The Bicycling World, Vol 52, No 24
Articles in this issue
- German cycle exports for 1905 reached 123,328 cwt. valued at $6,948,250, a jump of $1,940,250 on 1904, with 93,981 finished machines and $5,276,750 of the total represented by parts; full import and export tables by country are given, plus motorcycle figures of 833 finished machines imported and 1,934 exported.
- Theodore Jonas, one of Milwaukee's pioneer bicycle dealers and reputedly the city's first professional bicyclist, died at his home on February 23 aged 32; he built the "Jonas" racing wheels used on many Wisconsin tracks and once rode against "Charlie" Miller.
- Sales Manager Buffum of the Consolidated Mfg. Co., Toledo, reports 20,000 bicycles already shipped and arrangements made to turn out 200 more motorcycles than originally planned, predicting "piping times" for dealers this spring.
- E. H. Corson is incorporating The Motorcycle Specialty Co. of Boston at $10,000 capital, succeeding the Indian Motorcycle Co. at 258 Columbus avenue and pushing his own stand, luggage carrier, tool bag, muffler cut-out and spring handle-bar while retaining the Indian agency.
- Trade changes noted: George Hoeg of Lake Geneva, Wis., is enlarging his store; Carl N. Richardson of Athol, Mass., has bought a half interest in John Manly's bicycle and automobile business; and Alfred Simpkins' store at Penquannock, N. H., was damaged by fire with a $500 loss.
- C. F. Wing's annual bicycle department opening at New Bedford, Mass., on March 2 drew 300 people before the doors opened; exhibits from the Pope Mfg. Co. (Mr. Goodrich), Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. (Mr. Doll) and Fisk tires were shown, with 1,200 aluminium ash-tray souvenirs given away and the new Columbia motorcycle a chief attraction.
- E. H. Corson's new Corson Spring Handle Bar uses helical springs and a bar divided and pivoted at the centre, giving a "floating suspension" in which each half responds independently to road shock; stiff, medium or limber spring sets are to be supplied.
- A leaky joint or union in the carburetter pipe admits air and ruins the mixture; smearing the joint with soapsuds, saliva or thin oil and turning the engine over makes the leak visible as the suds are sucked inward.
- A full freight car of Diamond bicycle tires was shipped from Akron, Ohio, to the Pacific Coast Rubber Company, its banners advertising the largest bicycle tire order ever placed by a Pacific Coast jobber and carrying a "ride a bicycle campaign" all the way from Ohio to Oregon.
- An old merchant argues that abusing a competitor only advertises him — "It is better to be abused than to be ignored" — and closes with a verse advising dealers to show up their own merits and keep their hands clean.
- Gasolene used to clean a motorcycle belt should be applied sparingly and rubbed dry at once, a belt maker warning that it is an enemy of leather and that kerosene is little better where durability rather than cleanliness matters.
- W. E. Ritchie, known to Philadelphia track circles a few years back as Vincent J. Kelly, is now a vaudeville star on the English circuits with a pedicycle whose rear wheel is a spider shod with old shoes, a "humptedump" with an eccentric rear wheel, and a variable-wheel-base machine that elongates in mid-ride.
- "Homogenal," made from heavy benzol of 90 degrees or over specific gravity mixed with peat or similar oil, is claimed to be 50 per cent more efficient than warm producer gas; one kilo of benzine at 7 cents yields 2.5 cubic metres against 6 cubic metres of homogenal for 3 cents.
- The 1905 returns show the export trade has become chiefly a business in parts: over sixty per cent of England's $4,727,000 and about 75 per cent of Germany's $6,948,250 were parts, machines being shipped "K. D." to save ocean freight and to exploit reduced duties on parts assembled in the importing country.
- The three-wheel motorcycle is argued to be destined as a parcels delivery vehicle, citing a Chicago silk merchant's machine that covered 29 miles and delivered 158 parcels in an eight-hour day, and 99 packages over 68 miles in six and a half hours, at about 10 cents a day for fuel.
- A letter from Wm. A. Thornburn of St. Johns, Newfoundland, urging that more people would ride if machines were properly fitted, and giving frame heights by stature, a 55–65 inch gear range for women, and recommending a Morrow coaster brake and a Persons saddle.
- At the two-day meet on the Agricultural Park track, March 2 and 3, C. W. Risden (Indian) won the first day's three-mile open in 3:49 3/5 from E. W. Hoag and F. W. Dinsmore (both Thoroughbred); E. Bennett (Thoroughbred) turned the tables next day in 3:57, Risden taking the consolation in 3:56 3/5.
- Following the F. A. M.'s appearance before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee on the Freylinghuysen bill, Senator Minturn has offered a new measure proposing toll gates and telephones ten miles apart at one cent per mile, applying only to "automobile cars," and providing for mounted police on horses or motor bicycles.
- A letter from C. H. Pryor of Guthrie Center, Iowa, asking where he can buy framable cycling pictures — preferably road scenes of the old ordinary days — and urging manufacturers and dealers to support the paper.
- The formula served at a dinner in Oakland, California, is revealed: half a glass of gasolene No. 72, three jiggers of cylinder oil and a spoonful of graphite grease, stirred with a monkey wrench and garnished with a 3-8 locknut.
- The Cyclists' Union of Brussels is planning a June road race from Paris to the Belgian capital, 420 kilometres or about 262 miles, open to amateurs worldwide; 177 riders have already entered for $3,000 in prizes headed by an automobile.
- Charles A. Sherwood, the New York Athletic Club's crack amateur, has chosen to keep his job rather than go to Athens for the Olympian games; Fred Ernst may fill the void left by his withdrawal.
- The Superior Court of Rockingham County ruled Reidsville, N. C.'s by-law barring motorcycles clearly unconstitutional without even calling David L. Carroll to trial; Carroll, advised by F. A. M. Legal Action Committee chairman John C. Higdon to join the Federation and get arrested, was fined the $2 limit and appealed, winning the first test of the right to use motorcycles on the public highway.
- The Tiger Wheelmen's home trainer race meet at Turn Hall, 305 West 54th street, on March 24 has already signed Joe Fogler, E. F. Root, John King, Tom Butler, J. A. Lynch, W. F. King, George Schrieber, William Lee and T. J. Denning, with a gold watch for the fastest amateur.
- Vailsburg is expected to open for Sunday meets and Madison Square Garden on or about May 15, promoter P. T. Powers confirming a season; the Vailsburg track has been turned over to the Bay View Wheelmen of Newark with C. B. Bloemeke staying on as manager.
- Iver Lawson, still tanned from the Australian summer, reached Salt Lake City on Friday, March 2 for a rest before the season; Breyer and Coquelle have offered him a Paris contract to meet Kramer in match races, but he may instead stay in Salt Lake or come East for Madison Square Garden and Vailsburg.
- At the 65th Regiment Armory, Buffalo, on March 2, Ed Delling won the two-mile handicap from 30 yards while Fred Schudt took both the "miss-and-out" — in 7:28 over 27 laps — and the five-mile open, which a spill in the final reduced to Schudt, Delling and Lewis; full summaries are given.
- The Century Road Club of America's championship home trainer races at Brooklyn on March 8 ran until 5:30 the next morning; Louis J. Weintz of the New York Athletic Club took the interborough championship, Victor Lind the club championship, and Frenchman Marcel Boulonget Dupuis of the Roy Wheelmen the individual half-mile in 0:47 4/5, winning a Columbia racing wheel.
- The Bay View Wheelmen of Newark gave National Champion Frank L. Kramer a send-off on March 7 with a floral horseshoe; he rode a half-mile on the home trainer in 32 seconds before sailing on the Deutschland, while Charles Sherwood did a mile in 1:03 and Edward Rupprecht two miles in 2:05.
- A hitherto unpublished photograph, taken some twenty years ago at Cabin John's bridge near Washington, shows General W. T. Sherman seated among Capitol Bicycle Club members; it comes from the collection of C. E. Hawley of Ossining, N. Y., once a club member and later identified with the Pope interests.
- Brief notes: the Atlantic-Pablo beach tournament near Jacksonville, April 9-12, opens with a day of bicycle and motorcycle racing under J. W. Morgan; new officers for the Union Wheelmen of Bethlehem, Pa.; Minneapolis buys ten police bicycles; the Swiss Cyclists' Union fixes the 1906 world's championships for the Jonction track, Geneva, on August 12, 16 and 19; and T. K. Hastings offers a gold medal for mileage to the Brooklyn Motorcycle Club.
- An old cyclist recalls the wooden velocipede — plank seats, 24 to 30 inch spread rear axles, overgrown wooden spool pedals — and a downhill race on New York's new cable road in which both riders' front wheels dropped into the cable slot, wrecking a machine owned in undivided fourths by four boys.
- H. W. Bartlett, writing in Cycling, tells how the inventor Thinley built "Mary," a kerosene-engined lady-front tandem with a papier-mache face and a hot-beef-tea tap in her back, to pace Chatterley at the hundred-mile road record — an attempt ended near Poultry Hill by a policeman, a sow and a wrestling match with the dummy.
- An old trainer's dietary advice for sprinters: a purgative three times the first week, breakfast no later than 8 a.m. of weak tea or cocoa, chops, eggs, stale bread and oatmeal, rump or porterhouse steak over quantity, no midnight suppers, and filtered water or scalded milk in place of liquor.
- Dr. Watson of Klang is believed the first physician to use a motor bicycle in the Malay States, covering 40 and 60 miles on successive days across a district stretching from the Negri Sembilan boundary to the frontier of Perak.
- Every competitor in last year's Berlin to Frankfort road race, summoned by the Brunswick police for exceeding the legal speed limit, has been acquitted after a long fight taken up by the German Union.
- Answering a San Francisco rider's query about an "extra preferred" accident policy, one of the largest Pacific Coast companies wrote that since a motorcycle is well established in law as a bicycle, the policy would pay double benefits for accidents while riding one.
- Patent 813,681, a combined tachometer and cyclometer by Charles H. Warner of Beloit, Wis.; and 813,741 and 813,742, both velocipedes by Claus A. Rudbeck of Gibson City, Ill., covering a pivoted propelling lever carrying the steering-post and a sectional steering-post with clutch.