The Bicycling World, Vol 43, No 8
Articles in this issue
- The Syracuse Bicycle Rack Co., seemingly heir to the famous Calkins patents, has sued the West End Brewing Co. of Utica, N. Y., reviving the bicycle-rack litigation just as Joseph Coupe was returning the Utica defence fund to its subscribers; Frank X. Matt of the brewery calls the patent claim a bunco game.
- The Buffalo Specialty Mfg. Co. has begun United States Circuit Court proceedings over its Neverleak patents against Frank E. Norton of Syracuse, N. Y., who made Norton's Tire Fluid, and Bump Bros. of Binghamton, who mixed their own fluid for repair-shop use.
- Perkins & Richmond of Grand Rapids, Mich., have filed a trust mortgage over their bicycle, camera, photographic and sporting-goods stock with Arthur C. Torrey as trustee for some 125 creditors; liabilities are about $30,000 against $15,000-$20,000 of assets, the Eastman Kodak Co. the largest creditor at $1,425.
- The American Bicycle Co. sues the Stearns Bicycle Agency, Edward C. Stearns, Herbert E. Maslin and William A. Doubleday for $200,000 and an injunction, alleging a conspiracy to lease the old Stearns factory and build a Regal wheel that is a Chinese copy of the Stearns.
- The Buescher Mfg. Co. of Elkhart, Ind., has bought the factory of the failed Soudan Mfg. Co. in the same town, gaining some 15,000 extra square feet, and will spend about $15,000 on the plant and machinery before occupying it by September 1.
- The machinists' strike has hurt the cycle trade little, the season's rush being over: 500 of 700 men went out at the Columbia factory at Hartford and the Warwick Cycle and Springfield Drop Forge works also refused demands, while the J. Stevens Arms & Tool and Billings & Spencer forces stayed at work.
- Referee D. Lloyd Jones has called the first meeting of the creditors of the Sanger Handle Bar and Plating Co. of Milwaukee for 10 o'clock on May 27, 1901, at Room 434, Postoffice Building, Milwaukee.
- H. A. Allen of Davis, Allen & Co. explains how his firm ships some 18,000 Wisconsin Wheel Works bicycles a year to Great Britain and Scandinavia, selling at about $35 under the Beebe nameplate against the Rudge-Whitworth, and blames the export collapse on dumping cheap stuff on Hamburg; he is now trying the Goodyear detachable tire developed from R. P. Scott's Scott-Rogers tire.
- Under Judge Thayer's April 19 order, C. E. Rood of Springfield, Mass., has filed his itemized statement of claims against the Keating Wheel and Automobile Co. of Middletown, Conn.; the claims committee of Messrs. Northrop and Haines will hear the matter and report to the court.
- William Roche, the New York dry-battery maker, gives the Telegraph Age a home recipe using a zinc cup, blotting paper, melted pitch, sal-ammoniac and chloride of zinc, with a negative element of powdered black oxide of manganese and carbon.
- The E. R. Thomas Motor Co.'s new catalog for the Auto-Bi missed the pun of styling itself an "Auto-Bi-ography"; its cover shows two cyclists climbing a hill, one coasting thumb-in-pocket, and pushes the "no-hills-no-headwinds" slogan.
- The colored men demonstrating the detachable bicycle shown at the last cycle show work New York's downtown streets, dismounting outside stores to strip the machine into three parts and reassemble it before wondering onlookers.
- Ten years ago all weldless steel tubing for bicycles was imported and regarded as a semi-secret British art; the first American attempt was thought a dubious experiment, yet home-made tubing now leaves nothing to be desired in quality or price.
- A genuine revival of interest in cycling is in sight: despite unseasonable weather into May, more riders are out than for years past, and dealers and repairers report old machines by the hundred being brought out of seclusion and put in condition to ride.
- With prices and sales reduced, makers should hold out against the price-cutting few; the Bissell carpet sweeper policy and the Kodak plan, under which a dozen films cannot be had for less than 60 cents in any store, show that maintenance works.
- The dire warnings that greeted the coaster-brake's introduction—chains breaking, braking mechanisms failing—came to nothing, and not one accident found a place in the yellow journals; the supplementary brake urged on riders proved unnecessary.
- Too much is made of motocycle speed and too little of hill-climbing and the ability to proceed slowly; one motocyclist was stopped by police so often that he grew disgusted at being unable to travel slowly and sought to sell his machine.
- Cycling's decline owes much to the loss of its sociable character, since riders took to the wheel because their friends rode; every tradesman can help the returning tide by encouraging riders whose example will draw others back.
- S. H. Mora, sales manager of the Eastman Kodak Co., explains to the Bicycling World how the Kodak camera's price is held: conditions of sale printed on every price list, a 12 per cent conditional credit memorandum for compliant dealers, no consignment sales, and rules on old film and exchanges between dealers.
- Of the many devices for converting a pedal bicycle into a motor-driven one, none is as compact as the Motosacoche of the Dufaux Freres of Geneva, Switzerland, whose 1 1/4 horsepower motor, battery and carburetter sit in a tourist's-case-shaped housing bolted into the frame.
- Charles R. Gerrard reckons a bicycle chain has some 110 working joints, 110 rollers and 550 separate pieces, loaded from zero to 600 pounds, with rivet pressure often reaching 51 tons per square inch—which leads the English papers to renew their cry for gear cases.
- The New Departure Bell Co. of Bristol, Conn., has placed its improved coaster-brake on the market, with hub barrel, ball cups and brake drum formed in one solid piece of steel, a split steel expanding brake ring, detachable sprockets for 1/8, 3/16 or 1/4 inch chain lines, and a one-year guarantee.
- A new india-rubber substitute made from corn oil, a glucose-factory product, is reddish brown and stays pliable without cracking though it resists heat less well; its makers expect it to be used for bicycle tires.
- A limited liability company floated in London to take over a maker of a popular rim brake was largely oversubscribed despite cycle flotations being out of favor, testifying to the British rider's liking for rim brakes.
- W. D. Wilmot of Fall River, Mass., mails circulars that sell sidelines and answer the mail-order houses, offering wheels from the $17.50 Westminster to the $200-$250 Thomas Auto-Bi alongside phonographs, baseball goods and gas mantles; a second circular, "A Good Indian Story," markets the Hendee Mfg. Co.'s Indian bicycle as a tribe of trusty Indians costing $25.
- Minneapolis, Minn., dealers buying second-hand wheels must now file daily reports describing them to the police; the corporation attorney has ruled second-hand bicycle dealers subject to the same rule as pawnbrokers, on pain of having to take out licenses.
- The Waltham (Mass.) Mfg. Co. has cut the price of its Orient tricycles with 2 1/4 horsepower De Dion motors from $450 to $310 to clear a limited stock, while the 3 1/4 horsepower Aster-motored machines stay at $450 with a new free-clutch mechanism.
- The German Home Office has compiled an alphabetical list of over a thousand doubtful foreign firms from fifteen European countries and seven American States that try to swindle firms out of goods; it can be inspected free at any Chamber of Commerce.
- The Acme plant of the American Bicycle Co. at Reading, Pa., was slightly damaged by fire, believed to have started by spontaneous combustion in the enamelling room, which is separate from the main buildings.
- The week's trade changes: fires at Batavia, Ia., Salem, Ind. and Seattle, Wash.; new stores from Avonmore, Ont. to Merrill, Wis.; and changes including Kelly & Wells of Bloomington, Ill. retiring and Michael Staebler of Ann Arbor, Mich. selling out.
- In the Court of Appeals at Albany, N. Y., the Sager Mfg. Co. pressed its suit against Frank Sullivan Smith personally for the value of 750 bicycle saddles sold to the Worcester Cycle Mfg. Co. of Middletown, Conn.; Smith claims he acted only as receiver, and the Fourth department had reversed a judgment for the plaintiff.
- The old Arrow Bicycle Co. of Indianapolis figured in the Criminal Court trial of attorney J. B. Sherwood for embezzling $2,500 from Christian Schraeder, the concern's former principal owner; Sherwood had blocked its sale by claiming $5,000 in professional fees.
- The Sectional Pneumatic Tire Co. of Binghamton, N. Y. ($50,000), the Tube Bending Machine Co. of New York ($35,000) and the United States Tire Inflator Company of Trenton, N. J. ($125,000), the last to make automatic bicycle pumps.
- The heavy full roadster, once kept as a second machine for bad roads, died out completely once makers learned to build light machines that would stand up under all conditions through better materials, workmanship and knowledge of frame and fork stresses.
- Three weeks of fine weather have revived the British motocycle trade, the Motor Mfg. Co., Ltd. selling well on the Werner pattern; the writer wants a dropped-frame motor bicycle and two-speed gearing for ladies, notes the Dupont epicycloidal gear at $59.60, and reports the Inland Revenue summoning a Midlands agent over licensing every motocycle he holds.
- The Patee Bicycle Co. of Indianapolis will specialise in rebuilding tandems with Patee motors; the pictured machine carries two riders weighing over four hundred pounds and climbed every grade in a day's outing, and the firm supplies a three horsepower motor, batteries, carburetter, spark coil and fittings for $200.
- A prominent tire concern is putting a thicker tread on its tires, a return to the early practice abandoned in the light-weight craze, on the view that durability is now a prime requisite of a bicycle.
- Very thin oil is usually the mischief in a squeaking free-wheel clutch; slightly heated vaseline cures a squeak, while kerosene or turpentine frees a clogged clutch, and gasolene is better than kerosene for cleansing bearings and reviving enamel.
- At a meeting of the Society of Arts in London, Alexander Siemens read a paper on "Patent Reform" arguing that patent laws should be made identical worldwide so that a patent taken out in one country could be registered in all others without further examination.
- An extraordinary general meeting of the Dunlop Tire Co. was to be held in London to approve the purchase of a rubber manufacturing business, which the directors regard as a fitting occasion to consider scaling down the concern's enormous capital.
- The Peterson No. 2 luggage carrier just marketed by the Megquier & Jones Co. of Portland, Maine, has a stout nickel-plated steel wire frame hung on two steel hooks so it can be attached to either the head or the rear forks without affecting the steering.
- After shipping twenty ordinary folding bicycles to the Japanese Government, the Dwyer Folding Bicycle Co. of Danbury, Conn., has received an order for a sample military folding machine with a semi-dropped frame, with several hundred likely to follow.
- The Sun observes that a bicycle now attracts scarcely more notice than a buggy unless it collides with a street car, and argues wheeling has lost only its froth—the fashionable dudes, mashers and "wild-eyed idiots" of the scorching era—while present-day wheelmen ride for health and business.
- Few riders now care whether their front forks are brazed or seamless, though a few years ago brazed forksides were looked on with horror; the feeling was largely prejudice, and the seam gave the greater rigidity that was wanted.
- The firm organised at Binghamton, N. Y., by W. L. Bundy to make the Binghamton rubber pneumatic bicycle tire has begun business in Water street, its dies and moulds arrived, and will experiment for some time to settle methods and materials before making tires for the trade.
- Bicycle and material shipments included London 582 cases of bicycles at $5,579, Hamburg 182 cases at $5,608, Liverpool 53 cases at $1,146, Rotterdam 211 cases at $2,355, British Australia 108 cases and New Zealand 127 cases.
- A Chicago dealer reports customers coming in to say that, thinking over summer recreation, they have got out their old wheels to look them over and concluded to take to bicycling again as inexpensive and healthful, avoiding costly clothing and high-priced hotels.
- Thousands of cycles said to be sold for export never leave British shores: a firm with a note heading styling it an export agent to the colonies—West Africa, Pernambuco or Shanghai—obtains shipping terms from a maker, then resells at a nominal profit to acquaintances who would otherwise buy from the local agent.
- Grants include Justelle B. Cummings's mechanically propelled vehicle (673,861), Joshua E. Ragsdale's bicycle-bearing dust protector (674,015), Guilio Rusconi-Clerici's two-seated safety bicycle of Milan (674,196), Arthur Cuthbert's cycle saddle of London (674,199) and Tilman H. Anderson's automatic tire-inflating apparatus (674,251).
- A Copenhagen sea captain named Ishoy has invented a bicycle pivoted at about the middle of the frame instead of at the steering post, so turning the bars steers both wheels at once and a fall is claimed to be next to impossible; pulling a rod at the pivot splits it in two for storage.