The Bearings, Vol 12, No 6
Articles in this issue
- F. Ed Spooner's circuit column recounts the shabby treatment the racing party met on the Canadian loop—skimpy prizes, unscorecarded press men, near-strikes averted only by referee Orr and starter Donly—alongside the shock rumor that Titus, Cabanne, and Murphy have been suspended, and a thermometer/points table showing Cooper closing on Bald and Gardiner ahead of Springfield.
- At the Woodstock, Ontario meet an insufficiently banked second turn brings down Rigby and Kennedy in the mile open and Barnett and De Cardy in the two-mile, while Coulter beats McLeod for his first win in weeks and Cooper adds another victory; the circuit's next stop at Peterborough, delayed by a late train and a rain-softened track, sees Brown outsprint Coulter and Rigby in the mile open.
- On the Canadian loop's last day at Montreal, Tom Cooper wins two events to move two points up on Bald for the season, a disputed half-mile handicap is awarded to Brown over Bliss by a "tire's width," and Kennedy edges Bernhardt for second behind Cooper in a rain-soaked mile handicap.
- A poorly attended Waltham, Mass. meet sees Eddie Bald win the mile and half-mile open over teammates Jenny and Sims in what the paper calls empty, paced processions, while Sims scores his first win of the season in the mile handicap and a quad team of Callahan, Barnett, McDuffie, and Haggarty rides an unpaced record mile.
- A St. Louis dispatch reports that L. D. Cabanne, Fred Titus, and Charles Murphy have been suspended by the Racing Board pending investigation of a rumored "fixed" race deal at the Associated Cycling Clubs meet, after Titus admitted the prearrangement to reporters and Racing Board member D. W. Robert wired the story to Chairman Gideon.
- A. G. Spalding asks Gideon to lift the suspensions of Cabanne and Titus pending trial so they can ride at Springfield, while Murphy emphatically denies any race-fixing agreement and the pair travel to Philadelphia to press their case.
- Editor Geo. K. Barrett's editorial condemns the Canadian loop's poor prizes, dictatorial meet managers, and one crowd's hissing of an American winner, predicting the national circuit will never again schedule a Canadian excursion.
- The editorial welcomes Secretary of Agriculture Morton's call for a "Good Roads Parliament" at Atlanta's Cotton States and International Exposition in October, quoting Morton on how uniform roads could halve farmers' transport costs.
- An editorial dismisses daily newspapers' renewed complaints about pacemaker "loafing" as stale, arguing multicycle pacing has already pushed Class B mile times well under 2:10 and that no time limit will satisfy critics who compare races to the 1:35 straightaway record.
- The collapse of the Chicago Coliseum forces the National Cycle Exhibition Co. to move its show to Tattersall's at Sixteenth and Dearborn, a 150x365-foot hall expected to hold around 275 exhibit spaces, while Cycling Life announces it will drop sport coverage to become a pure trade journal under Editor Wardrop.
- Rain slows the Oskaloosa, Iowa meet on its first day, where Richard Slattery, George Meierstein, T. H. Cummings, and Ed Vernon take the day's races; on the second day Cummings and Rowland win the tandem and Ralph McCurdy the club championship as two state records fall.
- At the Associated Railroad Wheel Club's Labor Day road race in Denver, unheralded O. B. Hackenberge—an unemployed novice who had rented his 26-pound wheel just three weeks earlier—wins first place, first time, and a world's competitive record over the 25-mile Brighton road course, with scratch man W. W. Hamilton only managing second-fastest time.
- Over 100 riders start Joseph Holbrook's Jenkinstown-to-Fox Chase road race near Philadelphia, where W. A. Pulon wins the professional handicap ahead of scratch man Starbuck, who takes the time prize in 24:05, while Charley Church's amateur scratch mark is handicapped out of the money and the last-place amateur and professional are presented with a dog and a goat.
- The New Jersey Athletic Club's Labor Day games in New York draw 6,000 for two handicap races won by Henry Heeler and P. E. Dickey, while at the Silk City Cycle Club's Clifton track meet W. S. Slavin beats Thomas Hughes in a triplet-paced match race and G. F. Royce sets a new unpaced quarter-mile track record.
- A Mexico City dispatch reports the capital's cycling craze taking hold via a new riding academy on the Paseo de la Reforma, with Gregorio Lecca, Felipe Flores, and Luis Brauer among the fast local riders training on a new one-third-mile lap track ahead of international races planned for December.
- The Denver Wheel Club details its $5,000 diamond prize list and resurfaced track for the October 17-19 national circuit meet, boasting times already four seconds faster than last year's national meet and touting Class B stars Dalzell and E. J. Smith from its weekly night races under arc lights.
- Before a sparse, cold-weather Buffalo crowd, Eddie Bald rides an unpaced quarter-mile in :25 and an exhibition mile in 2:04 paced by Heuhne, Cleveland, De Temple, and Goehler, while Charles Callahan makes a near-record unpaced half-mile attempt in 1:03.
- Chicago members of the "C. O. P." pot-hunting brigade—Lange, Cox, Van Nest, Bicker, and Kenyon—sweep the prizes at Sycamore, Illinois, with Lange winning the mile against time in 2:06⅔ and Cox and McLain taking the half-mile and mile opens.
- Plainfield, New Jersey's Crescent Wheelmen stage a novel gasoline-lit night meet where Starbuck edges Eaton in a disputed one-mile professional finish and later wins the five-mile handicap in 12:37⅖, while William McCutcheon impresses locally before being timed out in the Class A scratch final.
- Chicago wheelmen R. P. Searle and George Wolfe both set out the same morning to attack the Chicago-New York record, Searle running hours ahead of Wolfe's pace by Erie, while a flurry of Chicago-area road races sees J. J. Bezenek lower the Palmer Square course record and Gormully & Jeffery, Kenwood, and Franklin MacVeagh employees stage company races.
- At Newton, Iowa, O. L. Stevens—who set a new quarter-mile record at Independence—rides an exhibition half in 1:04¼, and on the meet's second day A. E. Lumsden and Arthur Coyle take the mile open and five-mile handicap.
- Before a slim crowd at Rochester's national circuit meet, Tom Cooper wins the Class B quarter-mile and mile open, Walter Sanger beats O'Connor and Johnson in the paced professional mile open, and Charlie Appel of Rochester briefly leads a hot two-mile professional handicap before Baker takes third.
- A reader identified as L. A. W. member 53,699 writes to endorse a detachable brake on every wheel, arguing constant back-pedaling without one strains the machine and wears crank bearings, while agreeing a brake should never be applied directly to a pneumatic tire.
- C. W. Davis of Chicago wins The Bearings' $5 weekly paragraph prize with an essay contrasting the smooth, straight-legged pedaling style of old high-wheel riders, learned from the era's unforgiving toe-clip-free machines, with the sloppier form of latter-day toe-clip riders.
- A. C. Robinson of Louisville argues the bicycle's rise has broadened social and business life for both sexes and classes, crediting the trade with prospering through the recent panic while advancing legislation and public respect for cyclists' rights.
- Adah Brooks of Sioux City satirizes a tobacco-trade journal's complaint that bicycling is ruining the cigar business, mocking its plea for young men to return to smoking on street corners instead of riding wheels.
- The Buffalo Cycle Co., makers of the Fleetwing and Envoy, is moving into a new factory at Massachusetts Avenue and Lawrence Place to lift 1896 output from 4,500 to 20,000 wheels, built in six models on 1⅛-inch tubing.
- Local riders sweep the first annual Waukegan Wheel Club road race, with Peter Olle of Racine winning outright but Waukegan men H. G. Walker and O. A. Harvey, who trained together over the course, taking the two fastest times, while sixteen-year-old "devil" D. H. Bradbury and eighteen-year-old farmhand Charley Johnson draw special notice among sixty starters.
- At Kansas City, L. D. Cabanne sets a world paced-mile record of 2:02¾ on a quarter-mile track and Fred Titus wins the mile open, but the next day a telegram from D. W. Robert announcing their and Murphy's suspension reaches the grandstand mid-meet, prompting Cabanne to ride an exhibition tandem mile and deny any wrongdoing.
- Rain interrupts the weekly Manhattan Beach, New York meet after professionals draw criticism for loafing in the mile open, though Starbuck rides a plucky scratch win in the five-mile handicap, shaking Porter.
- A London dispatch details the Catford track's sectional twelve-hour race, in which Stocks and then Walters break British distance records through a violent thunderstorm, and the North Road Club's 100-mile race at Catford where F. D. Frost sets new amateur records to 100 miles in 3:55:47.
- At the Appleton Cycling Club's state circuit meet, W. C. Schrader wins the half-mile and mile opens before 3,000 spectators, with E. H. Harkins of Marshfield seriously injured in a five-man spill during the mile handicap.
- Wisconsin's circuit meet opens at Janesville with trick rider A. J. Nicolet of Chicago doubling as starter; on the second day Chicago Class A riders Bicker, Lange, Sanger, and others unsuccessfully protest being ranked with the B men, and W. F. Sanger sweeps both open events.
- An East Melbourne correspondent describes plans for a 160-mile handicap road race in which the winning entrant of any class claims a bicycle as first prize, and predicts American racing will follow Australia's lead in embracing professional cash-prize competition.
- Edward F. Leonert of Buffalo's Press C. C. lowers his own American 25-mile competition road record to 1:07:18 in the Globe road race, beating F. C. List and G. A. Phillips for the top times.
- Some 12,000 fans pack Syracuse's state fair meet under Harry Schell, with local riders E. W. Murray, A. E. Hughes, and F. W. Knowland dominating and Buffalo's H. G. Winters the only outside rider to win a first, in the mile open, on what the paper calls a fluke.
- Medina, New York's first annual benefit meet, held to fund a cycle path to Ridgeway, draws village-wide support and bunting despite one bad fall in the mile open.
- A Minneapolis report says A. A. Hansen has signed to race a series abroad in London, including a 1,000-mile event, though friends of the out-of-town rider call the story a fake.
- Milwaukee's W. A. Brown of Marinette faces a tougher-than-expected race for L. A. W. chief consul against Dr. Arthur of La Crosse, amid charges that Brown's role in defeating La Crosse's normal-school bid is fueling opposition split along party lines.
- A disappointing Quaker City Wheelmen meet at Philadelphia's Tioga track is redeemed by Charles Church's unpaced 1:01⅘ half-mile, with John Meade winning the club's own one-mile championship.
- Chicagoans James Gill and Regina Benson ride their bicycles to Milwaukee's Summerfield M. E. Church, where Rev. Huntley marries the bloomer-clad couple before they ride back to the dock and sail home.
- At Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, B. R. Gruner wins the three-mile lap race and mile open while Burhans and Webber take a flying-start tandem in 1:03¼, with Burhans, Thayer, and Moross also scoring wins.
- Cycling West's G. A. Walhgren recounts a European tour including a hair-raising 22-mile-an-hour ride in the French road race-winning horseless carriage, alongside a Brussels instructors' challenge to teach a 240-pound novice to ride fastest, H. L. Curran's handlebar-less nineteen-mile circuit of Onondaga Lake, and Pennsylvania chief consul S. A. Boyle's denial that Secretary-Treasurer Van Nort has resigned.
- Cleveland cyclists form the League of American Cyclists, a new organization of colored wheelmen led by Frank Isaac with G. T. Bullet of Pittsburgh's Liberty Athletic Club as president, before Pittsburgh riders sweep most of the club's own races.
- Heavy rain forces the Cleveland Wheel Club to postpone C. A. C. Park's record attempt for a Columbia piano prize, while George Comstock is ruled off the evening track for ungentlemanly language and unfair riding.
- Twelve thousand spectators watch professional racing debut in Buffalo, where John Johnson beats Walter Sanger and H. C. Tyler in a stubborn three-heat match race and Al Weinig equals Johnson's paced mile of 2:02⅘.
- About 50,000 enjoy Manhattan Beach's Labor Day card, where Harry Wheeler wins both professional events, Berlo again proves the meet's top tandem man, and A. B. Wise takes a loafing-plagued Class A mile scratch final after officials force three re-runs under a 2:40 limit.
- With Titus and Cabanne barred by their suspension, Earl Kiser stars at a New Haven meet run by the Second Company Governors Horse Guard, beating the track half-mile record in :57⅘ behind pacemakers Brandt and Barry.
- The Bearings prints a hardware firm's letter showing how a false rumor that the Studebaker Wagon & Buggy Co. would sell $25 bicycles led the firm to demand lower prices from its own supplier, though Studebaker denies ever planning to enter the bicycle trade at all.
- A trade feature warns that reckless tapping and tree-felling by native collectors is depleting rubber supplies in India as bicycle-tire demand grows, noting the Congo states' new rubber-tree cultivation as a promising remedy.
- New York butcher R. Webber praises the Tinkham Cycle Co.'s delivery carrier over imported English models he tested, as cycle delivery carriers become an increasingly important commercial product.
- Philadelphia's Hart Cycle Co. takes over H. A. Lozier & Co.'s vacated store on North Broad Street as the city's Columbia and Hartford branch house, while the bankrupt Philadelphia Cycle Bazaar's stock is sold off, with George H. Norris of Wilmington buying the sundries lot.
- Kansas City's sudden growth as a bicycle town draws the Avery Planter Co. (under H. R. Warren), the Columbus Buggy Co., and Bradley, Wheeler & Co. into jobbing bicycles alongside their existing implement trades.
- Mrs. Richard Spamer of St. Louis invents a 75-cent goat-kid handle-bar cover to replace unsightly tire tape, placing it with Chicago's Thorsen & Cassady Co. and Excelsior Supply Co.
- A Paris dispatch blames washed-out roads and heavy summer storms for slack French bicycle sales, predicts a strong fall demand instead, and describes an English-versus-French tire-maker feud over a rider who switched allegiance before losing an important championship.
- St. Louis inventor T. J. Christy unveils a wheel using a double-rim front hub and three-pulley spider so the rider's forward weight assists propulsion through leverage against the ground.
- H. T. Hearsey sells his stake in Indianapolis's Central Cycle Mfg. Co. to president L. M. Wainright, reinvesting the proceeds in Sieg & Walpole's Kenosha factory as D. Snitzer of St. Louis becomes the Indianapolis firm's new vice-president.
- L. W. Harper of McHugh, Minnesota builds a practical giant unicycle with a 28-foot-circumference wheel that the rider sits inside, its low center of weight making balance manageable and each pedal turn covering roughly double an ordinary bicycle's distance.
- The week's patent list includes Frank Southard's tricycle, a Morgan & Wright-assigned tire-tube vulcanizing process by Ernest Young, and sprocket chain and wheel patents by Erick Swedlung of Atwater, Minnesota.
- City-by-city trade notes report new bicycle-related incorporations and factories, from Minneapolis's Bicycle Keyless Lock Co. and Chicago's Eldorado Cycle Co. to a Metz and Rogers partnership in Pottstown and a big wage distribution by the Crawford Mfg. Co. of Hagerstown, Maryland.
- London's "Will o' the Wisp" reports a July export revival to $711,770, the shaky finances of the Puncture-Proof Tire Co., a Cyclist teardown comparing English and American machine weights, and rumors that a leading cycling journal is secretly owned by a manufacturer.
- "Birdie" Munger leaves the Munger Cycle Mfg. Co. of Indianapolis to take a major stake in the Worcester Cycle Mfg. Co., where he will oversee the Munger Special's new '96 "lulu bird" models.
- R. A. Dalzell's 2:05⅘ novice win at Denver breaks four records on a Syracuse wheel, while teammate C. C. Collins takes the half and one-mile Colorado state championships in a competitive-record 1:01⅘ half.
- Cleveland's Hoffman Cycle Co. plans to grow from 1,500 wheels this year to 6,000 $100 machines in 1896, dropping cotter pins for interchangeable sprockets and adding barrel hubs and tandems.
- Plumbing-supply wholesaler H. O. Nelson begins manufacturing bicycles at a new Leclaire, Missouri factory expected to turn out 3,000 wheels its first year under department head W. F. Weeland, as the Shelby Cycle Mfg. Co. elects R. P. Gormully president and T. B. Jeffery vice-president.
- The Aurora Automatic Machine Co.'s new hub, sold by Parkhurst & Wilkinson, uses three-point-contact bearings and semi-spherical washers that form a ball-and-socket joint to absorb fork misalignment without binding strain.
- The American Wheelmen's Protective Association of Chicago's semi-annual report shows 4,678 anti-theft contracts issued and total receipts of $24,314.08, with a bank balance and railroad-bond assets bringing total resources to $19,797.29.
- The Moniteur Scientifique publishes metallurgist Loemenherz's rules on how steel's heating color depends on shape and composition as well as hardness.
- A comparison shows the Stearns racing team has won fourteen more places than any rival national-circuit squad and set records including a :25 quarter-mile tandem and a 23:38 ten-mile at Mt. Clemens, Michigan.
- Syracuse riders adopt unusually high gears, led by E. C. Stearns & Co.'s H. E. Maslin on an 80-inch gear and William Van Wagoner of the Barnes Cycle Co., who plans a 112-inch gear for road racing, while the new Congress Cycling Co. of Hartford City, Indiana readies its Senator and Prairie Queen models.
- The International Wheel Co. of St. Louis arranges to represent Humber wheels across Missouri and the west while also manufacturing the "Nox-all" wood-rim cement in sizes from two-ounce cans to barrel lots.
- Detroit's Victor Mfg. Co. markets a new speedometer-style device that rings a bell once a rider hits a preset speed, alongside its novelty baby seat.
- New York's Persons & Muller Co. relocates to a larger West 39th Street factory to expand P. & M. saddle production, including a new unbreakable 12-ounce road saddle to be distributed through Chicago's Manufacturers & Merchants Warehouse Co.
- An accompanying illustration shows M. C. Henley's Richmond, Indiana plant, actually two and a half times longer than pictured, where Henley bicycles are built alongside engine, boiler, and warehouse buildings.
- F. X. Muller & Co. of Buffalo, maker of the maroon-finished Empire State 999, plans to jump from 1,300 machines this year to 6,000 next year across four models weighing 18 to 24 pounds.
- A manufacturer proposes a standard pedal thread across all makers, similar to the push for standardized pneumatic-tire valve threads, to spare dealers from having to swap cranks to fit a desired pedal.
- Trade gossip notes Walter Heath of the American Wheelman visiting Chicago, G. A. Boyer leaving the Black Mfg. Co.'s Tribune sales force, the Monarch Cycle Co.'s soap-cake giveaways touting its racing team, Otto Ziegler recovering from a broken arm as William Herrick's guest, and the Relay Mfg. Co.'s expanded 1896 catalogue.
- Ex-racer C. W. Dorntge takes to the road selling the Globe Cycle Works' new '96 Globe and Mascot models, featuring a Penseyers-designed crank hanger, as Buffalo's Globe plant plans to lift output from 3,500 to 5,000 wheels.
- The French Terrot chain replaces ordinary sprockets with roller-fitted pinions and rounded metal links that slide rather than hook, claimed to cut friction and prevent the chain from jumping off.
- The Garford Mfg. Co. of Elyria, Ohio adds a 120x40-foot wing to its saddle factory, aiming to double 1895's 230,000-saddle output to 400,000 next year with new light ladies' and wire-back saddle patterns.
- Chicago's Manufacturers & Merchants Warehouse Co. secures large Mannesmann, Climax, Paragon, and Star tubing stocks along with spoke and forging contracts, and is promoting a crucible-steel bottom-bracket casting it claims beats drop forging.
- The Bearings satirizes a Parisian inventor named Martin's absurdly complex hand-and-foot-powered, compressed-air-steered machine, illustrated with diagrams of counter-cranks and air chambers, as the latest in an endless parade of claims to "revolutionize cycling."
- The Speeder Cycle Co. plans to move its factory from Newcastle, Indiana to Kansas City with a $30,000 capital increase, giving Kansas City its first cycle factory and pushing its lightweight changeable-gear device, credited to secretary A. L. Bowman's efforts.
- The St. Louis Refrigerator & Wooden Gutter Co. reports strong demand for its Lu-Mi-Num wheels under manager Conkling, with 1896 models ready by October and deliverable in quantity by mid-December.
- A French scientific journal's technical feature explains how ball bearings evolved from friction-prone cylindrical rollers to true balls, details the two-, three-, and four-point-contact bearing systems, and gives formulas for calculating ball diameter and cup angle.