The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 13
Articles in this issue
- R. G. Betts and the Federation of American Motorcyclists win over Commissioner C. Andrade, Jr. of New York's Municipal Explosives Commission, who will recommend letting motorcycle repair shops keep one to five gallons of gasolene in approved safety tanks instead of forcing dealers to make repairs on the sidewalk.
- Trade changes: Will S. Collins opens at 629 Hancock street, Sandusky, Ohio; Miles McIntyre moves to Grant's Pass, Ore.; Hartman & Co. of Nashua, N.H. sells to A. C. Pollard; Charles J. Page of Greenfield, Mass. files for bankruptcy with $622.11 liabilities; T. L. Morris of Phoenix sells to Gove Phelps and Robert Stapley; and Anthony Motor & Cycle Co. of Colorado Springs sells to Western Automobile & Supply Co.
- The Ovington Motor Co., American agents for the F. N. four-cylinder motor bicycle, has leased the double store at 2208 Broadway near 79th street, New York, taking possession January 1st; E. L. Ovington reports 1907 orders far in excess of anticipations.
- The John R. Keim Mills of Buffalo, N.Y., bought by the Messrs. Spaulding and incorporated, elects former sales manager J. R. Lee president and will bid aggressively for cycle trade orders, driving especially at crank hangers, pedals and frame sets.
- The Standard Co. has finished two large factory buildings at Torrington, Conn., where its two-speed coaster brake, spokes, pedals and other products will hereafter be made.
- Professor Lucke of Columbia University, appointed by the government to test denatured alcohol as a motor fuel, finds it superior to gasolene and usable in an ordinary carburetter, though critics counter that it will not displace gasolene for years, is hard to start in cold weather and poses a knotty carburation problem.
- Four causes to check when an engine misfires at high speed but runs well at moderate rates: weakened batteries, a carburetter starved of air at high induction rates, mistimed valves, and badly pitted contact-breaker points.
- The Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co. gives notice that A. F. Pommert and C. B. Chadman of the Economy Cycle & Supply Co., Detroit, no longer represent it in the Middle West, where traveler George C. Smith is now handling the territory.
- C. F. Splitdorf & Co. of New York introduce a spur-geared motorcycle magneto weighing ten pounds and priced at $40, tested for two and a half months on a machine by M. E. Toepel of the Splitdorf laboratory; the enclosed permanent magnet and ball-bearing armature promise easier starting, more power on hills and adjustment only once in a thousand miles.
- A Christmas leader holding that nearly every man is the illuminator of his own Christmas, with the Bicycling World extending the season's greetings to its clientele.
- Defends the recent Madison Square Garden six-day race against newspaper cries of "fake," arguing the officials had nothing to gain by unfairness, though it concedes the lap-nullifying rule is a trouble-breeder and the deciding one-mile sprint alters the whole character of the grind.
- Weighs magneto against battery-and-coil ignition for motorcycles, concluding that although the dry battery looks cheaper, the magneto's everlasting armature, livelier spark and freedom from attention give it a real value for the price.
- Two propeller-driven cycles shown at the Aero Club exhibit in the Grand Central Palace, New York: Prof. Pickering of Harvard's aged tricycle with an aluminium fan belted to the rear axle, and Dr. Julian P. Thomas's three-wheeler with an eight-foot double-bladed propeller in front, whose blades broke loose on trial on upper Broadway.
- Quotes the new magazine The Circle arguing that the bicycle, not the automobile, made Long Island, luring New Yorkers out over level roads and firing the city dweller with the desire to build a home in the country.
- The Austrian army lays field telephone and telegraph wire from a motorcycle with a sidecar carrying a revolving reel, an operator directing it with a hooked pole: four kilometres in the twenty minutes that a single kilometre took by foot soldiers.
- The storm of denunciation over the six-day race causes P. T. Powers to tear up the Garden track and leaves Alderman James Bowler's proposed three weeks of Chicago racing uncertain; Floyd McFarland, sought by C. B. Blomecke for the Vailsburg track at Newark, says he would lease it for two or three years and bring over Rutt and Ellegaard.
- Reprints a Dublin newspaper "Lost and Found" advertisement describing a black-enameled "Coventry Flyer" free-wheel bicycle with a Brampton saddle, two brakes, a broken front mudguard tied with copper wire and a wobbling front wheel.
- Unearths an 1883 English circular calling on tricyclists to secede from the Cyclists' Touring Club, complaining that bicyclists "are a disgrace to the pastime" while tricycling "includes Princes, Princesses, Dukes, Earls"; recalled by the current move to drop "Cyclists" from the club's title.
- A petition got up by George Hannan and signed by a score of Salt Lake business men and about fifty riders, including McFarland, Iver Lawson, Hopper, Hollister and Downing, asks Chairman R. F. Kelsey of the National Cycling Association to restore San Jose rider Fred Castro to the amateur ranks after he quit the six-day race at 400 miles.
- At the semi-annual election of the New Century Wheelmen, San Francisco, James Rasmussen was made president, William Conrad first vice-president, Carl Laye financial secretary and past president Samuel W. Whitehead treasurer.
- The Associated Cycling Clubs of New York may lose president Joseph Oatman and secretary-treasurer M. L. Bridgman because their clubs — the Metropole Cycling Club and the Metropolitan Bicycling Club — are alleged no longer to exist; the New York Motorcycle Club's delegates have been told to inquire, echoing the Century Road Club Association's withdrawal over "dead" clubs.
- The Prospect Wheelmen will run their own New Year's midnight race from their club house at 811 East 144th street to a finish at City Island, with an open event, a class for A. D. T. messenger boys and a prize for motorcyclists.
- Louis Darragon beat Nat Butler by five laps over 60 kilometres at the Velodrome d'Hiver on Sunday, 9th inst., covering about 37 miles in 51:23 2/5 with Antonie Dussot third; Gabriel Poulain took the $2,000 track championship, beating Henri Mayer.
- Three unsanctioned "free for all" motorcycle events are added to next month's Florida beach carnival, chiefly to let two specially built freak machines of 32 and 24 horsepower disport themselves.
- Joe Fogler of the National Athletic Club of Brooklyn and Edward F. Root won the fourteenth annual six-day race at Madison Square Garden with 2,292 miles 2 laps, eight teams tied going into the final mile before 16,000 spectators; Walter Rutt lost it by an imperceptible quiver on the banking that let Hardy Downing up on the pole.
- Sidelights on the Garden grind: Hugh MacLean out at 185.1 miles and Menus Bedell with a broken collar bone at 201.4; Norman C. Hopper riding on despite a badly cut head; John B. Coffey finishing fourth with a fractured rib to Root's credit; the riders' prize apportionment; and the crowds, cappers and Bowery crooks who filled the arena.
- Rad Welt's 1906 earnings tables show Dutch pacefollower Piet Dickentmann first with $10,872, Guignard second with $9,792 and Contenet third with $5,700, while sprinters trail — Thorwald Ellegaard leading them on only $1,981 and Nat Butler taking $5,652 in Germany.
- Ollie H. Minton, the farm lad who told Sugar Notch, Pa. he would ride the six-day race with "Johnny Moran, of Buffalo" and had a bicycle raffled to fund the trip, was robbed of his sixty dollars, overcoat and satchel by affable strangers near Madison Square Garden and went home a sadder and wiser boy.
- Argues that most motorcyclists needlessly jab the float pin before starting: flooding fills the mixing chamber with pure gasolene vapor on which the motor will not start, and one steady press of the thumb attains the same object in far less time.
- A repair-shop method for bending steel tubing: ram the tube with sifted dry sand plugged at both ends, heat it cherry red with the blow pipe, and work it against a curve cut in a plank lined with sheet asbestos to keep the wood from firing.
- Two grants: No. 837,973, a water-cycle on triangular cylindrical floats with a propeller shaft, to Allie L. Standard of Tuscola, Tex.; and No. 838,303, a method of manufacturing and assembling ball-bearings with eccentric rings and spacers, to Robert Conrad of Berlin, Germany.