The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Albert A. Pope's report to Pope Mfg. Co. stockholders blames the year's slim $87,219 balance on liquidating unprofitable factories and $80,264 of upkeep on idle plants, with gross earnings of $7,801,145 against $7,226,589 in 1904.
- The National Cycle Trade Association's "Ride a Bicycle Campaign" leaflet raises its prizes to $50, $25 and $10 for the best lists of reasons why bicycles should be ridden, plus $1 for each accepted reason; an advisory committee organizes at 2 Hudson Street, New York, on January 15.
- Toronto dispatches report the sales department of the Canada Cycle & Motor Co. taken over by a syndicate of Toronto and Montreal capitalists, of whom only E. S. Clouston is named.
- The G. H. Curtiss Mfg. Co. of Hammondsport, N. Y., cuts the 1906 price of its two-cylinder 5 horsepower motor bicycle from $300 to $275; the 3 horsepower single-cylinder Curtiss stays at $200.
- C. J. Smith & Co., the St. Paul jobbers, have been elected to membership in the National Cycle Trade Association.
- In its first year of open competition after the patent expired, the English Dunlop Tire Co. earned $628,000 to September 30, paid 5 per cent on preference and 4 per cent on ordinary shares, and produced 1,556,000 tires in 1904; another reorganization goes to the stockholders.
- Under the new Venezuelan tariff, bicycles and parts thereof are dutied at .144 cents per kilogram, gross weight.
- The Hendee Manufacturing Company's new Springfield, Mass., factory — four stories, 150 by 50 feet, about 30,000 square feet, formerly a technical training school — houses frame building and tri-car work on the ground floor and Designer Hedstrom's experimental room on the second.
- A novice motorcyclist who dismantled his engine found every piston ring "broken" in the same place and demanded free replacements, not knowing that all piston rings are slit diagonally.
- A Century Road Club of America ensign carried by Spencer W. Stewart of the New York State Division on the Ziegler polar expedition to latitude 82:05 — within 475 miles of the Pole — is on show at the Brooklyn clubhouse.
- Adding sperm oil to ordinary cylinder oil — no more than two ounces to the pint — lowers the lubricant's freezing point for cold-weather motorcycling without reducing its efficiency.
- One rider beats cold feet by fitting a pair of footrests close to the engine so its heat reaches them, a scheme whose success depends on where the motor is placed.
- Despite the English habit of covering a bicycle with stopping devices fore and aft, the Cyclists' Touring Gazette counted twenty-four deaths between August 25 and September 25.
- A joke: a customer complains that the bicycle he bought three weeks ago has gone to pieces, and the dealer reminds him it was warranted to go fast.
- James N. Vandergrift of Philadelphia told the Syracuse Technology Club that his gyroscopic three-rail "motorcycle railway" would run New York to Chicago in two and a half hours — the Boynton Railway of Long Island under a new name.
- For 1906 the Kelly handle bar drops the old No. 3 stem for 1-inch or 2 1/4-inch forward extension stems; the 23-inch No. 4 racing bar, an idea sent in by a Paris customer, joins the regular line.
- The 1906 Pope coaster brake substitutes a divided driving sleeve for the old solid type so the bicycle can be rolled backward, adds single-cone adjustment and lets spokes be replaced without bending them.
- An Australian cycle maker prints a customer's phonetically spelled testimonial recording eighteen months and many thousands of miles on good and bad roads with no breakage and only a few punctures.
- Belgium exported 1,132,379 francs' worth of bicycles and parts in 1904 but shipped 1,068,248 francs of motorcycle goods to Germany alone, 953,195 to England and 515,859 to France.
- The Consolidated Mfg. Co. has taken basement space at next month's Madison Square Garden automobile show, making the Yale-California the one motorcycle exhibited.
- Of 1,042 bicycles at London's Stanley Show only thirty-nine had fixed gears, yet American makers bury the coaster brake in a catalogue line — while one mail order house has used eight thousand of them at a snug profit.
- Welcomes the coming remarriage of the Century Road Club of America and the Century Road Club Association, and their intention to take control of a road racing scene "run down at the heel."
- On the prodigious drawing power of New York's annual six-day race, which keeps men, women and children hanging over the rail all night in stale tobacco smoke while they will not go a mile to see racing in the open.
- The Syracuse "motorcycle railway" and its two-and-a-half-hour New York to Chicago promise are the old hobby horse and the mono-rail come round again on wire wheels and ball bearings.
- A table of the six-day starters: average age 24.4 and average weight 157.1 pounds, "Tommy" Hall lightest at 116 and Doerflinger heaviest at 204; twenty-eight rode American bicycles, mostly Reading Standards, and twenty-three used a 96-inch gear.
- Owen J. Devine, from the 40-yard mark, won the two-mile handicap at the Twenty-second Regiment's armory games in New York on December 16 in 5:08, from Frank E. Adams and scratch man George Cameron.
- Daniel M. Adee succeeds himself as president of the Century Road Club Association, with Paul Thomas, Julius F. Breit, E. Lee Ferguson and Herman F. Dreyer, plus Eastern, Long Island and Western division officers.
- The New York State Division of the Century Road Club of America holds its New Year's midnight run from Bedford Rest, Brooklyn, to Coney Island and back — sixteen miles, with the Popper trophy and a loving cup; entries close with Victor J. Lind.
- F. A. M. President Betts has secured motorcycle exemption in the Automobile Club of America's New York bill, but Outing Magazine's rival measure would demand $25 registration, State board examination and licensed operators.
- Four years after the 1901 split, the two C. R. C. A.'s move to reunite: Adee, C. P. Staubach, Paul Thomas, A. G. Armstrong, Fred B. Mommer and R. A. Van Dyke all back amalgamation and N. C. A.-recognised control of road racing.
- James T. Halligan of Newark, nineteen and 170 pounds, is the New Jersey Division's hope after setting a Century Road Club five-mile unpaced record of 12 minutes 51 seconds at Grant City, Staten Island, on October 25.
- Director of Public Safety Potter has put a policeman on a motor bicycle to check automobile speeding on Broad Street, with fourteen more bluecoats to be mounted if the experiment pays.
- Six-day winner Edward F. Root denies every charge in a letter on National Athletic Club paper, blaming his trainers for signing the agreement with the Bedells, Moran and MacLean and claiming his signature was written for him.
- The San Francisco Motorcycle Club plans a 500-mile endurance run from San Francisco to Los Angeles over two mountain ranges in April or May, with Frank E. Carroll, J. H. Nash and W. J. Pedlar on the committee.
- How to set the spark and valves on a motor bicycle: finding the dead centres with a timing rod, fixing the point of ignition, and checking the opening of the exhaust and the action of the mechanically actuated inlet.
- An old-time tourist on the people met awheel — the obliging fellow passenger, the interfering pest, the tandem hanger-on, the inquisitive hotel visitor and the penny-making youths who lie in wait to push riders up Wrotham Hill in Kent.
- From Cycling: the cycle chain traced from Morgan's inch-wide cast-iron roller pattern through the Abingdon, the Humber block chain, the Simpson lever and the Pivot chain of the chain matches, to the 3-16 inch roller chain now standard.
- C. Komiyama of Tokio, twenty-one, won the Osaka News-promoted championship meet at Osaka on November 5 — the first event of consequence since the war — riding a Pierce, as does Frank L. Kramer.
- C. W. Nason, next president of the New York Motorcycle Club, broke a rib when the combination wrench and other tools in his pocket jammed against him in a fall.
- The San Jose (Cal.) Motorcycle Club is drafting a bylaw paying $5 a week from the treasury to any member injured while riding his motor, without affecting the regular monthly dues.
- A paraphrase of De Quincey traces the easy descent in crime from a small murder through burglary, fraud, pocket picking and Sabbath breaking to bicycle stealing.
- The New Century Wheelmen of San Francisco have moved from their quarters near the park to larger leased apartments at Twentieth and Folsom streets.
- A Scottish court gave a miner twenty-one days at hard labor for maliciously cutting the tires of a bicycle that did not belong to him.
- A foreigner advances the theory that women succeed with low gears because they can easily pedal at a rate that would distress the average man.
- A. Alcayaga is elected president of the Pacific Wheelmen of San Francisco, with M. A. Griffith vice-president, G. W. Payton secretary-treasurer and Al. Bock captain.
- One of the most experienced motor makers in the country asserts that more motors are worn out through lack of lubrication than through mileage and years of use.
- A cyclist back from Cuba blames the constant 90-degree heat, the missing middle class and the absence of roads outside Havana; Caibarien's one good five-mile macadam road, built at $10,000 a mile, accounts for its two hundred bicycles and its Sunday bicycle tilting.
- The Irish Cyclist calls rusted steel rims "autumn tints" and cites a mud-caked 1905 model whose rims were red all over, cranks, pedals and hubs rusted and chain unoiled for months.
- Charles F. Comstock is elected president of the Remington Cycle Club of Ilion, N. Y., with William McKnight vice-president, W. G. Rix secretary-treasurer and John McGreevy captain.
- Three recent inventions — one English, two American — admit a small jet of fresh air at the plug points through a check valve to cool them and scavenge soot and oil; the small check valve is the weak point.
- "Senator" W. J. Morgan has refused Robert Walthour and Hugh MacLean motor-paced record attempts at the Florida beach meet of January 22-27; Walthour hoped to beat Charlie Murphy's 58-second mile behind wind shields.
- The Scottish Cyclist, Irish Cyclist and London Cycling report the Madison Square Garden six-day — 2,260 miles 6 laps to Root and Bedell — the Irish paper judging that the public is heartily sick of the exhibition.
- At a Paris track on November 23 world's champion Gabriel Poulain equalled Frank Kramer's competition half-mile record of 54 4-5 seconds.
- Long Island Division members lured Dan M. Adee home to Metropolitan, L. I., to arbitrate a fictitious racing committee deadlock, then presented him with a loving cup that left him unable to talk.