The Bicycling World, Vol 53, No 19
Articles in this issue
- William Wooster, the Barclay street cellar dealer-jobber who failed for $18,000, offered creditors 25 per cent in cash and 15 in notes; they refused, and a committee of Dodge, Kaufman, Nally, Kamber and Greenburg found his books so bad that an examination was ordered before Commissioner Alexander.
- Fire wiped out the Echo Bicycle and Motor Boat Co.'s building at Young and Delaware streets, Tonawanda, N. Y., destroying about fifty bicycles; the $10,000 loss is laid to incendiarism after neighbors heard an explosion ten minutes before the blaze.
- Great Britain shipped 5,287 complete bicycles worth £30,316 and £50,625 of parts in June 1906, one of its best months since 1897; the six months to June totalled 33,491 machines against 19,700 a year earlier.
- The New York Sporting Goods Co. takes over a large slice of Hudson Mfg. Co. territory covering New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia, and becomes export agent for Hudson bicycles and D. & J. hangers; 1907 Hudsons will list at $50, $40 and $30.
- The Association Patents Co. has invited spark plug makers to pay four cents a plug under the Mueller patent 582,540 and the Canfield patent 612,701; makers call the royalty excessive, doubt the patents and talk of combining to defend any suits.
- Practical shop tests for motor oil: viscosity timed through a fine jet on a Redmond or Engler viscosimeter, acidity from drops left a fortnight on clean brass, and gumming measured by travel down a grooved four-foot inclined glass.
- American cycle exports slumped to $94,558 in June 1906, but the twelve months to June came to $1,370,765 against the previous year's $1,378,428; large gains went to the Netherlands and Other Europe, with a full country-by-country table appended.
- The Neckarsulmer Fahrradwerke of Neckarsulm, Germany, is bidding hard for American agents and riders with its N. S. U. single and twin cylinder motorcycles — high tension magneto, sight feed oil pump, mechanically operated inlet valve — the campaign run from its London branch at 78 Charlotte street.
- A novice motorcyclist tells how his machine died on a Sunday run and a taciturn companion spent half an hour probing the wiring with a pocket meter before pronouncing a "short circus" and curing it with a strip of electric tape.
- The Pinch process brazes cast iron with equal parts of burnt borax and black or red oxide of copper mixed to a paste, the oxide being reduced to metallic copper by the carbon in the iron so that ordinary brazing solder will adhere.
- The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia has given a gold medal to a metallurgist who repeatedly heated a bar of iron to its critical temperature of 785 deg. C. and cooled it, increasing its volume by 45 per cent without altering appearance, texture or weight.
- A warning against meddling with the automatic inlet valve spring; some 90 per cent of motorcycle failures trace to ignition or fuel supply, and a valve stuck closed by heavy lubricating oil is cured with a little gasolene rather than by adjustment.
- Nickel steel valves are barely touched by grinding grit, so the seat is ground away instead and a gas-tight joint is hard to get; because the seat cannot readily be renewed, some makers still fit cast iron or mild steel valve heads.
- Editorial urging the Cycle Manufacturers' Association and the Cycle Parts and Accessories Association to hold a joint conference with the export houses on foreign trade, after June exports of barely $95,000 against Great Britain's $400,000; it takes up President Crosby's Atlantic City address.
- Editorial on competition rating formulae, arguing that cylinder capacity divided by rated horsepower is worthless because it ignores motor speed and mean gas pressure and because makers add a "dream power" constant, and defending the Callender formula.
- Letter from Harold H. Brown contending that unevaporated gasolene left on the tube walls, not the products of the first explosion, caused the repeated explosions in the "Waste of Power" experiment described in the issue of July 21st.
- Letter from G. W. Pattison, Jr., tabulating cubic displacement per rated horsepower for seven eastern-built machines — 9.05, 8.95, 8.62, 8.49, 8.98, 6.43 and 9.98 — and proposing 8.85 cubic inches per horsepower as a fair rating standard.
- Calendar of coming events from August 12 to September 23, among them the Veteran's eighth annual century run from New York to Sag Harbor, Roy Wheelmen handicap road races at Valley Stream, L. I., and Century Road Club of America record runs and handicap races.
- George A. Wiley of Syracuse took both first place and time prize in the Worcester Bicycle Dealers' Association's 23.2-mile handicap road race at Worcester, Mass., riding from three minutes in 58:07; Charles Mock and Charles A. Sherwood took the other time prizes and local favorite Farrell punctured out.
- Bartholomew James Gleeson, secretary of the League of Victoria Wheelmen, is suing D. Peter Smith for $5,000 in Australia over a speech calling the Eight Hours' Wheel Race the deadliest "slanter" ever run, with every man in the field "dead" for Floyd McFarland.
- Charged with making off with another man's bicycle, the prisoner explained that his brother had bet he could not ride and he only mounted the machine to prove it; the magistrate said "Six months" and the conversation lapsed.
- G. W. Sheff, Francis W. Davis and Glen Blake of the Pike's Peak Motorcycle Club rode R-S machines 28.1 miles up the abandoned burro trail from the Colorado College campus, Sheff reaching the Summit House in 9 hours 20 minutes as the first motorcyclist to do it; illustrated with photographs above the timber line and on the summit.
- Two Salt Lake City saucer riders married within a week: Ernest A. Pye of Australia to Miss Grace M. Newborn at Farmington on July 20th, and Emil Agraz of San Jose to Miss Alice Bosquet before Judge Christopher Diehl.
- Registration records show 46,574 motorcycles now in use in Great Britain, up from 34,706 in 1905 and 21,621 in 1904, exceeding registered automobiles of all kinds by more than 1,000.
- Suffolk county, L. I., which had let its cycle paths go to ruin and stopped collecting the 50-cent tax, is enforcing the law again; 8,000 tags have been received and riding the paths untagged is no longer safe.
- The Muskegon (Mich.) Motorcycle Club has chosen Percy Anderson president, J. Spencer Locke secretary, Paul Stamsen treasurer, Dr. C. J. Dove captain and Alphonse Gagnon lieutenant.
- The Garden City Wheelmen and the San Jose Motorcycle Club, both of San Jose, Cal., are to consolidate under the name Garden City Wheelmen and Motorcyclists.
- Police Commissioner O'Meara denies that Boston police will make a "crusade" against riders without bells but promises steady, sensible enforcement of the long dead-letter bicycle bell law.
- Los Angeles has bought new motor bicycles for its police squad of exactly two men, who turned $5,855 in fines into the city treasury during the past year.
- Salt Lake City saucer racing: Floyd A. McFarland lost his unlimited pursuit match to Ernest A. Pye of Australia by sitting up after catching him, Iver Lawson cut his own three-mile open record to 5:35 2-5, and amateur J. E. Holliday drove a splinter through his chest in a bad fall.
- A consular report from Nankin says the Celestial Empire has not taken kindly to the bicycle: only 18 machines were imported during the past year despite forty miles of newly macadamized city road and outlying districts said to suit the wheel.
- Austria took the International Motorcycle Cup a second time at Patzau, Bohemia, on July 8th, Nikodem and Obruba finishing first and second on Puch machines over 168 miles; England lodged a protest alleging the Puch maker's accompanying automobiles balked the other riders and caused the crashes.
- Will Stinson beat James F. Moran in the twenty-five mile handicap motorpaced race at the Revere Beach saucer, John Bedell of Newark losing second place when his pacing machine failed; the professional sprinters kicked at the cash prizes and their races were taken off the program.
- Part of the "down" Coney Island cycle path has been closed for weeks for no apparent reason, forcing riders onto the roadway that is supposed to be forbidden ground and has already led to several lawsuits.
- Rain put off Sunday's Vailsburg race meet until the 5th; the card includes an unlimited pursuit race with eight professionals, the first such race held in the East.
- Louis E. Mettling, once the "Flying Schoolboy from Down East," won the two-day Grand Prix de 14 Juillet at the Velodrome Parc des Princes, Paris, beating Parent, Rugere, Lautier, Bauge and Bouhours and breaking world's records at 30 kilometres (21:54 2-5) and 40 kilometres (29:02 2-5).
- Robert J. Walthour of Atlanta lost his first two European races at Dresden, beaten 27 laps by Paul Guignard over 100 kilometres on July 15 and 14 laps in an hour race on July 22; he will be the only American in the world's pace-following championship at Geneva.
- John Shillington Prince, the "Rainmaker," reached Memphis and proposed building a track and forming a Southern circuit on the strength of his Atlanta saucer's success, while Gust Castle was floating much the same plan in Louisville.
- John Elyea left Kalamazoo, Mich., on a motor bicycle for Los Angeles to visit relatives and see the country, and will not settle on his route for the semi-transcontinental ride until he reaches Chicago.
- National champion Frank L. Kramer meets ex-world's champion Iver Lawson in three races at one, three and five miles on the Salt Lake City saucer on August 14, 17 and 21 for $1,000; Kramer's uncle and manager Dillon B. Burnett offers to bet any sum that Kramer wins two.
- Gabriel Poulain turned to short-distance pace-following at the Velodrome Buffalo, Paris, on July 19, cutting Henri Contenet's flying-start kilometre record of 1:03 2-5 to 58 seconds behind Hoffman's pace.
- John H. Mitchell, a Casino stage carpenter, has revived the bicycle boat with a three-pontoon craft driving a horizontal shaft and propeller; he pedalled it on the Harlem river and then down the Hudson from West Eighty-third street until breakdowns left him to be rescued by the Battery harbor police.
- Charles Mock of the Century Road Club of America won both time and place prizes from scratch in the Park Circle Club's five-mile handicap road race at Valley Stream, L. I., in 12:29, beating Urban McDonald by inches with fifteen men bunched at the tape; Edgecombe Wheelmen took five of the ten prizes.
- H. Hinck won the Century Road Club Association's five-mile members' handicap road race at Valley Stream, L. I., from 150 yards in 13:18 4-5, finishing well ahead of scratch man George Glunz in a field of eighteen.
- An old cyclist describes going back to touring after years away, covering 500 miles from New York to Washington in a fortnight on a 50-mile-a-day schedule, and finding the roads far better and freer than in his youth — improved, he says, by the very automobile that displaced the wheel.
- Road wear depends on pressure per unit area of surface: narrow, heavily laden iron-tired wheels dig ruts into steam-rolled metal, while a pneumatic tire spreads its load evenly and absorbs obstacles, and larger diameters and better springing further soften the blow.
- Taking the Irish Cyclist's line that "It's the people who stick on that come off best," the writer advises staying in the saddle on a straight runaway descent and braking with the shoe between the front forks, but leaving the machine where sharp turns and obstructions combine.
- A Brussels police officer's trained dog led him across waste ground to the hiding place of five of the worst bicycle thieves known to the city police, and the five were "shepherded" to jail by the one officer and his dog.
- A twelve-hour census at Putney Bridge, London, counted 5,920 bicycles and 93 motorcycles — an average of 4,879 riders and 134 motorcyclists a day — showing bicycle numbers slightly down but motorcycles rising.
- A French physician credits the bicycle with a greatly lowered death rate in Toulouse, a place notorious for its lack of sanitary precautions, because it lets a large part of the population live outside the town in better surroundings.