Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 18, No 7
Articles in this issue
- Prompted by the Stockholm Olympics then in progress, Aristide Calderini reconstructs the ancient games at Olympia: the sacred truce proclaimed city by city, the Altis with Phidias' gold-and-ivory Zeus, the Hellanodikai judges and their partisan quarrels between Eleans and Spartans, the roughly 200-metre stadium sprint, the pentathlon's standing long jump aided by lead weights, and the crowning and banquet in the prytaneion.
- A survey of Arabia as a 1200-metre plateau rimmed by the Hediaz, Yemen, Oman and the central Nedjed: the Red Sea ports of Gedda, Moka, Hodeida and Yambo serving Mecca and Medina, the Persian-style underground kanat water channels of Oman, the date palm and coffee, the camel's sacred place in Bedouin life, and the nomadic and coastal tribes.
- Giovanni Chiggiato protests at the idea of the Cadore being 'discovered', tracing the Cavallera climb from Perarolo to Pieve di Cadore, Titian's birthplace, past the Antelao, Pelmo and Marmarole to the Comèlico and Pàdola, Italy's northernmost village, as students prepare to camp at Tendopoli.
- Folk charms and scientific attempts against hail: Luigi Servè's estimate of 150 deaths a year, Benvenuto Cellini's account of the Lyon hailstorm, the Piedmontese crowd who read the devil's horns into hailstones after an insult to the altar of the beato Ancina, the peasants of Baschi in Umbria praying it fall on Castiglione instead, Thracian arrows shot at the clouds, and the electric 'Niagara' hail-cannon of Poitiers.
- Italo Bonardi on the Tuscan abbey founded around the year 1000 by San Giovanni Gualberto and praised by Ariosto and Milton, whose 1660 buildings housed the Istituto Nazionale Forestale from 1869 after the models of Mariabrunn, Nancy and Venice's 1500 forestry school; the Saltino rack railway from S. Ellero now puts it two hours from Florence, beside Count Telfener's first chalets.
- A proposal that members hire the Ferrovie dello Stato 'Sizvcr' bogie saloon carriage shown at the Turin Exposition — two twin bedrooms, toilet cabinets, convertible divans, spirit stove and thermosiphon heating — for a six-day tour of nearly a thousand kilometres costing L. 1581, or L. 175,70 each for a party of nine.
- The Biella pre-Alps and the Oropa sanctuary basin, with Juvarra's vast pilgrim building offering some 850 guest rooms, the Rosazza tunnel road, Quintino Sella's pyramid tomb, and the Mucrone at 2400 metres — all reached by the new electric tramway that carries about two thousand visitors a day in July and August.
- The Senate's approval of the motor-circulation bill, reported by senator San Martino: the paper criticises the presumption of fault laid on the motorist and the special jurisdiction for damages claims, but welcomes the duty on constables to stop a driver when booking an offence and the sharp reduction of penalties compared with the old regulation.
- L. V. Bertarelli's appreciation of the Touring's Annuario Generale 1912 — 60,000 kilos of paper, 110,000 lines and nearly 100,000 lire — defending it against the charge of monotony and pointing to the 150 pages preceding the gazetteer, which cover the club's commissions, railways, cycling, motoring, boating and aeronautics and a glossary of foreign touring terms.
- Report on the XIV Congress of the Lega Internazionale delle Associazioni Turistiche held in Vienna from 12 to 16 June, which the T.C.I. rejoined after boycotting the meetings since Munich 1907; its resolutions press for simplifying the international circulation booklet, instituting the carnet de passage en douane, duty-free petrol in tanks and longer customs hours.
- News photographs from Libya and the air: a soldier of the Garian band, bersaglieri holding the Montagnole position at Homs, the Camerana division landed at Bu-Sceifa before Misrata, Guidoni's torpedo-float seaplane taking off in 50 metres at La Spezia, and Garros winning the Ae.C.F. Grand Prix on a Blériot monoplane, with a portrait of the newly dead Wilbur Wright.
- Trade notes showing FIAT military lorries on Michelin twin tyres working the sand in Tripolitania, and praising the Hupmobile chassis, built of vanadium-chrome steel and Parson metal with about a thousand fewer parts than an ordinary chassis.
- The magazine's standing news department, grouping the month's short reports by subject from aerology and aeronautics through alpinism, motoring and aviation to railways, geography, geology and inland navigation.
- The VII International Conference on Scientific Aeronautics at Vienna University, where Bjerknes urged publishing atmospheric pressure in bar, decibar and centibar rather than millimetres of mercury and Hergesell proposed an international network of pilot-balloon stations; Pavia's Osservatorio Geofisico will make a series of sounding-balloon launches in July.
- The new French airship Bayard-Clément V, of 9000 cubic metres and two 125 HP motors, flying with six aboard; Dr Wolff's Hamburg III balloon reaching 9000 metres from Bitterfeld; the Condé setting an airship altitude record of 3025 metres over Paris on 18 June; and a new Rhenish-Westphalian aerodrome with a subsidised dirigible hangar.
- The VII Congresso Alpino will meet during Tendopoli in the upper Cadore beneath the Popera group, organised by the S.U.C.A.I. commission at Venice's Museo Commerciale under the student Frazzi, on the study of the mountains and the economic future of Italy's alpine valleys.
- Heinemann's laboratory synthesis of rubber from acetylene and ethylene; the American Sporting Committee's new racing rules requiring a riding mechanic and nine-metre neutral zones; the 50 million francs a year French cars, motorcycles and bicycles yield in tax; Bruneau's naphthalene engine giving 8 HP at 3,42 centesimi per horsepower-hour against 13 for petrol; and the XIII Paris Salon fixed for 7-22 December.
- An obituary of Wilbur Wright that defends the brothers against French claims, tracing Ferber's and Voisin's debt to Wright drawings from 1902-05; plus the Belgian seaplane contest at Tamise, a projected England-to-India flight by way of Baghdad, Russia's Sebastopol military school with 55 aeroplanes, and Caproni's monoplane reaching 130 km/h at Vizzola Ticino on an 80 HP Anzani.
- Simplon traffic rose to 410,030 passengers in 1911 and should grow again when the Lötschberg opens in May 1913, diverting Rhineland and western Swiss freight from the Gotthard; also the completed 1160 km Tientsin-Pukow line in northern China, a proposed 36 km electric railway up the Valsesia to Alagna costing 10 millions and continued by rack to the Col d'Olen gold mine, and the Pallanza Fondotoce-Omegna tramway concession.
- A subsidy-free concession granted for an electric tramway from Savona to Ponente with a circular urban line in the town, and the opening of the Ponte Tresa-Luino section built on Swiss territory in agreement with the Italian promoters of the Ghirla-Ponte Tresa line.
- Danish Greenland work reported by consul-general V. Glukstadt, with Captain Koch leaving with a botanist and a meteorologist to cross the island at its widest from the Danmark fjord; and the American Crocker Land expedition sailing from Sydney, Nova Scotia on 20 July for Bache peninsula, Cape Thomas Hubbard and Etah.
- The Società Geologica Italiana, chaired this year by Bernardino Lotti, will hold its summer meeting at Spoleto in September; Hatch reports in the Geological Magazine the first hundred-odd carats of diamonds found in Liberian river alluvium; and Piutti and Maggi report on the radioactivity of the products of the 1910 Vesuvius eruption.
- The Milan committee for inland navigation approved president Castiglioni's report and its studies for a port basin on the Naviglio di Pavia, industrial basins at Gamboloita and a large-gauge Milan-Como waterway, heard senator Salmoiraghi on the Milan-Venice water route, opposed the Elena canal project and backed electric haulage on the Naviglio Pavese.
- Volontari Ciclisti Automobilisti business: new committees recognised at Cremona, Garlasco, Stradella and Lendinara and others reconstituted at Turin, Chioggia, Bormio and Bra; the ladies of Belluno present a war flag in the Teatro Sociale; and central committee decisions on counting service under arms, five-pointed stellette, a corps handbook and insurance.
- Luigi Luzzatti's visit to the Touring on 19 May, received by vice-director-general Bertarelli, at which he confirmed the forestry-law funds remain intact despite war spending; a refusal to support a firm seeking to run haulage locomotives on ordinary roads; a decision to spend the signpost budget on repainting rather than new installations; and the lapsing of the Riva di Trento capo consolato.
- Progress on the free members' publications: the Nizza (14) and Taranto (43) sheets of the 1:250,000 Carta d'Italia completing the 1911 block of 44, the Tripolitania and Cyrenaica map, the monograph 'Il bosco contro il torrente' at L. 1, the Annuario Generale 1912 going out at about 2000 copies a day, and the Lazio regional guide in press.
- An appeal to members to recruit hotels, petrol and lubricant dealers, mechanics, garages and chemists as T.C.I. affiliates, choosing only the best traders in each line and proposing them to the Direzione.
- Holiday advice for members motoring abroad: obtain the international circulation certificate and plate from the Touring at Via Monte Napoleone 14 for L. 2, carry the triptyque which passes the frontier duty-free at any hour instead of waiting for customs cashiers, and take the Touring's motoring map covering northern Italy, France to the Marseilles-Dijon meridian, Switzerland and Austria.
- Book notices including Major Carlo De Antonio's 'Authion' on the Piedmontese actions of June 1793, René Champly's 'Guide pratique du chauffeur d'automobiles', Bommier's 'Sur la route', Desmons' 'Aviation Agenda 1912', Redaelli's 'Milano in campagna', Lliez's guide to the Brazil and Plate line, and the C.A.I. Milan album of the Passo di Zocca and Albigna glacier ascent.
- New T.C.I. consuls appointed at Addis Ababa, Agordat, Conception, Conversano, Cosenza, Ferentino, Mosciano S. Angelo, Savigliano, Signa and Tobruk, with medical consuls at Bologna and Montemarano, a legal consul at Portoferraio, and resignations at Camponogara, Carate Brianza and Casalino.
- List of members taking the five-year subscription of L. 30 (L. 40 abroad), from Agostino Galeno of Albizzate through Bologna, Ferrara, Livorno, Milan and Naples, each receiving the special silver-and-enamel badge and all publications free for the five years.
- List of members who earned benemerito status by recruiting new members, headed by Antonio Bocchetti of Altamura.
- Members who applied to join the T.C.I. between 1 and 31 May 1912, listed as soci vitalizi and soci annuali by province, from Acireale, Bergamo and Bologna to Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Lima and Montevideo and on to England, Montenegro, Portugal, Russia and the Swiss cantons.