The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 17
Articles in this issue
- The E. R. Thomas Motor Co. will give free lectures and demonstrations on the use and misuse of air-cooled motors at its Broadway and Elm streets factory in Buffalo during the L. A. W. meet of August 12-18, having already taught over a thousand people to ride Auto-Bies on the Pan-American Exposition Stadium track.
- Philip A. Williams, Jr., & Co.'s purchase of some 600 bicycles and a lot of sundries winds up the Industrial Cycle Co. of Springfield, Mass., started by D. T. Methven and David Allen Reed and maker of some 40,000 bicycles in seven years.
- James C. Reber leaves the management of the American Bicycle Co.'s Reading plant on August 1 to enter the automobile business at Wyomissing; he had built up the Acme Mfg. Co., makers of Stormers and Pennants, before the A. B. C. absorbed it in 1899.
- Melbourne letter of June 17 reporting that bespoke machines assembled from English B. S. A. fittings now account for fully half the bicycles in the State, imported machines sell slowly, and there is no demand for chainlesses or American motors.
- Amateur rider Harmon Haggewald sues New Haven professional cyclist and dealer Geo. H. Collett for $1,000, claiming Collett pushed him off his wheel on the Coliseum track on Good Friday and broke his collar bone; property at Collett's Court street store has been attached.
- The Eclipse Mfg. Co. closes its New York branch at 105 Chambers street on August 15 and will handle all business from the Elmira factory; manager Harry E. Walker returns to Boston as a floating representative.
- The Dunlop Tire Co.'s reconstruction plan would cut capital from $20,000,000 to about $13,000,000, halving the ordinary and deferred shareholders' holdings while debenture and preference holders get out whole; the paper argues the scheme is a makeshift.
- Frank Porter, through attorney Edward J. Tierney, sues the American Bicycle Co. at Westfield, Mass., for $3,000 after a defective heavy trip hammer severed the third and fourth fingers of his left hand.
- Frank Borum & Co. obtain a Brooklyn writ of attachment for $731.45 against dealer George Klauenbach of 1,426 Bedford avenue, unseen since July 12 and said to have gone to Germany or Mexico, leaving clerks unpaid.
- J. B. Ransom, head of the Kirk-Snell interests at Toledo, has sailed for a trip abroad, and H. H. Fulton, president of the Eclipse Mfg. Co. of Elmira, N. Y., sails next week.
- A shop method for turning a new hub chain wheel from a stamped blank or forging: annealing to a dull red, chucking in the three-jaw chuck, cutting the hub thread with an inside V tool, turning both faces and laying off the pitch line with dividers.
- A Bicycling World man posing as a buyer in a newly opened Park Row cut-price store is offered a $35 "racer," a $24 roadster and a shopworn $25 Bullis ball-geared chainless, and is told the house issues no catalogues so as to give the money to customers.
- Bicycle thieves are far less numerous this season because magistrates have inflicted the full penalty of the law and wheelmen themselves have dealt out justice when they catch delinquents in the act.
- Reading notice pointing to the correspondence in the Racycle advertisement in this issue as evidence that the Miami Co.'s policy of standing by the legitimate agent has won its agents' unwavering faith.
- From Wheeling: the requirements of accurate pitch, pintel seating and sprocket form; internal and external chain wear; lubrication of bearings and teeth; and the rocking joint patented by James M. Dodge in 1880, used in the Morse bicycle chain.
- The week's new stores and changes, including Edward W. Watkins at Newport, R. I., James F. Rooney succeeding William E. Furniss at 4 Brattle Square, Cambridge, Manchester & Becker succeeding Ralph M. Frisbie at Elmira, and John F. Ives selling his interest in Arnold & Ives, Meriden.
- Buyers now scrutinise the "bargain" machines of defunct makers so closely that repeated markdowns fail to move the stock, teaching the concerns working off such lots that it is no longer easy to fool riders.
- Argues that riding on insufficiently inflated tires has caused more trouble than puncture, and that erring toward too-hard tires hurts only the rider while under-inflation hurts the tire.
- Instalment buying has lost its old stigma: parents buy bicycles for their sons and meet the payments out of allowances, and sellers price time purchases as keenly as cash ones, though reduced bicycle prices have held the proportion down.
- Cut-rate houses cannot find up-to-date machines at the prices they will pay, and buyers now refuse archaic pinch-bolt and outside-joint wheels, preferring to pay $5 or $10 more for something not so evidently passe.
- Editorial on the Dunlop Tire Co.'s complete domination of the United Kingdom tire trade through a dozen licensed subsidiaries, and on the skill with which the capital-reduction scheme offers something to each of the four classes of security holders.
- After Edward VII bought a juvenile bicycle for his grandchild, the Marquis of Salisbury gave a juvenile Beeston Humber to a nephew; if the fashion spreads, British juveniles being neither numerous nor good, there may be an opening for American machines.
- Urges dealers to master the motor bicycle now rather than wait, pointing to the E. R. Thomas Motor Co.'s Buffalo "School of Motor Research" running alongside the Pan-American Exposition.
- Endorses Charles Cunningham's call for dealers to refuse mail-order repair work but doubts the average repairman's backbone, suggesting instead that trade organisations agree to charge double rates and publicise the fact.
- London letter of July 9 on the motor bicycle's rapid rise in favour, the Platt-Betts pacing accident caused by a misfire, a two-trembler and two-cam cure for missing fire, and heavy front-tire wear on the writer's Werner compared with a Minerva; F. J. Osmond now speeds along the Great North Road.
- Letter from Charles Cunningham of Youngstown, Pa., who broke down in health from overtime on mail-order repairs last summer and this season refuses every job on which he would have to earn twice what he could charge.
- A well-built cycle should last almost indefinitely outside chain and tires, which is hard on the trade, though the three C's of cycling—coaster-brake, cushion frame and chainless—tempt riders to replace their machines.
- Quoting Bicycling News on how English wheel makers drill wood rims only right and left and ignore the four angular sets of holes required by tangent spoking, causing wrong alignment and splitting, and why correct drilling matters still more for motocycle wheels.
- Elkes rode 40 miles without a skip to beat Michael and Nelson at Manhattan Beach; Collett was disqualified and suspended by the N. C. A. Board of Control after fouling Kramer and Wilson at New Haven; Nelson beat "Major" Taylor at Worcester, Fenn twice beat Gascoyne in pursuit, and Champion defeated Nelson at Washington in 32.26.
- Buffalo dealers are being swindled by a man who twice hires and returns a wheel with a deposit, then on the third visit persuades the dealer to trust him and keeps the machine; half a dozen dealers have lost wheels.
- An Arlington, N. J., rider sets out shortly for the Buffalo exposition on a motor bicycle, expecting to make the journey in two days at 250 to 275 miles a day.
- The Birmingham Small Arms Co. has brought out a spring-frame bicycle using three coiled springs—one in the top tube just ahead of the saddle post and two in the upper rear forks—working with telescopic joints.
- A tradesman of many years' experience tells the Bicycling World that the trolley car beat the bicycle chiefly because trolley riding was the newer novelty, and predicts that when the trolley palls old cyclists will take up the sport again.
- A Cyclist writer who canvassed Americans at the Henley regatta reports that cycling is thought infra dig by wealthy Americans, that the sport is wholly in the hands of the trade with the amateur practically non-existent, and that they resent rather than admire "Major" Taylor.
- Reading notice for the free book on case-hardening, coloring and annealing issued by the Rogers & Hubbard Co. of Middletown, Conn., which "The American Machinist" says no one can afford to do without.
- Recommends that cramped repair shops build a wall stand of paired struts two inches apart and eighteen to twenty inches between pairs, with three-inch boards top and bottom, instead of elaborate stands or piling machines against one another.
- The Carloni Brake Co. of Milan offers a "virage multipliant," or geared steering head: an auxiliary head in front of the usual one, connected by a short piece of cycle chain so that bar movement is multiplied at the front wheel and the knees clear the bar.
- Lazarus S. Kallajian of Boston has invented a convertible frame that is turned upside down to change between drop and diamond, the crank hanger held by a strong clamp so the chain length need not alter.
- A Cyclist correspondent's verdict on a hand gear of cranks and grips driving the front wheel in place of a handle bar: a slight advantage on long gradients and against wind, but constant noise, clogging cog wheels and an exposed driving-rod bearing make it not worth while for ordinary riding.
- A rider's cure for porous inner tubes—three teaspoonfuls of sweetened condensed milk mixed with warm water squirted through the valve—which he says also restores elasticity and betrays a puncture as a small white spot.
- Spoke and wheel troubles have nearly vanished on machines of reputable make; an Irish contemporary explains how a tourist can carry spare spokes, nipples and a key in the seat tube and replace a spoke and true the wheel himself.
- A Bicycling World correspondent at Dawson City reports there is nowhere to ride but the board sidewalks, and the few machines gold hunters rode over the ice were sold in Dawson for a song.
- A salesman in a big Brooklyn housefurnishing store tells a customer that no refrigerator matched the one made by George N. Pierce of Buffalo, who gave up refrigerators and bird cages when his bicycle business grew too pressing.
- An Englishman's two handle-bar designs: balls and sockets strung alternately on an extensible wire with a tension nut, and circular wedges strung on a wire that turn to give extra frictional grip, both allowing any curve the rider fancies.
- An English "bicycle prop" that clips to any machine: a top-tube lever working in toothed segments swings two supporting legs into contact with the ground, intended for elderly riders who would otherwise take to tricycles.
- The published wish of Colonel Pope and Mr. Schwab for a dozen good men at $25,000 a year has set off an acrimonious labour-question correspondence in the Jersey City Journal, one writer noting that Pope's stock is hard to sell.
- Advises cleaning bearings with refined kerosene and lubricating slowly drop by drop with pure oil, running the oil in along a thin florist's wire and using a drop can for the chain links.
- Notice of "The Complete Costkeeper" by Henry Lucien Arnold, published by the Engineering Magazine Press of New York—over 400 pages of blank forms and illustrations, with an exposition of account keeping by cards instead of books.
- An Englishman named Johnson revives lever drive with oscillating pedal arms pivoted behind the usual crank bracket and rods rising to a chain wheel below and behind the saddle, so the feet move vertically instead of rotating.
- J. H. Johnson of 35 Niagara street, the well-known National agent, has fitted up his Buffalo home to receive members of the trade visiting the Pan-American Exposition at reasonable prices.
- A Bicycling World correspondent at Funchal reports that Madeira's roads are too mountainous for bicycles: horses, donkeys and oxen serve in the country and ox-drawn sleds in the city.
- Nine United States patents, including Albert F. Blagdon-Richards's volute saddle spring, Arthur M. Carey's acetylene generator concealed in the steering tube, Frank E. Ferris's gear-tooth generating machine for Leland & Faulconer, Edward F. Kelley's rear hub coaster and brake, and Harvey M. Wood's bicycle lock.
- The metric system came up in the British House of Commons: the Act of 1897 removed any legal impediment to adopting metric standards, but the Government was not ready to make their use compulsory.
- Bicycle and material shipments by port, led by London with 200 cases of bicycles at $1,600, Havre with 104 cases at $2,814, Rotterdam with 103 cases at $1,100 and British possessions in Africa with 30 cases at $2,263.