The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 16
Articles in this issue
- W. H. St. John, ten years secretary of the Spencer Automatic Machine Screw Co., replaces J. C. Wilson as secretary-treasurer of the Hartford Rubber Works Co., Wilson leaving to manage the Seamless Rubber Co. of New Haven; F. H. Turner, inventor of the Turner automobile tire, becomes vice-president, while Colonel George Pope and George H. Day leave the board.
- Charles R. Lloyd, a Main street bicycle dealer in Hartford, Conn., was arrested for embezzlement by bailee after selling a bicycle that John J. Lawlery had left with him for repair.
- Charles Alvord, 74, a director of the Eagle Bicycle Mfg. Co. and formerly treasurer and manager of the Excelsior Needle Co., died at his Torrington, Conn., residence on July 13.
- Reports circulating say two and perhaps three Bicycle Trust factories are booked for discontinuance, carrying with it the transfer of certain bicycles to other plants.
- Henry H. Brantigam, a Bridgeport, Conn., bicycle dealer, filed a voluntary bankruptcy petition showing liabilities of $5,116.03 against assets of $5,606.65, most of it open-account debts and stock in trade.
- The auction of the old Trinity Cycle Works plant at Worcester, Mass., was called off after a question arose over ownership of a driveway adjacent to the property.
- The United States Circuit Court at Pittsburg granted the American Dunlop Tire Co. an injunction restraining the Pennsylvania Rubber Co. of Erie from using the name “Dunlop”; the Erie firm made no fight, saying it applied the term only to an inner tube, which it will keep making under another designation.
- Wheeling reports that chain maker Hans Renold, touring American engineering works, is writing home letters full of gloomy forebodings about England's industrial future.
- William W. Tucker, who invented and patented improvements in automatic screw machines while with Pratt & Whitney and other labor-saving devices for bicycle manufacture, died at his Hartford, Conn., home.
- A self-styled original pitches the Bicycling World man a spring motor for bicycles and light automobiles, wound like a clock and free of gasolene, noise and dirt, but leaves the details of regulating the power to “you people who are in the business.”
- Judge Tuley discharged C. W. Moulton and James M. Lovelette, former South Town deputy collectors accused of demanding an illegal $30 fee from James L. Mead of the Mead Cycle Co., Chicago, because the indictment charged no crime; another indictment is expected.
- Motor tandem pacing expert Charles S. Henshaw, alleging $5,000 of pacing engagements this season, sued a New Haven, Conn., street railway after a collision on the road to Savin Rock threw him against the seat in front and badly injured his knees.
- A Syracuse, N.Y., process casts frame and fork joints from “Clark metal,” a copper-base alloy, poured at white heat around tubing clamped in two-piece moulds, joining an entire frame or fork in about three minutes before the waste “gate” is sawn off.
- A Barclay street (New York) window offering garden hose at 25 cents a foot prompts a comparison with tire prices — a 28-inch tire is about seven feet round, or a trifle over $1.75 — and a look back at $25-a-pair pneumatics and the jibe that the single-tube was only a “hosepipe.”
- Explains the difference between the two materials: gutta-percha comes from one plant against rubber's sixty, three-fourths of the commercial product shipping from Singapore out of Sumatra and Borneo, and is vulcanized with carbon and sulphur to insulate telegraph cables.
- Thieves broke a rear window and stripped J. B. Smith's Buffalo repair shop of bicycles, tires, tools and coaster-brakes over a weekend, apparently using a wagon in the rear street; one man has been arrested.
- Fine British weather has given Great Britain its best cycle season since the 1896 boom while continuous rains cut the heart out of the American selling season; an English writer notes the demand is for cheap machines and that varied specifications and stubborn material prices leave makers little chance of dividends.
- The Wisconsin Wheel Works report that general-press advertising brought upward of five thousand inquiries about their motor bicycle within sixty days, a fair proportion of which developed into orders.
- Argues that makers who kept making their own bolts, nuts, axles and sprocket wheels long after parts makers could supply them cheaper were penny wise and pound foolish, though genuinely distinctive features remain worth their extra cost because they help sell the cycle.
- Describes the English-built “Paradox” two-speed gear, contained wholly in the bracket chain wheel, which expands the chain wheel without disturbing the pitch, shifts by pedalling or back-pedalling, and gives a 28 per cent difference between ratios.
- Charles Campbell, a frequent loafer at the store of Alexander & Elmer, Hartford, Conn., was arrested after about sixty tires of a style the firm made a specialty of had disappeared; he is said to have sold them on to dealers.
- Ben Hinchcliffe, an English veteran who spent eight years in the States, tells the British press that a properly made single-tube tire beats the double-tube for speed, comfort and ease of repair — testimony likely to help force the single-tube wedge into a market held by the Dunlop monopoly.
- A small but growing class of buyers again wants the best machine absolutely rather than the best for the money, and dealers should rouse that pride by demonstrating chainless, cushion frame and coaster-brake fittings instead of chasing the $12.99 trade.
- Even a nearly worthless second-hand bicycle keeps a few dollars' value if rightly handled, and something more than arithmetic — perhaps sentiment — stops the dealer throwing a ridable machine on the rubbish heap.
- Argues that racing men's tire trade is now worth having: sprinters use many small thin-walled tires a season and motor-paced men destroy them faster still, one celebrated make becoming unreliable after about eight miles behind pace, while a six-ply special is making a great hit.
- Blames the shrinkage of cycling coverage on a shortage of printable matter rather than editorial indifference, and urges dealers to write their local papers as Jarvis & Daniels did at Grand Rapids.
- Warns dealers that washing their hands of a customer once the cash is paid is the worst possible policy, since riders kept riding buy new machines, second-hands, repairs and sundries.
- Praises Fred T. Merrill for advertising boldly and undiplomatically against mail-order and bargain-counter bicycles instead of merely talking against them, leaving an indelible mark on the cycle trade of the Pacific Northwest.
- The craze for ten-, eleven- and twelve-tooth rear sprockets has subsided; riders on high gears now prefer very small rear sprockets — some scarcely larger than the hub barrel — with correspondingly smaller front wheels.
- Calls on the N.C.A. to enforce its ride-to-win rule after Gascoyne openly held back at Manhattan Beach so team mate Jenkins could steal a handicap win, a trick also worked by three Buffalo amateurs at Madison Square Garden the week before.
- The George N. Pierce Co.'s “study in vibration” sets two 160-pound life-size automata riding a Pierce Pan-American cushion frame chainless and a rigid frame over cobblestones against a moving panorama; the Shelby Steel Tube Co. shows tubing worked into many mechanical specialties.
- A raw-rubber substitute made from corn, exhibited at the Pan-American Exposition, is claimed to stretch and turn water as well as tree rubber and to serve for tires, boots, linoleum and waterproof roofing — the latest of hundreds of such claims.
- Three letters: Jarvis & Daniels of Grand Rapids enclose the appeal they sent the Press and Herald asking for cycling space; the Veeder Mfg. Co., answering R. E. Fronde on cyclometer accuracy, explains its 728-revolutions-per-mile standard and a special 27 1/4-inch gearing for undersized tires; and Fred T. Merrill of Portland, Ore., defends throwing “dignity to the dogs” in advertising against shoddy department-store wheels.
- Quotes a Los Angeles paper notice in which Williamson Bros. give warning that an 1896 Hoffman bicycle left for repairs by M. G. Williard will be sold at public auction to satisfy the repair bill.
- Dr. C. Whitehall Cooke of London and Dr. Alfred Hartley testify that the motor bicycle beats the tricycle for a medical man, citing cost, single track, small storage space, freedom from vibration that would spoil delicate surgery, and the ability to slip the belt and pedal home.
- Traces anti-theft devices from the Victor high bicycle's detachable saddle cover to a quick-release seat post that let a rider carry saddle and post indoors — until a thief began making the rounds with a duplicate saddle and seat post under his arm.
- Walter C. Sanger, an ex-king of the path and formerly of the Sanger Handle Bar Co., is now on the road for the Jonas Cycle Co. of Milwaukee selling Merkel-equipped Jonas motor bicycles, and has become a motocycle enthusiast.
- World rubber production is estimated at 99,207,000 pounds — nearly two-thirds from the Amazon Valley, a third from Central Africa and a twentieth from Asia — with Liverpool importing more than all other European ports combined.
- The Goodyear detachable tire with a corrugated outer cover has made its formal appearance abroad with considerable favor, and the company has opened offices at 5-7 Singer street, London.
- Week's round-up: Stinson beat Nelson over 15 miles at Madison Square Garden in 25.42 2-5; Elkes rode 37 miles 2 1/2 laps in the hour at Manhattan Beach to beat Walthour and Michael; Kramer won the mile pro at Vailsburg; the N.C.A. fined Fred Hoyt only $100 for a catgut towline; Moran took the Golden Wheel race with 416 miles 1,042 yards; and Sievers of Friedenau won the 100-kilometre amateur championship at Berlin.
- Standardization stalled once saddles, posts, pedals, cranks and handle bars became interchangeable; a transatlantic maker would fix bolts and nuts and put 24 or 26 threads to the inch on hub spindles and fork stems, but says standardizing ball races and cups would cramp design and destroy what differentiates machines.
- A well-posted English rubber man advises building a tandem open-sided casing of stronger fabric with a thicker tread strip and mottled rubber sides, and warns that such tires must be gone over continually to solution cuts and are not for “mugs.”
- A practical man's brazing method: clean the joints and wash them with borax water, use a front hub spindle and nuts as a stretcher in the fork ends, dip the still red-hot job delicately in warm alum solution to lift the scale, then cool naturally before filing.
- Commends the planks of the “Racycle platform” advertised in this issue as genuinely honest protection for the legitimate agent, unlike rival platforms full of cracks and knotholes.
- France led the export manifest for the week ending July 16, Havre alone taking 361 cases of bicycles at $7,651 plus 96 cases of material; British possessions in Africa, British Australia, the British West Indies, Copenhagen and Southampton also took large shipments.
- The British cycle journals report that Edward VII has given Prince Edward of York a birthday bicycle with fourteen-inch wheels and the usual plated parts ordered enamelled instead — which may start a movement for that finish.
- Patents granted include Thomas P. Vandeleur's bicycle lock securing the brake handle to the handle bar, three Leroy S. Buffington acetylene generator and carbid cartridge patents for the Buffington Light Co., Edwin Hemsted's steel-banded pneumatic tire, and Harry Shoemaker's induction coil.
- Quotes a general paper that “nobody talks bicycle now, simply because everybody rides it,” the wheel being permanently established as a personal and commercial necessity now that the maker's costly experiments and the faddist and fashion-following riders are past.
- An English observer notes racing men have swung from last year's narrow bars, horizontal top tubes and long heads to wide bars, the shortest heads, sharply raking top tubes and often straight forks — almost the cross-framed machine of fifteen years ago.
- Trade changes: L. J. Ross of Danvers and F. H. Fernald of Haverhill, Mass., and Lawrence Cannon of Bellows Falls, Vt., closing; W. I. Smith succeeds the Norton Hardware Co. at Fair Haven, Vt.; Jay Bros. succeed the Sunset Cycle Co. at Los Angeles; new stores at Preble and Poland, N.Y., and West Rutland, Vt.; a burglary at John F. Smith's, Buffalo, and a fire at W. Howe's, Ottawa, Ont.
- Aluminum's natural finish, a poor imitation of nickel plating, has told against it with cyclists, but motocycle flywheel cases, gasolene tanks and battery boxes offer a far larger field if the metal is enamelled as well as tubing is.