The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 22
Articles in this issue
- The Cycle Parts and Accessories Association was brought into being at Cleveland on Wednesday 22 February, with W. H. Crosby of the Crosby Co., Buffalo, as first president, C. A. Persons vice-president, H. S. White of Shelby Steel Tube secretary and J. W. Surre of Corbin Screw treasurer; a $50 fee and four meetings a year were fixed, and Crosby is to name a committee to confer with the Cycle Manufacturers' Association.
- For non-payment of 1903 taxes New Jersey has formally cancelled the charter of the American Bicycle Co. — the old A. B. C. "Bicycle Trust," long since absorbed by the Pope Mfg. Co. — along with those of the American Bicycle Track Association, the Berry Bicycle Support Mfg. Co. and the Halcyon Cycle Co.
- The Equitable Distributing Co. of Boston, formed years ago by New England dealers to buy co-operatively, has re-incorporated under Maine law as a straight jobbing house with the co-operative features dropped and has moved to 24-26 Columbus avenue, Arthur Sidwell remaining active manager.
- The Fisk Rubber Co. has contracted for a two-storey pressed-brick fireproof building at 1440-42 Michigan avenue, Chicago, next to the new Excelsior Supply Co. structure, to house its Chicago branch; completion is due by 15 April.
- Twenty-five days' figures for Peter Hanson, who rides a Manson motorcycle with a delivery box for the Chicago silk merchants A. Stevens & Co.: 76 trips, 2,273 packages and 726 miles, averaging 91 packages and 29 miles a day at about 10 cents a day for gasolene — less than a cent a mile for fuel.
- The Harry Fosdick Co., the Boston automobile dealers handling the shaft-driven four-cylinder F. N. motor bicycle, report six already sold despite giving the machine almost no advertising; the multi-cylinder mount is rated at only 3.5 horsepower.
- Trade changes of the week: Martin & Briley is a new firm at Miami, Fla.; O. B. Nelson of Vermillion, S. D., lost store and contents by fire with a $2,000 loss against $1,500 insurance; and G. A. Gove of Brockton, Mass., has bought E. M. Buffom's business at 145 North Main street to run as the Brockton Sporting Goods Co.
- Experiment has shown that the temperature inside a gas engine cylinder during the working stroke often exceeds that needed to melt platinum, one of the most refractory metals known, yet the parts run as smoothly as if submerged in water.
- The Thoroughbred and the Yale-California are the two motorcycles on view at the Sportsman's Show in Madison Square Garden, shown in the exhibit of the New York Sporting Goods Co., agents for both machines in the metropolis.
- Beltz & Delavie, the Pittsburg jobbers, have taken larger quarters at 524 Penn avenue to carry their added accounts, but will not move in until 1 April.
- Germany's export of cycles and parts for the twelve months of 1905 reached 5,678 tons against 3,811 tons in 1904; the values are not stated.
- Emery Cortines, travelling for the Pope Manufacturing Company, found behind Oscar A. Brannon's cycle and automobile shop at McKinney, Texas, a scrap heap holding the frames of some two hundred wheels awaiting the junk man — a photograph catching Brannon adding a tandem frame to the pile — and the piece traces how discarded machines are stripped and sold off as high-class scrap.
- At the Trenton hearing of 20 February the Federation of American Motorcyclists was allowed only three minutes, in which president R. G. Betts (with Carroll LeRoy Mosher of the Roads and Tours Committee lobbying alongside) attacked Senator Freylinghuysen's drastic New Jersey motor-vehicle bill; the senator afterwards agreed to redefine motorcycles, cut the tax to $1 a year for residents and non-residents alike, and exempt them from everything but numbers, lamps and horns.
- Editorial: with the Cycle Manufacturers' Association and the Cycle Parts and Accessories Association both now in being, cyclists and dealers will expect "something doing"; their officers carry the hopes of a trade, a sport and a pastime, and all eyes are on them.
- Editorial on "Manager's" letter elsewhere in the issue: almost the same publicity bureau was funded by makers a year ago and abandoned only because no qualified man could be found, and what the cycle trade needs is a clever press agent plus real contests and events to give him material.
- Editorial built on a magazine's epigram "When you shop in the market place of the world, you deal with the proprietor," arguing that the trade paper's advertising page is the maker's one direct channel to the consumer and deserves reading as carefully as the news columns beside it.
- Letter signed "Manager" arguing that the "Ride a Bicycle Because" circulars are wasted and that the bicycle manufacturers should instead employ a paid promoter to arrange frequent local meets for lads of 12 to 15 and brand-named boys' clubs — "Pierce," "Columbia" and the like — with prizes small enough to keep older men and professionals out.
- Louis J. Weintz, handicapped on the 80-yard mark, won the bicycle race at the Fourteenth Regiment games in Brooklyn on 17 February from Oscar Goerke and George Cameron in 4 minutes 59 seconds; Jacobs fell in the first heat and O. J. Devine in the second.
- England will again hold an international meet at the Crystal Palace track, London, on 5 May; Frank Kramer, who sails from New York on 15 March, is expected to compete in a programme of handicaps, scratch and international match races and a three-mile devil-take-the-hindmost.
- The Edgecombe Wheelmen of New York City elected Samuel R. Morrison president, Reese Hughes vice-president, Bernard Glemba treasurer, Otto Brandes recording secretary, Richard Hughes financial secretary and Nicholas Kind captain, and will hold a box party and dance on 3 March at 305 West 54th street.
- A dictionary shows "bicycle" was first used in 1868, then spelled "bysicle"; Americans went one better with "bicycular velocipede," and "bicyclism" and "bicyclian" were both tried before the word settled into the language.
- A motorcyclist asks for opinions on the ethics of killing a stray duck or chicken miles from any owner: should the fowl go aboard for the family stock pot, or be left on the road for the first tramp to claim?
- An elderly gentleman argues that a bridge at Victoria, B. C., sees more collisions than any in the world because the American keep-to-the-right rule meets the English keep-to-the-left there, and traces the two customs to armoured knights, colonial settlers wary of ambush, and the English carter riding his left-hand horse.
- Charles A. Sherwood, the young Wall street broker, has been chosen to represent the New York Athletic Club in the six bicycle races of the Olympic games at Athens from 22 April to 2 May; Oscar Goerke may go with him for the National A. C. of Brooklyn.
- An English professional trick cyclist gets his laughs from freak machines: a "pedes cycle" whose rear wheel is a six-armed wooden spider shod with old shoes, a mount with its rear hub set eccentric near the rim, and a lazy-jack framed bicycle that beats the eccentric wheeler by a lunge that shoves its front wheel over the line.
- A close follower of racing predicts 1906 will be an amateur year in the East, with Kramer sailing abroad and Fogler bound for Salt Lake; Tom Butler, the 1897 champion, is training on the Bronx roads for the professional title, while Charles A. Sherwood, paced by "Whitey" Ashurst, leads the New York A. C.'s amateur hopes against Boston's young Coffey and "Teddy" Billington.
- The Union Cycliste Internationale, meeting at Paris on Saturday 10 February with Victor Breyer representing America, awarded this year's world's championships to the Junction track at Geneva, Switzerland, the date probably in August.
- Harry Heagren has found backers for a second eight-lap Salt Lake City track, and nine riders — Hopper, Downing, Bardgett, Achorn, Williams, Redman, Samuelson, Smith and Chapman — have signed a three-year exclusive contract to ride only for him; F. E. Schefski, who succeeded Heagren at the old bowl, means to fight and would sign the blacklisted Root.
- An old-timer answers the automobilists' speedway talk by recalling that Colonel Pope proposed the idea first, that an elevated two-mile wooden cycle speedway on trestles was actually built in California, and that the ninety-mile half-million-dollar Philadelphia-New York scheme will never be the speedway that road already was when holiday cyclists lined it for miles.
- Figures from the Revue de Chimie Industrielle: Prof. Fischer reckons a man's working day yields about 0.47 horsepower-hour, so 100 horsepower costs $150 in workmen at 60 cents a day, $12 in horses, $1.20 by gas engine and 70 cents by gasolene motor — human effort being a hundred times the dearer.
- A Western correspondent signing himself "The Missouri Kicker" answers the paper's editorial question, blaming ignorance rather than the lapsed rider: wedding bells, park-only riding, cheap crocks and rotten tires, and fashion's followers emptied the ranks, and century grinding — which he rides against — does nothing to impress the non-riding public.
- An Asbury Park motorcyclist tells of being arrested and fined five dollars for racing a cyclist across the Manasquan drawbridge, then smashing his front wheel against the guard rail at Clark's Landing when the spark lever jammed, and finally punching his way out of a camp of striking Italian trolley graders near Burrsville under a pistol shot.
- An Irish ticket collector insisted a lady's tandem was "a thricycle" and charged double; she bought the second ticket but gave up only one at her destination and kept the other.
- Charles E. Duryea's test: a jump spark plug perforates a paper strip with minute holes, while a make-and-break spark burns a hole often an eighth of an inch across, showing its far greater volume and heat and its ability to fire a less perfect mixture.
- When a motor bicycle belt will not run true in its grooves the fault is either wrong tension or a bad fastening, but more often pulleys that are untrue, off-centre, unequally sloped or out of line; stretching a string between them and sighting along it shows the error at once.
- The Tiger Wheelmen have arranged a professional home-trainer championship at Turnverein Hall, 305 West 54th street, New York, with Tom Butler of Cambridge, Carl Limberg of San Jose, W. F. "Hobo" King, William Lee and George Schreiber entered; amateur roller races the same night offer a gold watch, a clock and a Solar gas lamp.
- Claims granted: 812,547, a bicycle-support with pivoted disks and legs, to George F. Cook of East Washington, N. H.; 812,607, an induction coil casing vented to the outer air, to John Splitdorf of New York; and 812,622, an electrical igniter with opposed thin-edged ring and disk terminals, to William H. Walter of New York.