The Bicycling World, Vol 4, No 6
Articles in this issue
- Reproduces the articles of agreement signed 15 December 1881 between John Keen of London and John S. Prince of Boston for a ten-mile bicycle race in heats (best two of three) for $500 a side and the championship of the world, to be run on a Boston track by 17 January 1882 under Wolverhampton racing rules, with the editor of the Bicycling World as stakeholder; witnesses were Robert Patrick and C. E. Wentworth.
- Brief notes including a new four-member club in Hanover, Michigan; W. D. Wilmot of the Framingham Bicycle Club riding outdoors every day of the year; the Milwaukee-Chicago club team race set for the Exposition building; John Keen's fifty-mile amateur championship race at the American Institute, New York, on 19 December; and Dr. Coleman of Canandaigua asking where the next L.A.W. Meet will be held.
- Editorial reply to a Bicycling Times correspondent's jibes at American racing, showing that W. W. Stall's 3.07 mile did not displace W. S. Clark's official 3.08 1/4 record, and that every machine in the 6 October League races — including the 'Yale' (Surrey Machinist Company's 'Invincible') and 'Harvard' (Bayliss, Thomas & Co.), both imported by Cunningham & Co. — was English-made, while conceding American tracks like the Polo Grounds are inferior to English courses.
- Telzah describes Major David Urch of Portsmouth, N.H. and his pedal-driven catamaran craft — twin twenty-foot floats, bevelled gears turning a copper propeller, and a convertible awning-sail — patented 9 August 1881; voyages included a thirty-mile round trip to Dover by the inventor's sister in the screened ladies' boat, ten and a half miles to the Isles of Shoals in 1h 20m, and twenty-five miles along the coast to Newburyport in four hours.
- Day-by-day account of bicyclienne Elsa Von Blumen wheeling 1,000 miles in six days on the one-sixteenth-mile track in Old City Hall, Pittsburgh, starting 28 November and finishing at 11.52 p.m. Saturday with blistered hands and swollen limbs; during a rest interval seven Keystone Bicycle Club members raced five miles for a $28 silver pitcher she offered, Philo French winning alone in 24.24 after collisions felled the rest.
- Recommends Boston's three principal dealers to Christmas and New-Year present seekers: the Cunningham Company's rooms in Odd Fellows' Building at Warren Avenue, Tremont and Berkeley Streets; the Pope Manufacturing Company's salesrooms and riding school at 579 Washington Street, makers of the 'Columbia'; and Charles R. Percival's newly opened store at 1,292 Washington Street stocked from his recent European buying trip.
- Complains that La Revue des Sports refuses to credit John Keen's twenty-mile win over De Civry at Surbiton (1h 4m) though it was quick to record the Frenchman's earlier victory; notes Le Sport Velocipedique of Paris is offering a free year's subscription for the best wheel story, and that Brussels bans hub lights because they sit below the one-metre height required for carriage lamps.
- 'K.' of Montreal reports the farewell supper at Hall & Scott's for departing club captain C. J. Sidey, presided over by secretary H. S. Tibbs; 'Steno' of Chicago critiques the new fifty-four-inch 'British Challenge' and its oval backbone against the favored 'Premier'; 'F. F.' describes two New Brunswick, N.J. riders coming to grief racing an express train; 'Geesee' corrects a misprint about Marblehead roads; Julius Wilcox skewers Central Park's anti-bicycle commissioners; and 'Cyclos' and G. W. Pressey, inventor of the American Star Bicycle, debate round versus flat rubber tires, Pressey announcing a broader, flatter tire for 1882.
- Standing notice of League of American Wheelmen membership terms (fees to treasurer Dillwyn Wistar of Philadelphia), followed by corresponding secretary Kingman N. Putnam's list of new applicants: unattached riders Charles W. Clapp of Brighton, Mass., Frank W. Miller of Ashland, Ohio, and D. W. Robb of Amherst, Nova Scotia.
- 'Geesee' of Marblehead asks whether kerosene alone works in bicycle lamps, citing English maker J. C. Garrood; 'X.X.X.' corrects praise of the 'Arab' ridden by Arthur Waite of the Hartford Wheel Club, revealing it now sports Columbia felloes, tires, spokes, pedals and saddle; 'Sixty-Inch' of South New Market, N.H. seeks road opinions of the 'British Challenge'; and a Lancaster Daily Examiner clipping tells of a man fainting in Isaac Snyder's Columbia, Pa. store after mistaking a night-riding bicycler's lamp for the devil.
- The Brothers Waller's tournament at Sunderland ends with J. Battensby winning the six days' professional race on 509 miles 3 laps (first prize £80) ahead of Parkes, Lamb and Cleminson, while W. Todner of Ryhope takes the six-hours amateur race and its ten-guinea marble clock with 96 miles 5 laps, beating Woods and M'Kenzie on the eleven-laps-to-the-mile track.
- Reprinted from the Cyclist: 'Ab Initio' recounts a small fortune spent on rattling gongs and alarms — including five successive Challis's bells that all went wrong — before finding a near-perfect 1s. 9d. Birmingham single gong, and lays down four qualifications for the perfect bicycle bell, hoping makers respond before the Stanley exhibition.
- Secretary J. S. Dean announces W. R. Whitney's expulsion from the Boston Bicycle Club for non-payment of dues; the Crescent Bicycle Club adopts resolutions of mourning for deceased member Robert Carter Goodwin, wearing a badge for one month; and the Nashua Wheel Club adopts rules for club drills and tours at John F. Bixby's residence before a birthday supper for W. H. Walker at Johnson & Wright's restaurant.
- Notices of the December 'Our Little Ones and the Nursery' (Russell Publishing Company, Boston) with its Christmas stories, the new monthly 'Archery and Tennis News' edited by A. S. Brownell at 80 William Street, New York, the Western Manufacturer of Chicago's illustrated feature on the town of Pullman, Ill., plus mentions of Wm. Ford & Co. of Wolverhampton and Livingston's 'Perfection' cyclometer.