The Bicycling World, Vol 53, No 7
Articles in this issue
- The Western Classification Committee has cut its rates on bicycle and motorcycle tires shipped to Western territory, a victory credited chiefly to Traffic Manager Lyman of the Fisk Rubber Company, who forced a mail vote after appearing before the committee in March; the Hartford Rubber Works Co. and its Mr. Kessler backed Fisk throughout.
- Receivership and marshal-lien applications were filed against the Snell Cycle Fittings Co. and the Kirk Manufacturing Co., both absorbed by the Consolidated Manufacturing Co. of Toledo, whose liabilities may reach $710,000 — including $18,000 to one tire maker and $200,000 lost in an automobile venture.
- The Eclipse Machine Co., makers of the Morrow coaster brake, deny any connection with the Reliance Motorcycle Company, which their former superintendent A. P. Morrow resigned to join.
- Harry T. Dunn, president of the Fisk Rubber Company, leaves next week to help re-establish the firm's San Francisco branch.
- The Pope Manufacturing Company will close its last Chicago factory within weeks and concentrate bicycle work at Westfield, Mass., and Hagerstown, Md.; manager Fred C. Gilbert has been quietly selling off the machinery, and Rambler production had already moved to Westfield.
- Oscar Hedstrom, mechanical chief of the Hendee Manufacturing Co., returned quietly on Wednesday from a month in France, hinting at developments for the 1907 Indian.
- March bicycle exports dipped slightly, but nine-month totals rose to $1,027,614; Germany more than doubled, Italy jumped from $2,838 to $11,139, the Netherlands and Other Europe gained sharply and Mexico nearly doubled, while Japan's quota shrank and British North America fell off.
- A motor bicyclist who snapped two new compression rings complained they were 'rotten'; the paper explains that hard cast-iron rings have only enough springiness to pass over the piston end when handled with care, and break if forced like clock spring.
- Thomas Midgley, recently arrived from Columbus, Ohio, as vice-president, was elected president of the Hartford Rubber Works Co., succeeding Charles H. Dale, who heads the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company.
- Swiss inventor Antonin Deletrain offers the 'Motorcone,' a 1.5-inch cone of mixed acids dropped into the gasolene tank that he claims perfumes the exhaust for a hundred miles and multiplies the fuel's driving power tenfold.
- The Automobile Association of Bengal, 57 Park street, will hold a bicycle, motorcycle and accessory exhibition at Calcutta in January 1907, a timely opening for exporters.
- Charles E. Miller of New York has imported the first consignment of Brampton self-hardening chains in motorcycle sizes, suited to Indian, R-S and Thor machines.
- Trade moves: Al. Johnson to a new Broadway store in Fargo, N. D.; Charles Lindstrom re-opened at 5 State street, Portsmouth, N. H.; F. A. Baker & Co. removed to 37 Warren street, New York.
- Frederick A. Ives of 130 East Thirteenth street, New York, filed a bankruptcy petition showing $1,833 of liabilities and no assets, the debts contracted for bicycles and tires at New Haven, Conn., in 1901.
- An account of chasing newspaper bargain advertisements for a used Tribune racer and a 1906 Pierce, both of which led to the same dingy East Side shop where the machine had always 'just been sold' and rows of nameless crocks were offered instead.
- A motorcyclist divides his chain into four sections joined by detachable links and carries a spare section, so a breakage means swapping a section rather than filing or chiselling at the roadside.
- When a motorcycle will not develop full power the contact breaker may refuse to advance; the grip control is often slightly bent, and a few light taps with a mallet restore the fit.
- Switzerland has officially adopted motor bicycles as the mounts of a corps of despatch bearers, notable because the country is generally thought traversable only by goats and mountain climbers.
- The Federation of American Motorcyclists is credited with winning motorcyclists a $1 fee and freedom from numbers under the new New Jersey law, exemption from the Virginia measure, and exclusion from the three bills pending at Albany.
- Reflecting on the Owen letter printed in this issue, the paper recalls that A. H. Overman was not alone in predicting the woman's bicycle would ruin the trade, and that only 'professional ladies' at country fairs rode in public before it appeared.
- A letter from Herbert S. Owen, placed at the paper's disposal by veteran Charles E. Hawley, claims priority over W. E. Smith for the loop-framed ladies' bicycle: Owen's first gas-pipe model, ridden by his niece Elizabeth Randolph Keim in Star Park, is now in the National Museum, and he ordered 25 Psychettes from Duryea in 1887.
- Frank M. Dampman covered 99.8 miles on one gallon with a 2.25 horsepower Indian tri-car in the Automobile Club of America's two-gallon efficiency test, riding through rain and two hours of darkness; the best automobile managed 87 miles on two gallons.
- Reading, Pa., has grown from one or two motorcyclists to sixteen, and a meeting will shortly be called to form a club.
- Frank L. Kramer took the mile scratch, half-mile open and quarter-mile at the international meet in the Crystal Palace grounds, London, on 5 May, beating Thorwald Ellegaard of Denmark, J. S. Benyon of England and Richard Heller of Austria.
- The Century Road Club of America's Union Club Run drew over two hundred riders from Columbus Circle to Grant's Tomb and on to Coney Island, but poor publicity and ragged formation made it look like a pleasure jaunt; President A. G. Armstrong led.
- Of 39 starters in the Brooklyn Motorcycle Club's 116-mile Brooklyn-to-Patchogue century, only 24 finished inside the schedule; seven failures were due to punctures, and Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Goodwin finished despite a buckled reach rod and his dislocated shoulder.
- George W. Wells of Chas. E. Miller & Bro., Washington, has built explorer Walter Wellman a polar sled on a 1906 Indian, with steel-tube bob runners in front, hickory rear runners on a steel brace and a corrugated galvanised rim over the studded rear tire.
- Harry Early of Bayonne, N. J., still tops the Century Road Club of America's century table after April, with Alfred H. Seeley up from fourth to second and H. H. Hintze to fourth; members have rolled 123 centuries and 11,529 miles since 1 January.
- Rain broke up the second Sunday Vailsburg meet before the miss-and-out, but newcomers Alfred 'Whitey' Ashurst (half-mile handicap for pros) and Edward Simonet (novice) made their mark, and Floyd Krebs beat W. F. Fenn in the stretch of the five-mile open.
- Saxbury Waddell won the Edgecombe Wheelmen's ten-mile handicap on Hoffman boulevard, Jamaica, in 32:36 2/5 off 2:30, beating W. Reese Hughes by a fifth of a second; scratch man Otto C. Brandes took the time prize in 30:29 3/5.
- Oscar Schwab won the Course des Primes at the Parc des Princes and James F. Moran was fourth in the 50-kilometre paced race behind Darragon; Friol beat Frank Kramer in the Easter grand prix semi-final, shutting the American champion out to the crowd's delight.
- Richard Cobden, Jr. took the one-third mile and Alfred Seeley the one-mile scratch on Columbia oval at Williamsbridge, after the two Berkeley entrants withdrew; Seeley rode a Pierce geared to 91, Cobden a Reading Standard geared to 87.
- 'Tommy' Hall and Pedlar Palmer are already in America, and J. Arnst and Richard Arnst, winner of the Sydney Thousand, are aboard ship with Floyd McFarland; efforts are being made to bring world's champion Gabriel Poulain over this summer.
- 'Woody' Hedspeth, now a masseur for the German crack Bader, finally won abroad, taking the 'little Easter prize' at the Stieglitz track, Berlin, by an eyelash from Conrad, Wegener and Kudela.
- The Park Circle Club of Brooklyn will run a twenty-mile handicap from West's, Valley Stream, on 10 June, with prizes awarded at the finish, a choice of gold or silver watches for the winner, and the Armstrong and Dyer silver loving cups; V. J. Lind manages the affair.
- Thaddeus Robl covered 83 kilometres 759 metres in the hour paced race at Leipsic on 16 April, beating Guignard and Nat Butler, though Butler had won an hour race at Dresden the previous day.
- Henri Cornet won the eleventh Paris-Roubaix over 168 miles in 9 hours 59 minutes, half a wheel ahead of Marcel Cadolle, who rode the last mile on the rim after puncturing; Rene Pottier was third and Louis Trousselier fourth.
- Nashville's city council dropped a proposed ordinance requiring every motorcycle and automobile to carry a cyclometer or speed-indicating device, after being shown that a cyclometer cannot register speed and that no officer could read one from a moving machine.
- LaCrosse, Wisconsin, has posted signs fining pedestrians $5 for walking on the cycle paths, after cyclists complained to the Board of Public Works about walkers preferring the paths to dilapidated sidewalks.
- 'Bobby' Walthour has applied to the Atlanta park board to build a bicycle track in the coliseum at Piedmont Park, promising completion in two weeks and wiring Jack Prince to conduct the meets.
- The Verband Deutscher Radrennbahnen fined Thaddeus Robl $125 and Paul Guignard $75 for infringing pacing regulations with motor tandems, and fined the Dresden and Leipsic tracks $125 each for permitting wind shields.
- Howard G. Reynolds is the National Cycling Association's new representative and referee for Boston, succeeding R. F. Kelsey, who has taken the chairmanship of the board of control to New York; John C. Wetmore may quit as official handicapper.
- Captain Richard Schaeffer of the Dunkirk (N. Y.) Cycle Club named his 1906 run officers: assistant captain Alfred Jefferson, bugler Henry Goldhart, assistant bugler Philip Gerber and colour bearers Charles Worter and George Schied.
- An illustrated appreciation, signed MIZZO, of the De Soto Pike and other St. Louis roads — the Manchester, the Gravois, Kimmswick and Three Sisters hills — recalling the 'St. Louis Toughs,' the Holt Haus wine cellar, the 1887 Greenwood-Stone match race and the 1891 rout of Birdie Munger's Chicago party.
- The season's calendar from the Roy Wheelmen's ten-mile handicap at Valley Stream on 13 May to the Century Road Club of America's fifty-mile handicap on 29 November, including the Irvington-Milburn, the F. A. M. tour and meet at Rochester and the world's championships at Geneva.
- 'Billy' Bowles, Iver Lawson's trainer, has reached Salt Lake City after wintering in Southern California; Lawson is expected to drop his Australian Massey-Harris for a Pierce, suggesting he is through with racing in Australia.
- The full text of the Frelinghuysen act, effective 1 July, which the F. A. M. amended so motorcyclists pay $1 a year, display no numbers and face no examination, while automobilists pay $4 to $7, carry front and rear numbers and risk a $100 fine for blurred plates; motorcycle dealers pay nothing against the automobile dealer's $20.