The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 20
Articles in this issue
- The American Bicycle Co. closed its Portland, Ore., branch and abandoned the Milwaukee and Reading factories, shipping their machinery to the Crawford works at Hagerstown and discontinuing the Crawford Sales Department, whose trade passes to the New York jobbing department.
- The Manhattan Storage Co. of Philadelphia has opened two cut-price stores under another name on Park Row and further downtown, advertising a $50,000 stock for only "storage charges and expenses" — ads the New York trade reads as a dumping operation.
- Receiver Betts of the Keating Wheel and Automobile Co. of Middletown, Conn., has declared forfeit the Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Co.'s $10,000 check, leaving the New York concern until September 1 to pay the $140,000 balance on the Keating plant.
- Hans Renold, the English chainmaker, has arranged to place his son at Cornell University, attributing America's commercial supremacy to the scientific and technical courses its universities provide.
- Bids for the stock and fixtures of the failed Burroughs Cycle Co., 7 Barclay street, New York, were opened in the United States District Court clerk's office, but none was considered satisfactory and another meeting was called.
- Receiver Jones's accounting for the Sanger Handle Bar and Plating Co. of Milwaukee, Wis., leaves only $2,059.33 for distribution after expenses — a final dividend of 5½ per cent.
- Hazard & Co. of Peoria, Ill., last remnant of the once famous Rouse-Hazard & Co., failed after a Chicago implement house obtained judgment on a disputed $400 claim; assets are about $8,000, much of it lost on a special bicycle promoted the year before.
- The A. B. C. began pruning its branches by closing the Portland, Ore., store and shipping its stock to San Francisco; H. Goodman & Co., of the same place, has also discontinued business.
- Justice Farwell's Chancery Court decision in the British Motor Traction Co.'s infringement suit against the London dealer Friswell held the Maybach float-feed carburetter patent worthless for want of subject matter and of novelty, Wilkinson and Butler having anticipated it.
- A garrulous stranger tells a Bicycling World man how riders fake tire defects — pump the tire rock hard, strike it with a hammer, and a "pimple" appears that the makers cannot distinguish from a genuine fault.
- Springfield, Mass., promoters plan to raise the Hendee Mfg. Co.'s capitalization from $5,000 to $35,000 to manufacture Oscar Hedstrom's motor bicycle, with George M. Hendee keeping the controlling interest.
- C. J. Iven, of C. J. Iven & Co. of Rochester, N. Y., argues at Manhattan Beach that the L. A. W.–N. C. A. fight over the control of racing cut race meets from some fourteen hundred a year to four hundred and cost the trade a good many thousands of dollars in sales.
- The old plant of the Royal Cycle Works at Marshall, Mich., is now being operated by a concern that turns out fly killers.
- A travelling man recounts how his scarlet socks let him hoax the manager of an upper New York bicycle factory into believing the Boston Woven Hose and Rubber Co. was giving away "Vim" souvenir socks, setting off a week of letters to the Vim people.
- The German Cycle Dealers' Association has circulated a confidential letter threatening instant expulsion for representing foreign bicycles, and expelled Mr. Kukulak — who ignored the notice and continues to sell them.
- The directors of the Crystal Palace are planning an all-American exhibition for 1902 and are already charged with lack of patriotism for helping an aggressive foreign rival into British trade.
- O. E. Boles, manager of the American Bicycle Co.'s London depot and formerly a Lozier representative who went out to sell the Cleveland abroad, has resigned to enter the shoe trade.
- A practical repairman explains how to cut a new part for a stripped thread on a machine whose maker has gone under — count male and female threads and average them, then work out the change wheels on the lathe's leading screw for single or compound gear.
- The leader argues the electric railway wins riders because it asks no physical exertion, and that the motor bicycle — a "private trolley" that levels the hill, stills the headwind and equalizes age and sex — will in its turn discomfit the trolley.
- Repair men who did a rush trade fitting coaster brakes to old machines in 1899 are urged to canvass the hundreds of thousands of fixed-gear bicycles still unconverted instead of waiting for the work to be asked for.
- Riders now want comfort rather than speed, yet the inch-and-three-eighths and inch-and-a-half tires that displaced the two-inch sizes of the early nineties leave them fatigued by vibration; larger tire diameters are offered as the fillip the trade is hunting for.
- Data gathered for the Bicycling World's export editions points to Turkey, Syria and Asia awakening as purchasers alongside India, Japan and the Philippines, and the Rangoon letter printed elsewhere shows Chinese repairers refuting the idea that Asiatics lack mechanical ability.
- The London correspondent reports English tire makers blaming his own high speeds for wearing a Werner front tire to the fabric in under four hundred miles, and describes belt-tension arrangements on the Werner and on Brown Brothers' slide-mounted motor bicycle.
- The Court of Appeal found for the Buckingham & Adams Co. after the Dunlop Tire Co. sought to declare illegal the Midland company's shifting of its tire wires to the centre of the rim for rim brakes — a third defeat following Wapshare and Flexifort.
- Buffalo's championships went largely to Marcus Hurley (quarter, third, half and mile) with Grady taking the two- and five-mile, Fulton the twenty and Wiley the hour; Kramer covered a half in 58 seconds at Madison Square Garden, Lawson won the quarter-mile professional final, and Walthour beat Munroe over twenty motor-paced miles at Hartford.
- The proprietor of "The Westerton Cycle Stores" in a Kentish village tells the Wheeling man he sells mostly £7 10s. American machines because the farm laborers who hire them want something cheap and strong; of £200 of new machines sold last year only about £50 were £10 and over.
- F. A. Southwick argues that a salesman is judged on net results, that tact outranks genius, and that disparaging competitors, bluffing with technical terms or falling back on lowest price are the surest routes to being "allowed to resign."
- Variable gears are called the logical successor to the coaster-brake, with the British Paradox two-speed — praised by the Irish Cyclist for expanding a chain ring without disturbing the pitch, and giving 63 and 80½ on a 28-inch wheel with 16 teeth — as the leading example.
- A Rangoon correspondent describes morning runs round the Royal Lakes and the cycle stands at Dalhousie Park, the whip or bamboo needed against native dogs and buffaloes, and the loongyi that drives Burmans to a lady's mount, while Chinese make the best native repairers.
- A rival cycle paper's attempt to copy the Bicycling World's English, French and Spanish export editions is ridiculed, one of its solicitors being caught professing ignorance of the originals by a prospective advertiser.
- Trade changes at Versailles, Ohio, Ivoryton, Conn., Coldwater, Mich., and Mankato, Minn.; new stores at Paw Paw, Mich., and Roanoke, Ala.; and fires at Rochester, N. Y., Escondido, Cal., and Marquette, Mich., where F. H. Hoard lost $2,000.
- An English dealer who placarded a damaged Royal Oak bicycle as having been trampled by eight horses and run over by two loaded brakes broke the nose of a rival who entered to inspect it; the injured man is asking the court for damages.
- German courts have fined the maker of the "Fulwel" tire preserver after analysts found it was two-thirds linseed oil and one-third colouring — a floor stain that made the rubber brittle until it broke in all directions.
- A ready formula for a chainless bicycle's gear: multiply wheel diameter by the teeth on the crankshaft spur wheel, divide by the forward connecting-rod spur teeth multiplied by the cogged wheel at the rear of the rod, then divide by the spurs on the back hub.
- Consul Thomas H. Norton at Harput advises the State Department that Turkey wants simple, braked, low-priced but durable wheels, tires chosen for stony oriental roads, compact packing for the haul from Samsoun over the mountains, and diamond frames.
- Two directors of the Quadrant Cycle Co., Lloyd and Priest, have devised a self-inflating valve whose plunger works in a tiny cylinder within the valve stem; Cycling thinks it a marked advance on the Pneumo automatic pump shown at the last cycle show.
- Dealers are urged to read their buyers — give the man who wants a cheap, strongly built machine exactly that, but talk a purchaser who can afford more out of a $20 bicycle when a $50 one would serve him better.
- J. B. Brookes & Co., the English saddlemakers, are proceeding against a dozen or more concerns for patent infringement and for royalties dating back several years; the alleged infringers have combined to fight the suits.
- An experimental chainless motor bicycle run by a gasolene motor with bevel transmission gear, the product of a Hartford factory, has appeared on that city's streets, with good results reported from its running tests.
- The Miller Mfg. Co. of Torrington, Conn., maker of the Arc bicycle lamp, was sold by the trustee, C. S. Dikeman.
- Vienna's municipal pawnshops now repair, "touch up" and resell unclaimed pledged cycles as a regular business, and their cheap prices are taking the second-hand trade that forms a big item in the local dealers' income.
- Bicycle enamellers do the bulk of their work in cool weather and so escape the almost dustproof, oven-heated workroom that would be unendurable during the dogdays.
- Heat from back-wheel hub brakes and their drums evaporates the lubricating oil into a gummy, sticky residue; injecting a little kerosene into the bearings and joints from time to time disperses it.
- Grants to George W. Manson and John E. Sweet for bicycle supports, Blomster and Gustafsson of Boras, Sweden, for a whistle alarm, Charles R. Reid for a Kirkpatrick saddle clip, A. P. Morrow of Elmira for a friction clutch and Emil Koch for a sprung front wheel, plus designs to Vincent H. Bendix and Jonas D. Knoll.
- Wheeling complains that Britain's intricate weights, measures and non-decimal coinage handicap its export trade against the 445,000,000 people already using the metric system, while the United States at least has a decimal monetary base.
- Motor pacing machines have driven multicycles out of the pacing game and off the road; survivors go for the proverbial song even when almost new, though they were expensive to build except in large quantities.
- For the week closing August 13, New Zealand ($9,093) and British Australia ($7,853) led American cycle shipments, ahead of London (264 cases, $3,500), Copenhagen ($2,440), the British East Indies ($2,268), Japan ($2,332) and the Philippines ($1,125).
- A worker in metals gives a quick water anneal for a hardened punch: heat the piece to dull cherry red, test the falling heat by charring soft pine, and plunge it into oil once it will no longer char the wood.
- A sea velocipede propelled by paddles worked from pedals and built in airtight compartments is said to have made the eighty-mile voyage from Trieste to Pola at good speed.