografico Militare; a Foreign Office conference in London settled the 6°-by-4° sheet layout for the 1:1,000,000 map of the world.
- The 1910 Giro d'Italia gains two stages, reaching Udine and then Ferrara, and will be run with only one rest day between stages; Garavaglia won the 115 km Coppa d'Inverno on 19 December; Rutt and Clarck took the New York six-day with 4,280.924 km, while Cuniolo and Carapezzi both abandoned.
- Vienna will hold an international exhibition of hunting and allied sports from May to October 1910, marking Franz Joseph's eightieth birthday.
- Short notices: the Gaeta-Roccasecca line under construction and the Aquila-Ascoli projected, complaints over the long-closed level crossing on the Valle Brembana line, and new tramway and cableway schemes from Conegliano to Montovolo.
- A permanganate-and-carbonate test to detect hypo in developing dishes and to check that plates and papers are washed clean, followed by a list of card-mount colour combinations that harmonise.
- How to approach a frightened horse: enter the stable, hold out the left hand and stand motionless for ten or fifteen minutes, then advance silently and work from the forehead and ears down the neck to the back and feet, speaking gently throughout.
- At Brooklands the hundred-mile lightweight motorcycle record fell to a 3½ HP machine, which covered the 161 kilometres in a little over 51 minutes.
- Berlin will hold an exhibition of marine motors and motor boats from 19 March to 3 April 1910, under the German Imperial Automobile Club and the constructors' syndicate.
- The Ligurian runner Emilio Lunghi returned from America with records at the half-mile, 700 yards and three-quarter mile; Dorando Pietri lost a London marathon to Gardiner on 18 December and meets the American Hayes on 16 January.
- Road tarring is no novelty: Nottingham has streets tarred since 1840 and the first French trials date back some forty years, though their results were inconclusive.
- The Touring's monthly road-condition survey, listing gravelled, muddy and deeply rutted stretches by route number from Turin-Asti and Chivasso-Casale Monferrato to Bologna-Firenze, Roma-Rieti and Lucera-Foggia.
- The Commissione Strade adds Note tecniche di buon governo stradale by engineer Enrico Pozzoli of Milan's provincial technical office, written for head roadmen, assistants and others responsible for day-to-day road upkeep.
- Local road news: deplorable roads in the province of Salerno and the suburbs of Padua, impassable streets at Marina di Pisa, the Acquapendente-Proceno-Monte Amiata road made provincial, and a new carriage road opened up to Montemignaio at 904 metres.
- Department on tourism in law and statistics, covering the parliamentary debate on the bicycle tax, a new international legal committee for aviation, and the bill to connect isolated communes by road.
- Samoggia's bid to exempt poor workers' machines failed for want of any way to measure poverty or distance, Montù defended the return of the fixed plate as favouring the one-bicycle owner, and the finance minister put the loss from the reduction at 1,200,000 lire.
- A committee formed in Paris under Eduardo D'Hoogue, with Gastone Delayen as international secretary, will defend aviation's interests under existing law and frame future rules; Raffaello Ricci is its national delegate for Italy.
- 335 communes across 37 provinces are still reachable only by bad mule tracks; Bertolini's bill funds 1,850 km of connecting roads at 39,500,000 lire, with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti loans and half the interest borne by the state.
- Lloyd George's Finance Bill grades the British motor tax from 25 lire for motorcycles to 1,050 for machines over 60 HP, exempting public vehicles, omnibuses, ambulances and fire engines, halving it for doctors, and hypothecating the yield to road improvement. Signed I. B.
- Book notices including Tiller's Le Caoutchouc, Biagi and Bianchi's iconographic history of Rome, Falciai's Arezzo, Frémont's Caen et Bayeux, Rabot's Au Cap Nord, Hutchinson's Motoring in the Balkans and the Baedeker Italian handbooks.
- The Touring's national air-tourism commission, chaired by senator Giovanni Celoria of the Brera observatory, lists its members and divides into four sub-commissions — cartography and publications, legislation and customs, meteorological observation, and travel practice — before the Paris intergovernmental conference.
- The Rivista and other publications will be withheld from members who have not paid the 1910 subscription by 15 January; instructions for money orders and change of address, and the list of Touring Office branches from Bergamo and Brescia to Trento and Venice.
- Prof. Umberto Guerzoni of Rosario de Santa Fe, director of the Banco d'Italia y Río de la Plata, sent in 92 life memberships from Italian emigrants in Argentina and was made consul for Rosario.
- The Direzione records its thanks to the commission president, the rapporteur and the ministers of the Treasury and Finance for the new law cutting the bicycle tax to 6 lire and grading the motor tax in favour of smaller and commercial vehicles.
- The director general, vice-director general and a council deputation are to travel to Rome to constitute the Touring's Roman delegation definitively.
- A Touring gold medal is again to be conferred on the chauffeurs' school at Bologna.
- Candidates for membership who applied between 1 and 30 November 1909, listed as life members by town and annual members by province, with separate runs for Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America, and a membership tally of 77,033 at 15 December 1909.