The Bicycling World, Vol 53, No 9
Articles in this issue
- The free alcohol bill passed the Senate without division and takes effect January 1st; the Brooklyn Motorcycle Club and F.A.M. president Betts had urged New York's senators, Senator Platt replying, arguing denatured alcohol would free riders from New York garage keepers who refuse or overprice gasolene and from apartment-house storage bans.
- The National Carbon Co. of Cleveland, makers of Columbia batteries, brings out the Reserve dry cell, built with a hollow carbon pole into which water is poured to put life in it, so dealers can shelve stock indefinitely without it going stale.
- C. C. Hopkins, who lost both home and business in the earthquake and has begun again at 1524a Golden Gate avenue, reports that wholesale and retail customers are increasing their orders rather than cancelling them.
- C. W. Hatch leaves the motorcycle department of the Consolidated Mfg. Co. of Toledo for the Diamond Chain & Mfg. Co. of Indianapolis, covering eastern territory in place of William Culver.
- Sales manager George W. Sherman reports the Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co. working nights on a big California call and unable to get motors fast enough; the firm's Reading agent keeps nine repairmen busy and sold eight $40 bicycles in one evening.
- Alex. J. Wedman, buyer for Simonsen & Nielson of Copenhagen, reaches New York on Wednesday to purchase for his house and will travel as far west as Chicago.
- Harry A. Gliesman, who sells Tigers and Reading Standards on Eighth avenue, New York, hung a bannerette lettered "Motorcycles" on one side and "Push Cycles" on the other; a jobbing salesman studying his name plates finally asked him who made "the Push."
- Henry S. Lyons, New York representative of the Wagner Motorcycle Co., lies at Port Chester with a fractured skull after a head-on crash with an automobile at Rye; his two companions were held for riding motorcycles without license numbers.
- Portable Accumulators, Ltd., newly incorporated in London, will let a motorcyclist exchange his accumulator for a freshly charged one on a subscription of about $10, the cells to be returned every fourth week.
- Pokes fun at a widely reprinted Western dispatch announcing that the bicycle shops of Walla Walla, Washington, have formed a trust to hold repair and sundry prices to the Portland scale.
- Edward Buffum, sales manager of the Consolidated Mfg. Co., practised what he preaches by making his New York to Boston business trip on a Yale-California motor bicycle.
- Trade notes: fire costs J. F. Lamb of Corsicana, Texas, $750, and Lemon Fister and Levi Williamson of Hamburg, Pennsylvania, form a partnership trading as Williamson & Fister.
- Frank B. Widmayer, Indian dealer at 2312 Broadway and also an electrical contractor, was swamped by fan-motor repair orders in the hot wave and put his tri-car to commercial use, two men doing as many as 40 jobs a day at under 25 cents' running cost.
- Argues that the human engine, like a gasolene motor left standing, needs running-in from time to time, and that the bicycle does for grown-up riders what the velocipede once did for children.
- A technical article with two diagrams explaining why pedals take a right-hand thread on the right side of a bicycle and a left-hand thread on the other, tracing the convention to the backward reactionary thrust of the ball bearing rather than to plain-bearing friction.
- Editorial urging motorcycle manufacturers to consider denatured alcohol's effect on their productions, noting one maker is already "ready for alcohol" and that no riders will welcome it more than New Yorkers plagued by bumptious garage keepers.
- Editorial on fitting saddle height, fore-and-aft position and pitch, and bar position to the individual rider by prolonged trial, warning against riding fads and holding that a long ride should tire the whole body evenly rather than one part.
- Race calendar from 26 May to 29 November 1906, including the New York Motorcycle Club's hill-climbing contest, the eighteenth Irvington-Milburn handicap, the F.A.M. New York to Rochester tour, endurance test and annual meet, and the world's championships at Geneva.
- Washington Park-on-the-Delaware, Philadelphia's Coney Island, is reviving with two bicycle race meets carded, the first on Decoration Day, entries received by John A. Roden of 2238 Fitzwater street.
- Chairman Kelsey of the N.C.A. board of control caught unlicensed riders on registration day at the Vailsburg track; the new licences are international, letting a holder compete on any track affiliated to the N.C.A. or the Union Cycliste Internationale.
- Eugene Lange won the Bay View Wheelmen's five-mile handicap at their Linden, N. J., outing off three minutes in 16 minutes, with club mascot Allan Weunsch second and scratch man Charles James third.
- Roumanian cyclists must carry their names and addresses both on the frame and on the lamp lens so it can be read at night, making cycle stealing hazardous and flight after an accident near impossible.
- Fred Van Vleet, formerly of the Eclipse Bicycle Co. at Elmira Heights, has taken a post as turnkey at the Chemung County jail.
- The fifth annual Federation of American Motorcyclists endurance contest leaves New York at 4 a.m. on Monday 2 July for Little Falls, 228.8 miles, and on to Rochester, with five controls, a 15 miles per hour schedule and 30 minutes' leeway; entry is $5 through H. J. Wehman, closing 25 June. Illustrated with a drawn profile and route map from New York to Rochester.
- George Bray of the C.R.C.A. Long Island division won its fifteen-mile handicap at Valley Stream off 7:30 in 39:55 1/4; the scratch men waited for the fallen Urban McDonald and Vanden Dries and so lost three time prizes, while A. Demarest took first time prize and Joe M. Eifler finished on the rim after a ten-penny nail.
- German sprinter Gustave Freudenburg died at Magdeburg after a heavy pacing machine admitted to the track too soon knocked over a group of riders, its handle bars severing the artery in his thigh.
- Stanford law student Frank L. Hill and his cousin leave San Francisco on 1 June to tour across the continent on Indians, carrying cameras so the Bicycling World can reproduce their snapshots.
- Presidents Armstrong and Adee have conferred several times and amalgamation of the Century Road Club of America and the Century Road Club Association can scarcely be long deferred.
- Thaddeus Robl, refusing to pay the $125 fine assessed by the Verband Deutscher Radrennbahnen for using windshields, is suspended until 18 June and forfeits several booked match races.
- Unsuccessful in bidding for the 1906 F.A.M. meet, the Chicago Motorcycle Club has already served notice on Secretary Wehman that it wants the 1907 meet.
- The New York Motorcycle Club's road committee defines a "regularly catalogued" motor bicycle for its open Fort George hill climb of 30 May, permitting substituted tires, coils, batteries, saddles and belts but requiring catalogued mufflers used unaltered with cut-outs closed, and barring picric acid and energine.
- Frank Kramer is raising a crop of whiskers in France to win a $20 bet with "Piggy" Moran on which of them has the most "un-Frenchy" mustache at the end of the month.
- The Bay View Wheelmen's all-handicap meet drew 4,000 to the Vailsburg board track: W. S. Fenn of Bristol won the two-mile professional and Teddy Billington the quarter-mile, Martin Kessler of the Edgecombe Wheelmen took the ten-mile amateur and Paul E. Bourget the half-mile novice.
- Explains why a plug that gives a good spark tested on top of the cylinder breaks down under compression inside it, and prescribes checking the plug, then run-down batteries, the contact maker and finally coil and wiring. Illustrated with photographs of Fillmore street, San Francisco.
- The Bay View Wheelmen name Colonel Albert A. Pope honorary referee and William R. Pitman referee of the eighteenth Irvington-Millburn race, whose prize list is headed by a $175 Yale-California motor bicycle with a grand piano for best time; Gabriel Abinieste will start the field promptly at 10:30.
- The Roy Wheelmen of New York recut their closed handicap road race distances for the season and elected F. L. Valiant president in place of the resigned George Schmoll, with George Gunzer first lieutenant.
- Stanley C. Kellogg and Fred Hoyt, both on Indians, took first and second in the motorcycle event of the Dead Horse Hill climb at Worcester, Massachusetts, Kellogg's 1:15 on a rain-slicked mile beating Hoyt's 1:17.
- Home trainer races at the Bay View Wheelmen's club house, held to raise funds for the Irvington-Milburn race, saw J. T. Halligan ride ten miles in 11:14 and beat "Mike" Ferrari over five miles.
- The C.R.C.A. Long Island division will run one and two-mile closed handicaps at Valley Stream on 3 June, before its open twenty-five-mile "Long Island Cycle Derby" on 4 July.
- The Standard Wheeling Club of Buffalo elected Ernest Landes president, John Dick vice-president, George Clark treasurer's colleague as recording secretary and C. J. Smith captain.
- At the Velodrome du Parc, Bordeaux, Frank Kramer beat ex-champion Emil Friol in both heats of their match, the first by an officially measured two and three-eighths inches, and had to ride a "tour d'honneur" before the crowd was satisfied.
- Carlo Vanoni, son of an Italian father and French mother, born in New Orleans and once of New York, rides in France under American colours and appears as American on race programmes.
- Oscar Schwab won the international sprint race in brilliant style at the opening of the Cholet track in France, beating Vanoni and Thuau.
- "Jock" uses a flock of sheep on the road as an emblem of human faddishness, then defends and warns against the touring diary — the temptation to boast of head winds and unrideable roads, the "mileage fever" bred by a mileage column, and the plain shilling manuscript book he prefers.
- Miss Agnes Hogan of Fulham spent seven weeks in hospital and underwent two operations after a hired bicycle lost a front wheel nut and threw her into a 'bus, then was made to pay the machine's owner $16 damages in monthly instalments of $2.50.
- Consul Brunot of St. Etienne reports France's six classes of highway, grades limited to 3 to 5 per cent, an 11 1/2-inch stone dressing on a rounded earth bed, stone graded on a 4-to-20 quality scale, and steam rolling, at an upkeep of $31,615,668 a year over 311,000 miles.
- Two patents in full: Harry Harrison of Erdington, England, No. 820,110, for closing a puncture in a pneumatic air-tube with two clamped metal disks, and D. McRa Livingston of New York, No. 820,222, for an internal combustion engine whose compressor stratifies combustible mixture and scavenger air.