The Bearings, Vol 12, No 9
Articles in this issue
- The Bearings defends its percentage table against rider complaints, noting that those who grumble most are typically men who quit races rather than fight to the tape, while Bald stays atop the thermometer after a strong week.
- Cooper wins all five open races he enters at Reading and Cabanne makes his strongest showing since returning from suspension, with the two men now only fractions of a point apart in their climb toward the thermometer's top.
- After a bad fall at Reading knocks Murphy senseless, he insists on starting the quarter-mile race to keep his nerve, finishes third, and then withdraws for two weeks with a strained ankle first injured earlier in the season.
- The Bearings reports a marked improvement in racing quality since the thermometer was introduced, with riders fighting every finish to the tape rather than quitting when they cannot win, producing tighter and more exciting fields.
- After weeks in the bulb, Bliss surges up the thermometer by fighting out every finish rather than quitting, a turnaround credited to his finally understanding how points are calculated and what consistent racing demands.
- The western boom party of thirty to forty riders, trainers, and managers is confirmed to race through Louisville and then head west, with Baltimore knocked off the circuit schedule after the official referee's inflammatory public remarks.
- Updated season tables show the Monarch, Columbia, and Spalding teams nearly tied for first in points, with Bald's solo effort accounting for the bulk of Columbia's total while the Monarch pair of Cooper and Bliss rise rapidly.
- At the Penn Wheelmen's national circuit meet in Reading, Cooper sweeps every open race to tie Bald's season win total, Cabanne sets a meritorious handicap time of 7:18, and Loughead's two wins push his season total to a record sixty-eight firsts.
- At the South End Wheelmen's Philadelphia meet, Cabanne lowers the five-mile handicap record to 12:13 3/5 in a thrilling finish with Bliss, while Tom Cooper completes a clean sweep of the week's five open races and Vineland's Miller wins the day's other big handicap.
- Bert Repine sweeps the quarter- and half-mile opens at the Jerseyville Cycling Club's first-ever race meet, with Clark McAdams taking the Class A handicap events.
- A high wind and slow track at New Carlisle, Indiana don't stop F. F. Rough from sweeping the Class A half-mile and mile opens before 2,000 spectators.
- O. E. Virum and Joe Stevens split the open and handicap events at the Marathon County fair races in Wausau, Wisconsin.
- An editorial accuses the rival Referee of violating the Associated Cycling Press of America's Buffalo agreement by accepting two 1896 bicycles at list price as part-payment for thirteen pages of advertising.
- An editorial defends Cabanne, Titus, and Murphy against Racing Board member D. W. Robert of St. Louis, arguing his case against the suspended trio rests only on newspaper clippings and personal animus toward Cabanne.
- A tongue-in-cheek item disputes the popular belief that an intoxicated man cannot ride a bicycle, citing an unnamed authority's counter-examples.
- The Scottish Cyclist predicts pacemaking's abolition after tire and bicycle makers turned it from a fair-play device into a tool for pulling their own riders across the tape first.
- The Racing Board's weekly bulletin declares a long list of Iowa and Michigan riders professionals and accepts James G. Budd's Class A quarter-mile paced record of :29 3/4 set at Glens Falls.
- At Sioux City, Johnson wins the $1,000 professional mile purse but Austin Crooks takes the half-mile event, while O. B. Hachenberger beats A. B. Hughes in a twenty-five-mile match race at Denver despite giving him a head start.
- Huret wins Bordeaux's grueling twenty-four-hour race in 95-degree heat with 529 miles 585 yards, and George Banker captures the Grand Prix of the Union Velocipedique de France in Paris after Jacquelin crashes out.
- "Billy" Hamilton rides an unpaced mile in 2:05 1/4 on Denver's fast new track ahead of the October circuit meet, with Titus and Maddox also eyeing the record.
- The Coast Country Fair Association builds a banked cement track at Dickinson, Texas, aiming to make it a year-round winter training resort for racing men.
- George W. Mitchell sweeps the two-mile, five-mile, and half-mile opens at the Muskegon, Michigan county fair, while local rider W. H. Wilson takes the mile championship.
- The Wolverine Cycle Club's second annual ten-mile interstate road race at Ann Arbor is won by Paul C. Meyers after first-finisher George C. King is denied first position for also claiming second time prize.
- The Press Cycling Club captures three of four team titles in the Associated Cycling Clubs of Boston's yearly contest, with Walton and Nat Butler starring, while Maiden's Wettergreen and Eddie McDuffie also feature in a dramatic ten-mile finish.
- The Grand Prix de Paris programme is announced with the largest cash prizes ever offered at a race meeting, drawing entries from speed merchants across Europe.
- Veteran trainer Harry Leeming is reported gravely ill abroad; a profile recalls his years training Tyler, Ed Bode, and the Chicago Cycling Club team, and his signature cold-water treatments for exhausted riders.
- Over one hundred applications are already filed for the 285 spaces at the October Chicago cycle show, while Denver's Cycling West manager plans a rival show for February.
- Excessive heat and wind mar a quiet week of Chicago road racing, with the Oakland Cycling Club, the "King B" Cycle Co., the Hampton C. C., and the Sylph C. C. each holding events on the Garfield Boulevard and Lake View courses.
- The Laredo Bicycle Club's meet nets six new records, including Parker's :29 unpaced quarter-mile and Hofheinz's competition mile and five-mile marks.
- Walters sets British records over a hundred miles at Catford, Piatt Betts smashes world marks from forty-two to fifty miles in the Catford Club championship, and Gibbons Brooks rides Great Britain's first sub-two-minute mile.
- Post Office official Mr. Marsh defends Superintendent Machen's decision to cut Chicago's bicycle mail carriers' repair allowance to $3 a month, saying the carriers have already paid off their wheels.
- Starbuck breaks the Tioga track record in a mile match with Eaton and Sanger nearly upsets Baldwin in the handicap final as O. S. Bunnell closes out Philadelphia's night-racing season.
- Former government entomologist Prof. C. V. Riley dies of a fractured skull after striking a stone and being thrown from his bicycle on Connecticut Avenue in Washington.
- H. Warnken wins the newly formed Niagara Wheelmen's first road race over the Cedarburg plank road into Milwaukee despite a hard headwind.
- Milwaukee plans its first cycle show at the North Side clubhouse in January, while racers William Sanger, Walter Schrader, and Harry Zerbel spend a night in jail at Menominee for riding without lanterns.
- Buffalo's fifty-mile interclub road race for the Rose trophy sees fourteen riders beat the American record, led by E. F. Leonert in 2:21:09, as the Rambler Bicycle Club edges the Press Cycling Club for the trophy.
- General Miles orders army officers to survey road conditions by bicycle for potential troop movements, with First-Lieut. G. W. Stevens riding from New York toward Washington to scout the route.
- John W. Conklin wins the Century Cycle Club of Newark's first hundred-mile handicap road race from scratch, while long-distance rider R. P. Searle punctures and withdraws at the fifty-fifth mile.
- Will Coburn lowers the St. Louis one-mile and two-mile Class B competition records at the West End Athletic Club's poorly attended tournament, while Eugene Devoy sets a paced third-mile mark.
- A disputed no-race call and a contested quarter-mile decision favoring local rider Jackson over the fouled Ingraham mar the opening of the Iowa circuit's Cedar Rapids meet.
- St. Louis riders E. Stade and C. McAdams sweep most of the open and handicap events at a society-crowd meet in Alton, Illinois, despite a track in miserable shape.
- The Western Boomers' full itinerary is laid out from the Louisville meet on October 2 through St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and on to a string of California dates running into November.
- Circuit press men Spooner and Pelot are overcharged $2.20 per hundred pounds by an over-officious Pennsylvania Railroad baggage agent in Philadelphia who insisted their personal trunks were sample cases.
- The Fountain Ferry Cycle & Athletic Association elects a mostly new twelve-man board, which immediately institutes reforms to standardize meet officiating.
- Chicago riders dominate the Peoria Bicycle Club's annual tournament before 3,000 spectators, though A. S. Walker breaks his collar-bone crashing in the mile novice event.
- Riders from Chicago sweep the open events at the Onarga Cycling Association's well-attended meet in Illinois.
- Dealer Thos. B. Dewhurst's annual Lexington, Kentucky tournament draws the state's best riders, led by O. S. Kimble, despite a dry and dusty track.
- Walter Foster lowers the world half-mile flying-start record to fifty seconds and then to forty-eight seconds on consecutive days in San Francisco, paced by a quad.
- Trainer Ed Moulton, credited by riders Cooper and Bliss for their successful season, has left the circuit to coach the Minnesota football team and now wears two diamonds gifted by his proteges.
- The Pope Mfg. Co.'s promotional balloon, which broke loose announcing Columbia team wins at Springfield on September 12, is recovered at Gloucester, Rhode Island.
- A survey of the sport's stars finds Titus planning three more seasons, Cabanne returning as an amateur, Sanger vowing to race as long as his health allows, and team managers already scouting new Class B talent like Rigby and W. M. Randall.
- Monarch team member Bliss reflects on being written off as a "has been" at twenty-three, crediting a full campaign alongside Tom Cooper for silencing the doubters, and plans one more record attempt at Louisville before heading west.
- Zerbel and Sanger headline two days of racing at the Menominee, Michigan county fair, with Schrader knocked unconscious in a tandem-pacing fall.
- Bert Repine takes the open races and Clark McAdams the handicaps at the Jerseyville Cycle Club's meet, though the Coburn brothers' tandem fails to arrive in time for a scheduled record attempt.
- Viking manufacturer Alvin Peter offers a $2,000 guarantee and a $5,000 prize fund to bring the 1896 L.A.W. national meet to Toledo, irritated by a late rival bid from Cleveland.
- G. E. Bicker takes the half-mile open and two-mile lap on the opening day of the Iowa circuit's meet at Marengo.
- A U.S. consular report from Havre describes French petroleum-motor bicycles and steam-powered carriages costing up to $2,500, and notes France taxes every bicycle and tricycle 10 francs a year.
- An eminent French physician argues the bicycle is uniquely suited to building women's muscular development compared to horseback riding, fencing, or gymnastics.
- Le Cycle contends women's lower center of gravity and skeletal proportions make them naturally better suited to safety-bicycle riding than men, despite men's greater raw muscular power.
- A Bearings staffer trails a fast-riding cyclist and eventually discovers the eerie noise trailing him comes from rubber bands the rider strung from his handlebars to his front axle.
- Chairman Gideon receives a full account and evidence from St. Louis board member D. W. Robert in the Titus-Cabanne-Murphy case but keeps his ultimatum under wraps.
- The Clio Wheelmen hold a well-patronized meet on New York's Bayonne Boulevard, with C. E. Ertz sweeping the handicap and exhibition events.
- Le Gaulois polls Parisian celebrities including Sarah Bernhardt, Nellie Melba, and editress Mme. Adam on skirts versus bloomers for women cyclists, amid a police push to ban bloomers outright.
- Walter Sanger says he will chase the mile unpaced record on the Springfield track before wintering in Milwaukee, and predicts his brother Will will soon join him in the professional ranks.
- A trade-advice column urges local bicycle agents to advertise liberally and continuously in daily papers rather than relying on personal solicitation alone.
- G. & J.'s new Rambler combination tandem No. 2 features an improved truss frame matched to the ladies' Model D and either single or double steering.
- Toledo manufacturers Yost, H. A. Lozier, and Gendron dismiss a cabled report that a Toledo firm cornered the English tubing market, though C. F. Meilink of Dauntless projects American production nearly doubling for 1896.
- London's "Will o' the Wisp" doubts English tube makers would truly let American demand starve home buyers, and reports the John Griffiths Corporation may relocate to Coventry and a craze for anatomical saddles is emerging.
- The Zenith Cycle Co. sets up in Binghamton, New York under George H. Harris, planning to exceed its original 3,000-wheel target using 1 1/8-inch tubing.
- The Acme Mfg. Co. of Reading, Pennsylvania sold 6,300 machines this season and plans to build 15,000 in 1896 across five models with barrel hubs.
- Gardner & Johnson's "four-minute" bicycle cement claims to repair any torn or punctured tire without heat or a patch.
- The Moore Cycle Fittings Co. of Harrison, New Jersey staffs up with veteran managers Theodore D. W. Moore and Robert Perkins, backed by $150,000 in capital.
- A Bearings visit to the Waverley-adjacent American Sewing Machine Co. finds record demand for the American wheel and plans to double output with larger tubing and barrel hubs.
- Smith & Egge of Bridgeport, Connecticut, maker of every lock used in the U.S. mail service, expands into bicycle locks and steel toe-clips under founder Mr. Smith.
- A roundup of incorporations nationwide includes the Elgin Sewing Machine & Bicycle Co., the Newburg Cycle Co., and the Columbia Carriage Co.'s move into wholesale bicycle manufacturing.
- The Champion Mfg. Co. of New York introduces a gusseted, air-tight tool-bag design in two depths that keeps dust out and tools from rattling.
- The New York Belting & Packing Co. preps a hand-made single-tube tire with an open fabric weave for 1896, to be handled in Chicago by the Chicago Fire Hose Co.
- The Inter State Coupler Co. of New York introduces "Witchkloth," a polishing cloth that removes tarnish from bicycle metal with a few damp rubs.
- The Bearings covers the Fowler Cycle Mfg. Co.'s lavish banquet for forty-plus cycling and daily-press men at the Hotel Normandie, plus the crowded opening of its new Ashland and Warren avenues retail store.
- Short items note E. C. Stearns & Co.'s doubled Syracuse office space, the new Indiana Chain Co.'s entry into high-grade chains, and Toledo cadets riding Yost-equipped Falcons to the Atlanta Exposition.
- Four E. C. Meacham Arms Co. representatives in matching white duck suits labeled "Cleveland Swell" create a sensation on wheelmen's night at the St. Louis Exposition.
- Cyclist-editor Tom Winder nears New York on his wagered ride around the United States on an Eclipse, having covered nearly 13,000 miles since leaving New Orleans in March.
- Maxwell M. Mayer's New York shop builds two-pole iron-clad dynamos and motors for light, power, and plating, with over 500 already in use.
- The Mansfield Machine Works of Ohio begins building a plant to manufacture bicycle tubing to meet anticipated 1896 demand.
- Short items report the Yost Mfg. Co.'s silver medal for Falcon wheels at the Lubeck exposition and the Gray & Dudley Hardware Co.'s appointment as southern distributor for Fenton bicycles.
- A survey of Cheyenne, Wyoming's cycle trade profiles agents Duffy & Erswell, whose junior partner C. S. Erswell set a world mile-straightaway record and is now chasing a tandem mark with riding mate Green.
- Paris editors and critics turn sharply against the bloomer for women cyclists, favoring a return to skirts and drop-framed safeties, a shift the report says will especially benefit American wheel makers.
- The International Mfg. Co. hires H. R. Pollow away from G. M. Shirk Mfg. Co., while the Fowler Cycle Mfg. Co. names Robert W. Slusser superintendent of agencies, succeeding W. H. Vernon.
- The new '96 Fowler model debuts with larger tubing, reinforced joints, and the Fowler adjustable handle-bar, drawing praise from advertising manager Fred Van Sicklen.
- Chicago butcher Adolph Arnold backs the new firm Arnold, Schwin & Co., which plans to build 5,000 high-grade wheels next year under former International Mfg. Co. superintendent Mr. Schwin.
- Ralph Lowenbaum's aluminum Ralph cycle lock stays permanently bolted to the bicycle frame, using a spring steel band around the tire so a thief cannot ride off even after unbolting it.
- Snyder & Fisher of Little Falls, New York expand S. & F. wheel production to 2,500 machines with a new factory and an adjustable handle-bar.
- H. G. Shepard & Co. of New Haven completes a new factory devoted to wood guards, tripling its capacity for rims and guards in 1896.
- George N. Pierce & Co. of Buffalo unveils its full 1896 line, from a 23-pound roadster to an 18-pound racer and a 21-pound Special with a patent tubular hub, backed by a transformed five-story factory.
- The Indianapolis Rubber Co.'s hand-made single-tube tire uses a specially manufactured sea-island cotton fabric, heavily reinforced on the tread for durability.
- A repair-shop proprietor comically discovers, after several failed brazing attempts, that he has been trying to melt a box of tobacco mistaken for spelter.