The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 19
Articles in this issue
- H. A. Lozier's objection reopened negotiations over the United States Steel Corporation's absorption of the Shelby Steel Tube Co.; at a conference in President Schwab's office the common-stock exchange was improved so Shelby holders give four shares instead of five for one of Steel common.
- The old Wilhelm plant at Hamburg, near Reading, Pa., has at last been sold to the Hamburg Board of Trade, and is understood to be passing shortly to an automobile manufacturing concern.
- Judge Carter appointed L. W. Wainwright receiver of the Patee Bicycle Co. of Indianapolis on a complaint by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. of Akron, Hannah Greenburg and Sarah Morris, whose claims aggregate $1,752.76.
- George W. Pfeffer, who keeps a repair shop at 578 East Genesee street, Buffalo, and was arrested for buying stolen wheels from Ida Gormiak, was discharged by Judge Murphy after Dr. Preiss, Coroner Boller and twenty other citizens testified to his character.
- The Allman Gear Co., of Huntington, Ind., is said to be considering a Louisville, Ky., factory for bicycle supplies, employing seventy-five skilled hands from the start.
- The Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Co. of New York failed to pay the $140,000 balance due August 1 on the Keating Wheel and Automobile Co. plant at Middletown, Conn., so Receiver Betts has filed notice claiming the $10,000 certified-check forfeit.
- The Trust's pruning knife is being sharpened for a fairly general lopping off of branch stores, and several factories will feel it too.
- Constable Butterfield attached the stock of the Wimmer Bicycle Supply Co., State street, Detroit, on a chattel mortgage.
- June cycle exports gained $55,705 over June 1900, the bulk of it from the United Kingdom, Africa, the British East Indies and the Philippines, but the fiscal year closed $1,037,420 down, with the heaviest money loss in Germany; a full country-by-country table is given.
- A downtown fittings house advertises built-up wheels at $2.50 a pair with well-known brands of hub, spokes and rims, when assembling alone would once have cost that much for a single wheel.
- The American Bicycle Co. is closing and inventorying its Chicopee Falls, Mass., plant, formerly the Lamb Knitting Co. works that built Spalding bicycles, throwing only six men out of employment.
- Justice Farwell of the British Chancery Division overthrew the Maybach float-feed carburetter patents in British Motor Traction Co. against Friswell and ordered the plaintiff to pay costs, only months after Justice Kekewich had upheld them; the suit against the Longuemare people stands over.
- A Bicycling World man overhears a small-town rider whose cheap tire has failed for the fourth time in three weeks reject the dealer's $6 to $8 guaranteed makes and buy a nameless “Blank second” pair at $2.50 instead.
- A salesman for a cut-price house admits the chainless it advertises at $19.50 as worth $60 is built by a firm now out of business and that buyers could not get parts — “we only look after the selling end.”
- The Automobile Club of Great Britain has served notice that no motor exhibits will be allowed at the Stanley or the National cycle shows, proposing to hold a show of its own instead.
- The Metropolitan Bank of Buffalo sued the American Bicycle Co. for $2,831.25 on two protested notes of the failed Ripper Cycle Co.; a levy was made at Wyoming and West Fayette streets, Syracuse, until Justice White discharged the attachment on a bond.
- British cycle exports for June rose to £45,773 from £40,584 a year earlier, though the half year's £204,864 trails £292,778 in 1900 and £915,986 in the first six months of the boom year 1896.
- Editorial arguing the trade wants a purely cycling journal, quoting a veteran New Jersey dealer who cancelled a rival subscription because it had become “more of an automobile issue than a cycle issue.”
- Editorial holding that the uniformity once longed for now spells dulness as the safety and the pneumatic tire once spelled briskness, and that deliverance will probably come in the form of the motor bicycle.
- An ex-manufacturer blames the falling off in riding on the trade's catering to racing — springless frames, forks, saddles, handle bars and rat-trap pedals — and welcomes the cushion frame as a move toward comfort.
- Coaster-brakes have upset the axiom that no constructional novelty is right at first: the predicted crop of serious accidents never came and the devices have proved eminently satisfactory under severe tests.
- Indianapolis vehicle licences to August 1 show bicycles down over 15 per cent, at 18,230 against 21,721, but horse-drawn vehicles also down over 10 per cent, at 8,368 against 9,253.
- London letter of July 24 on a worn Werner motor-bicycle tire and the salesman who blamed the rider's braking, belt versus chain drive and Brown Brothers' coming chain-driven machine, praise for the Pennsylvania Rubber Co.'s motocycle tire, and the scarcity of Singer motocycles on the road.
- A practical writer explains how a slight “set” on a cycle head throws the two ball bearings out of parallel, commends spherical-seated ball cups, and warns that sweating races into the head lugs lets the solder give way.
- The two Werner motor bicycles in the recent Paris-Bordeaux race covered 348 miles in 12 hours 20 minutes and 12 hours 43 minutes without trouble, a performance the writer thinks has had far less attention than it deserves.
- The Pan-American programme at Buffalo for August 15-17, with the $1,000 invitation middle-distance championship, plus Walter Smith's 8.27 1-5 five-mile paced amateur record, Kramer beating Taylor at Vailsburg, three motor tandems wrecked at Madison Square Garden, and “Major” Taylor's $500 suit against the Vanderbilt Hotel, Syracuse.
- Wheeling draws a lesson from the Bryant & May amalgamation: British makers keep machinery like family heirlooms, while the American throws away a thousand pounds' worth if it will cut his working cost 30 per cent.
- The Dunlop Tire Co. is pushing the Bartlett beaded-edge tire, the old Clincher bought from the North British Rubber Co., has dropped its rebating system, and lists 1902 wired-on and beaded-edge types, vulcanized rather than cemented, at $15.75 a pair.
- The Quadrant Cycle Co. and the Ivel Cycle Works are among the latest English concerns to add motor bicycles to their lines.
- Revives the old question whether the right-hand pedal takes a right or left hand thread, quoting the Cycle Trader and a better American explanation using a pencil rolling in a ring to show why each pedal screws itself up.
- A British patent granted a few weeks ago pivots a camlike adjustment plate with a curved slot at each rear fork end, so chain tension can be altered without disturbing the axle bearings, with a spring pawl to stop slackening.
- Notes on working the “white metal”: commercial aluminum runs about 99.25 per cent pure with silicon the chief impurity, melts at 1,157 degrees Fahrenheit, is best alloyed slightly with nickel or tungsten, and shrinks a quarter inch to the foot in cooling.
- A New England journal argues the bicycle's extravagant price once made it the rich man's mark so everybody bought, and that despite the present reaction there will be a permanent market for wheels as time savers and healthful recreation.
- Letter from C. B. Muchmore of Charleston, Ill., on mail-order wheels sold under “wild and woolly” nameplates with the rottenest single-tube tires, and the one local repairman who refused to work on the Iver Johnsons Muchmore sold.
- Anonymous letter from Providence, R. I., describing a white rider running a coloured rider up the 45-degree bank at the Providence Coliseum in full view of the N. C. A. judges, who took no notice.
- An English inventor has applied for a patent on a ball tire — a rim occupied by a ring of inflated elastic balls under a cover moulded inside with pyramidal rubber prominences to hold them in position.
- A metallurgist doubts that renaming “cherry red” as “blood red” helps the steel hardener, and proposes a coloured glass pane in a north wall, or tinted tissue paper, in a darkened hardening room as a heat-colour guide.
- Trade changes and openings: W. J. Miller succeeds F. L. Harvey at Windsor Locks, Conn.; the Wilkins Toy Co. buys A. J. Sweeney's stock at Keene, N. H.; Finn & Chretien of 625 Main street, Buffalo, sell to Annie Krumholz for $1; new stores at Wakefield, R. I., Cedarville and New York, N. Y., and South Paris, Me.
- Brimmer's patented process grinds old rubber and waste fine, dissolves it in castor oil at 180 to 210 degrees Celsius, pours the cooled solution into 90 per cent spirits of wine, then washes the rubber in fresh alcohol and warm water with caustic soda.
- The foot-applied tire brake popular in America a few years ago is only now being patented in England, as a spring-hinged brake plate on the steering head depressed by the rider's foot.
- Arrangements have been made to provide ample capital for pushing the Wapshare tire, the only British tire yet to win a legal victory over the Dunlop monopoly's foundation patents.
- “Jarge” tells in the Cyclist how he overtook Karl Kron beyond Falmer on the Brighton road, riding an all-nickel ordinary in shirt sleeves with two Veeder trip cyclometers, who announced he had completed his fourteen-hundredth mile in England that afternoon.
- A suggestion that pacing machines carry a small free wheel at the back level with the hub so a colliding front wheel spins it the same way; an English journal prefers an earlier scheme of a horizontal wheel bearing on the follower's steering socket.
- An English firm advertises a testimonial from a customer entirely satisfied with a mount he has ridden for over fifteen years, which arithmetic makes an 1885 or 1886 machine, high wheel or very early safety.
- The week's grants include Alexander P. Morrow's roller bearing, Melvin F. Hock's seat-post bicycle pump, Lyman T. Smith's pneumatic tire valve, Henri Dufaux's motocycle, John T. M. Hircock's cycle steering, David P. Wolhaupter's bell, and a design patent for a lamp to Charles Carroll Armstrong.
- Port-by-port list of the week's bicycle shipments: 230 cases of bicycles to London worth $3,270, 78 cases to Liverpool, 89 cases to China, 52 cases to Havre, 26 to Copenhagen, and smaller lots to Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Rotterdam and elsewhere.
- From Portsmouth, N. H., word of an unnamed maker's bicycle built of solid flat spring steel instead of round tubing, braced with extra bars on the idea of a trestle bridge and guaranteed to hold a thousand pounds.