The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 12
Articles in this issue
- Charles A. Persons's Royal Motor Works has secured part of the Overman Wheel Co. plant at Chicopee Falls, where the J. Stevens Arms and Tool Co. will build Royal motor bicycles under contract with Emil Hafelfinger as manufacturing foreman; Persons will confine agencies to about ten large cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.
- H. S. Owen, who bought the bottom-bracket patent from W. E. Smith and sold it to the A. B. C., testified in the A. B. C.-Snyder case that he paid Smith only $9,000 for his entire business and six patents, and had once offered the patent to the Pope Mfg. Co. for $10,000.
- Judge Cox at Utica denied the American Bicycle Co.'s prayer for an injunction against the Stearns Bicycle Agency of Syracuse, but ruled that the Stearns name must not appear on a yellow bicycle — a decision that affects the Regal.
- The Keating Wheel Co.'s Middletown, Conn., plant, held by Receiver Frederick A. Betts for two years, has been sold to the Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Co. of New York, a check having been sent to bind the bargain; the Keating Co. had a paid capital stock of $500,000.
- The Admiral Lamp Co. has completed its removal from Columbus, Ohio, to Marysville, where besides the Admiral combination oil-and-gas lamp it will make several other specialties.
- Colonel George Pope's testimony finally produced the full list of eighteen A. B. C. bottom-bracket licensees — among them the Acme Cycle Co., Excelsior Supply Co., Davis Sewing Machine Co., Union Cycle Mfg. Co. and Ariel Cycle Mfg. Co. — which the paper judges a feeble showing that will never pay the Trust a dividend.
- Reprints The Cyclist's account of a London cyclist riding one machine, leading a second by hand and carrying a third slung over his shoulders, and notes such feats have long been seen on Nassau street, New York.
- Far-reaching developments are thought probable in the tube trade, both parties — one of them the billion-dollar United States Steel Corporation — being in conference in New York this week.
- The Bicycling News of Birmingham, England, has become a monthly partly devoted to automobiles, leaving The Bicycling World the oldest weekly cycling journal in the world.
- The Excelsior Cement Co. of Westfield, Mass., has been absorbed by the National Cement and Rubber Co. of Toledo, Ohio, the purchase carrying the entire plant, stock, goodwill and trademarks.
- O. G. Formhals has resigned as advertising manager of the American Bicycle Co. and the department has been discontinued, though the Jimsullivan press bureau remains in full operation.
- Ridicules an Englishman's new front fork stay, which ties the forks to the crank hanger by a tube passing round the tire and adds about two pounds; the extra weight would do more good put into the forks themselves.
- A wheelman back from Philadelphia reports a great increase in riders compared with a year ago, giving the lie to the story that everybody has stopped riding.
- The American Bicycle Co.'s bottom-bracket infringement suit against John R. Keim of Buffalo has been discontinued, Keim paying $100 costs and taking a manufacturing license at less than the usual $1 royalty.
- The Persons Mfg. Co. of Worcester, Mass., is already equipping for 1902 and confidently expects to sell 50,000 of a new pattern, citing the trade success of its Royal Racer and the Royal Roadster for coaster-brake and heavy riders.
- R. P. Bunting, head of the Wanamaker cycle departments in New York and Philadelphia, tells the Bicycling World that March-to-May rain spoiled an unusually promising season: repairs had run 50 per cent ahead of 1900 to May 1, coaster-brake fitting is now the staple work, and high-priced $325 Orient motor bicycles sell better than the bargain Vikings.
- Judge D. W. Northrop and Frank D. Haines, the committee on claims against the Keating Wheel and Automobile Co. of Middletown, Conn., have cut C. J. Rood's original $201,000 claim, disallowing $15,592.34 and reporting a total of $161,478.99.
- W. H. Marble, a Brockton, Mass., dealer, blames slow collections for his voluntary assignment to Fred. M. Bixby; creditors met on June 15 and heard assets of $5,000 against liabilities of $3,000.
- Russia has raised its bicycle duty 30 per cent — from 18 rubles to about $12.35 a machine, effective June 21 — in retaliation for the American duty on Russian petroleum and sugar, and will now class bicycle parts as completed bicycles at $4.40 per 36 pounds.
- A. J. Gould, the Englishman dubbed the "bottom bracket sleuth" who supplied the models behind the Smith bottom-bracket patent, was found by the Cycle Trades Protective Association and, while in England verifying his testimony, was reunited with the wife who had believed him drowned in the Johnstown flood and had remarried.
- An English anti-puncture tire carries two air chambers with two valves; after a puncture the rider deflates the inner tube and inflates the space between the skins, rolling an unpunctured surface onto the tread.
- Receiver Robert Careey reports on Porter & Gilmour, Incorporated, bicycle makers formerly of No. 16 Warren street, for whom he was appointed in July 1896: total cash received $13,325 against expenditures of $10,077.
- A London correspondent on motocycle ignition faults — a new talc-washer sparking plug replacing porcelain, dry and wet batteries that run down for no apparent cause, and loose commutator insulating plates that cause misfiring on Werner and Benz-type machines.
- Editorial: Russia's increased bicycle duty is a shrewdly aimed blow at one of the few markets still buying American machines, and punishes the cycle trade for the tariff on Russian petroleum — a protective duty on bicycles the paper calls needless from the first.
- Editorial: a wet spring has cut short an already short selling season, and dealers should bend their energies to coaxing it to hold on rather than write the lost trade off as gone forever.
- Editorial: the average dealer waits for buyers instead of pushing lamps, bells, cyclometers, pumps and other sundries the way merchants in other lines push their goods.
- Editorial: with conventionality the fashion and the bicycle pronounced "well nigh perfect" by makers, there is little scope left for the innovator in cycle construction.
- Editorial on Alderman McEneaney's New York ordinance banning gasolene: aimed at the Standard Oil and automobile interests, it would also hit printers, painters, plumbers, tailors and tire repairers, and is clearly unconstitutional under the Doughty law.
- A poem signed W. R. Walkey pleading for men of sterling worth, exact weights and measures, unretracted statements and honest dealing throughout the earth.
- Account of the Friday hearing on Alderman McEneaney's gasolene ordinance: publisher-automobilist Charles McLaughlin alone opposed it, Senator Foley and inventor John A. Secor spoke for it, and the committee let slip that the only party notified was the Standard Oil Co.
- Recalls the early-nineties fad for bicycle watches and small clocks, sold at $2 or $3 in leather holders strapped to the top tube or clipped to the handle bar, which kept fair time and saved riders leaving good timers at home.
- On a Jersey-bound ferryboat the Bicycling World man noticed a pedal-driven pneumatic-tired tricycle with full-length crutches fastened to the frame, belonging to an elderly man.
- The New York Journal's Long Island century run of June 15 drew a motocycle division contested by Thomas Auto-Bi and Orient men; Schede and Fisher alone kept to the route and finished first, Ferguson took third after going seventeen miles astray, and Emil Hafelfinger rode a Royal through on under seven pints of gasolene.
- Weekly trade record of embarrassments (W. H. Marble of Brockton and Fred Knobloch of Lawrence, Mass.), fires (three total losses at Lynn, Mass., plus Fennville, Mich., and Niagara Falls) and changes of ownership from Fort Wayne and Little Falls to Tacoma and Wichita.
- In Elliman, Sons & Co. against Carrington & Son, Ltd., Mr. Justice Kekewich held that a maker free not to sell at all may fix his own prices and bind buyers not to cut them — agreements to maintain price are not a restraint of trade.
- Christian Nelson, a minor of Milwaukee, sues the American Bicycle Co. through a guardian for $15,000 after losing three fingers in a steam press at the company's North Milwaukee factory.
- An old rider tells the Bicycling World man about his wrench collection, prizing an English "Yankee wrench" — a stock-lock-and-barrel copy of the Billings & Spencer pattern shipped with Premier machines — and a small Mossburg wrench he carries in ordinary clothes.
- Dismisses the yellow-journal yarn that arriving foreign racing men presage an invasion of crated British bicycles, given the 45 per cent duty, lower American prices and the lateness of the season.
- Argues the toolroom should have plenty of light, enough taps, drills and reamers to avoid waiting and borrowing, and an intelligent tool keeper; suggests grouping reamer, reamer wrench, drill and plug gauge in one block issued on a single check.
- An Englishman has brought out a brush-on preparation, needing forty-eight hours to dry, to stop cracks on tire treads and sides from letting moisture rot the fabric beneath.
- The week's racing: an ugly spill in the 5-mile professional handicap at Vailsburg, N. J., taken by Cooper, McFarland and Ross in 10.50; Kramer's half mile and Ross's exhibition 5 miles in 7.51 3-5; Nelson beating Stinson and Michael over 30 miles at Charles River Park; and a proposed combination tying McFarland, Nelson, Michael, Walthour and Champion to a circuit of tracks for 5 per cent of gross receipts.
- E. L. Ferguson of the E. R. Thomas Motor Co., fresh from two century runs, says makers "cannot sell brains with their bicycles" and recounts dealers who damned the Auto-Bi over nothing worse than a weak battery, a fouled plug or cells packed loosely by local electricians.
- Two rival tradesmen, on successive days, each cited the same rider — the owner of two motocycles of different makes — to the Bicycling World man as proof that his own machine was the preferred one.
- The Hydra Double Battery Co. of 32 Broadway, New York, has acquired North American rights to the German "Hydra" cell, whose water-filled carbon cylinder keeps the composition dry until sparks are drawn and whose inner and outer zincs raise the output; a special small cell is promised for motocycles.
- The week's grants, including Hermann E. Ebbs's cooled gas-motor piston, George W. White's sectional tire, a Boehm and Waldron folding handle bar, Lazarus S. Kallajian's reversible-head convertible bicycle and John A. Spencer's pneumatic tire valve.
- Detail of American cycle exports shipped from New York in the week ending June 18: Great Britain took close on $15,000, the British East Indies $5,031, Southampton $6,250 of material and British Australia $3,231.
- The British War Office has made gearless cycles the standard for army service, which the paper takes as confirming that the gear case, near-perfect in theory, is unworkable for the average rider in practice.