The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 11
Articles in this issue
- Eclipse Machine Co.'s D. L. Whittier and R. D. Webster report the Elmira plant running twenty-two hours a day on Morrow coaster brakes, while Consolidated Mfg. of Toledo, Hudson Mfg., the Racycle factory at Middletown and Reading Standard's W. F. Remppis all report 1906 orders ahead of 1905; George N. Pierce of Buffalo has shipped 774 more bicycles than at the same date a year ago.
- The Chicago meeting on Monday next, at which the Cycle Manufacturers' Association is to be completed, will consider a trade publicity bureau funded by the royalty collected on the bottom bracket.
- The 1906 Rudge-Whitworth, Britain's most popular machine and already a close copy of the American bicycle, adds a reversible handle bar and a back-pedalling coaster brake in place of a mere free wheel, with wood rims optional on one model.
- The Eclipse Machine Co. has almost ready a Morrow coaster brake designed specifically for chain-driven motorcycles; Secretary Webster says the company is now going after the motorcycle trade in earnest.
- For 1906 the Indian and Thoroughbred motor bicycles both stay at $210 and the Yale-California at $175, though all gain new features and larger 2 1/4-inch tires.
- L. C. Brown, representing an unnamed group of St. Louis capitalists, has obtained a Mexican Government concession to incorporate the Mexican Automobile & Bicycle Mfg. Co. and build a Mexico City plant projected at ten automobiles and as many bicycles a day, with expert workmen brought from abroad.
- Trade changes: George Zeigin opens a new store at Monroe, La.; fire at the New York Cycle Co., Washington, D. C., costs $2,500, covered by insurance; and F. A. Baker & Co. of 1,080 Bedford avenue, Brooklyn, dissolves as George B. Pieper retires.
- The Jones Speedometer Co. of New York is now regularly marketing its instruments for bicycles, registering up to thirty miles an hour, and for motorcycles up to fifty.
- October bicycle exports for 1905 and 1904 finish scarcely $2,000 apart: the United Kingdom fell sharply from $13,192 to $2,952, offset by gains in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and above all Mexico, which rose from $37,314 to $53,518 over the ten months. A full country-by-country table is given.
- A foreign patent-office design mounts the seat post directly over the centre of the rear wheel with vertical rear stays, the pedals brought back on independent cranks locked together by large spur gears and idlers, giving a very short and decidedly archaic wheelbase.
- A rough test for acidity and tackiness: a drop on a polished copper plate should stay clear and keep its color for days; turning green shows acid present and becoming tacky shows the oil dries too rapidly.
- Explains why amateur soldering fails: both surfaces must be clean and free of oxide, the temperature exactly right, and the flux correctly chosen — zincic chloride or "killed" acid made by dissolving zinc in weak muriatic acid, as against resin for electrical work and borax for brazing.
- Report of the twenty-ninth Stanley Show at Agricultural Hall, London: of 1,042 bicycles staged only 39 kept fixed gears, 319 exhibitors showed against 316 a year before, fifty tricycles appeared (twenty for carrier work), and of 164 engine-driven machines thirty-one were bi-cars, the zenith prominent among them.
- Editorial on a maker's remark quoted elsewhere in the issue — that people now buy bicycles because they want or need them — arguing that dealers who assume the average purchaser wants a cheap article merely deceive themselves.
- Paris has voted the money to raise its cycling police to one thousand men; the editorial argues any American city could add four bicycle patrolmen for the cost of one motor car and quadruple a roundsman's beat.
- The Saturday-night curtain-raiser at Madison Square Garden before over ten thousand spectators: Matthew Downey of Boston beat Teddy Billington in two heats and turned professional, Hugh MacLean beat W. "Tommy" Hall of Canningtown by two laps in the ten-mile motor-paced race in 17:13 2-5, and J. B. Coffey, A. W. McDonald and Charles Jacobs figured in the amateur handicaps.
- On the Biblically-named Mount Carmel hill near New Haven on Thanksgiving Day, James F. Cox, Jr., on a 1 3/4 horsepower Indian took the three-quarter-mile ascent in 2 minutes 30 seconds, Hugh Matheson on an Indian second in 2:31 and Edward Brereton on a Thoroughbred third in 3:27.
- Besides the Automobile Club's new bill, a popular monthly has drafted an act for the New York legislature that would impose a $25 tax on motorcyclists; F. A. M. president Betts reports a reassuring interview with the Automobile Club.
- William Marcuvitz, a Kansas City motorcyclist, plunged over a 30-foot embankment while scorching down hill in Penn Valley Park, breaking his left arm and cutting his face — his machine was scarcely injured.
- The thirteenth annual six-day race at Madison Square Garden, begun when John J. McGraw fired the pistol on sixteen teams: a day-by-day account of the eliminations (Krebs and Peterson, Gougoltz's broken rib, Hall's collar bone, Trousselier's fractured rib) with the full roster of starting teams from Root and Fogler to the Bedells, Vanderstuyft and Stol.
- Standings box with eight teams tied on 2,053 miles led by Root and Fogler and the Bedell brothers, Doerflinger and Dussot ten miles adrift on 2,043; the record stands at 2,477 miles 3 laps.
- Photograph contrasting the tall Swiss Emil Doerflinger with the diminutive Briton Tommy Hall, the two extremes of the six-day field.
- Twelve-hourly mileage table for all nineteen six-day teams from the 12-hour to the 120-hour mark, with footnotes recording where Agraz, Gougoltz, Vanoni-Castro, Krebs-Peterson, Dove-Scott, Hall, Wilcox, Achorn and Keegan dropped out.
- Photograph of the foreign six-day contingent — Vanderstuyft, Trousselier, Stol, Dussot, Gougoltz, Decaup, Doerflinger and Vanoni — gathered on the Garden boards round trainer Dave Coburn.
- The interval racing at the six-day: Walthour, paced by Gus Lawson on a two-cylinder 8-horsepower motor bicycle, rode two miles in 3:02 1-5, the fastest ever ridden in the Garden; Frank L. Kramer took an unpaced half mile in 54 seconds and J. B. Coffey won two heats from Teddy Billington.
- At the State fair at San Antonio on 26 November the young Texas amateurs copied the French loaf-and-sprint style to a puzzled crowd; John Lewis took the quarter-mile and two-mile State championships while George Eldridge, Richard Madder and Arthur Morris shared the other events.
- A cyclist's defence of solitary touring — no companion to lie a-bed of a morning, no Hercules straining up every hill, nobody looking fresher than you at the day's end — concluding that loneliness on the road has its compensations.
- Photographs of Frank and Fred Baker with Police Captain Patrick Murphy, Baker rounding the turn and Hedstrom the time-prize winner, opening the report of the Brooklyn Motorcycle Club's 25-mile handicap on Ocean Parkway, which Fred A. Baker won in 38:17 2-5 from E. W. Goodwin.
- Charles Callahan, self-styled "champion of Maryland and the District of Columbia," could not get his four-horsepower Aster to move at the Electric Park meet in Baltimore on Thanksgiving Day; Ray ("Chic") Thomas on an Indian overhauled Herbert Webber at the four-and-a-half-mile post in 8:30.
- Peter P. Probst, a St. Louis wheelman ordered to halt by a highwayman, snatched up his bicycle and brought it down on the robber's head; the man grappled with him but eventually made his escape.