The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 15
Articles in this issue
- Japan, long America's best bicycle customer, is being courted by Britain, France and Canada; the Canada Cycle & Motor Co.'s man brought some 30 models and promised a machine built specially for the Japanese demand, while a British resident of Kobe warns his countrymen the Canadian will be a "dangerous competitor" and blames cheap imports for the roughly $100,000 fall in American shipments during 1906.
- J. R. Vosburgh of Johnstown, N. Y., has bought the cycle business W. H. Loft ran for ten years at Gloversville, N. Y.; it moves to a new location under Frank Fish as a Vosburgh branch.
- Fred C. Gilbert, manager of the Pope Mfg. Co.'s Western department, is made manager of the entire Pope jobbing department and returns to Hartford, Conn., where he was originally stationed.
- The newly incorporated Royal Motor Works Co. of Worcester, Mass., will revive Emil Hafelfinger's Royal motor bicycle — first shown at the 1901 Madison Square Garden show — with a 2 3/4 horsepower Eclipse-built motor caged in four curved tubes, enclosed two-to-one gears and a single 1/2-inch roller chain; deliveries begin about February 15th.
- A French eye specialist replaces goggle lenses with thin steel plates pierced by three narrow slits, claimed to give brighter, sharper vision than glass and to eliminate blurring from rain, mud, dust and steam; the soft grey leather frame takes an elastic headband.
- P. H. Ferguson has left the tube department of Peter A. Frasse & Co., New York, to join the Seamless Tube Co. of America at Pittsburg.
- During January's Madison Square Garden automobile show the Emblem Mfg. Co. will display a full line of bicycle samples at the Victoria Hotel, general manager W. G. Schack in charge.
- November 1906 exports of cycles and parts totalled $72,437, down $22,621 on October, with the United Kingdom leading at $14,275 and Japan falling $18,725; the eleven-month total reached $1,320,964 against $1,210,316 for the same period of 1905.
- C. H. Ballew, a consulting engineer who worked with Bion J. Arnold in Chicago and reorganised several Waterbury Co. branches in New York, has taken over the Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. of Middletown, Ohio, and is doubling Racycle output.
- I. Davega, Jr., the bicycle and supply dealer on West One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street, New York City, incorporated this week with $10,000 capital; R. Louise Davega and F. Ottolengui are also named in the papers.
- How a broken valve — the inlet more often than the exhaust — can knock a hole in the cylinder head or piston, and why single-forging nickel-steel valves, a thin central bridge across the port and mechanically operated cam-driven valves are the designer's best safeguards.
- Leader arguing that makers and dealers of motorcycles and tri-cars have played up pleasure riding and ignored the utilitarian case — saved time, labour, expense and boy hire — that would sell a machine to Mr. Grocer and the man who must keep appointments.
- Leader on the near-simultaneous appearance this winter of two very different machines both using the truss frame, giving the dealer who has been crying out for something new the "talking point" he wanted.
- Letter from Earle L. Ovington, citing M. E. Toepel's Splitdorf-equipped Indian, J. J. McLaughlin's N. S. U. and his own F. N. on a New York Motorcycle Club run, urging the Bicycling World to campaign for magneto ignition as an English contemporary did for the two-speed gear and free engine clutch.
- Nicaragua's new consular-invoice regulations require successive numbering, dates of embarkation matching the corresponding bill of lading, and three copies of invoice and bills; a mismatch of dates brings a fine of fifty per cent of the duties.
- Rudolph Stenz beat George Holzhauer by a minute over the Prospect Wheelmen's 25-mile Bronx-to-City Island New Year's race; William "Farmer" Blum took Chicago's annual "2:50 scorch" to Pullman from William Studt and five-times winner Fred Nelson, and "Hard-Luck" Wilcox led five Cork Pullers home in the Century Road Club's 49-minute Coney Island cycle path race.
- The maintenance department of the Long Island Division of the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company has used motor bicycles for over three years; six Orients now cover 30 to 50 miles a day carrying the linemen's 50-60 pound kit to the "bug hunters'" scattered trouble calls.
- The German Racing Men's Association, founded in 1895, votes on January 9th on dissolution after years of decline in sprint racing under the fashion for monster pacing machines; its funds would go to riders injured on the track.
- Cable dispatches from Brussels report Belgian motorphobes petitioning parliament to burn every motor vehicle in the country in one bonfire before 1908 and sell the scrap metal to compensate those the machines have damaged.
- Part III of Stanley Bowmar's motorcycle journey to the Pacific Coast, Omaha to Denver: rain and thunderstorms out of Fremont, a ride along the railroad ties to North Bend, a belt rim that pulled off between Lexington and Cozad, sand and prairie schooners past Ogallala, two upset traps and a failed coaster brake before Plattville.
- A Swedish inventor's plug, fitted in the exhaust valve cap with a spring-held valve that bleeds off part of the explosion, lets a gasolene engine idle without jerking; it was tried on a four-cylinder car and a three horsepower motor bicycle, both of which then crept at a snail's pace.
- Keep the fuel-feed check valve from leaking or sticking and the strainer clear of carbon, and find leaks anywhere in the system by sponging soap suds over it with the pressure raised well above normal so fine bubbles flag the danger point at a joint.
- The Roy Wheelmen of New York elected F. L. Valiant president, Hubert T. Mayo vice-president, Jean Roy treasurer, Ralph Roullier recording secretary, George Schmoll financial secretary and Arthur E. Rhodes captain.
- About a score of amateurs are expected to turn professional at the National Cycling Association's annual meeting next month, but the N. C. A. is said to hold evidence against some nineteen riders, several of them Cork Pullers Club of Brooklyn members, over a cash-pool race meet at Valley Stream, L. I.
- The Chicago Motorcycle Club elected S. W. Farhney president, Grant W. Hunter vice-president, C. H. Lamb recording secretary and W. L. Johnson captain, and will remodel three large rooms and add a garage for storing motorcycles.
- The Corbin Screw Corporation of New Britain, Conn., is sending trade friends an ornate gold-finished watch fob carrying the big Corbin "C" and a reproduction of its coaster brake, on a black leather strap with a gold buckle.
- The Prospect Motor Mfg. Co. of Brooklyn, N. Y., is preparing to market the Simplex speed indicator for motorcycle use, driven by a friction wheel bearing on the front tire, registering 1 to 42 miles an hour and listing at $5.
- The "Retrospective Exhibition of Velocipedes" in the Avenue d'Antin dome of the Grand Palais, Paris, gathers fifty or sixty numbered machines — Pierre Michaux's 1864 velocipede from Bar-le-Duc, Poncet's "boneshaker," the chain-driven Ader and Guilmet machines of 1867-68, the Compagnie Parisienne's 1869 output, the 1879 "spider" and the two-chain 1894 "Magnant."
- Nat Butler beat Thaddeus Robl by 1 1-3 laps in 49:27 4/5 over sixty kilometres paced at Paris on Christmas Day, with H. Ryser 25 laps back; Otto Meyer won the Christmas sprint from Ellegaard and Darragon beat Heurtevin.
- To straighten a bent crank or other finished piece without marring it, wrap the part tightly in overlapping folds of cloth on a smooth level surface and strike gently but firmly on the highest point, or muffle the hammer carefully if no soft-faced babbit or copper one is at hand.
- An apparently inexplicable weakness in a bicycle motor is often oil starvation: friction between piston and walls rises and compression is lost as the thin sealing film between the piston's ends disappears.
- Wrap a few turns of tire tape round the handlebar end, smear it with cement or shellac and twist the grip firmly into place rather than shoving a loose one back every few moments — loose grips can cost a rider steady control in an emergency.
- Anzani covered a mile in 56 3/5 seconds on the five-lap Velodrome d'Hiver track in Paris on the 23rd ult., beating Cissac's record of 58 seconds — a rate of sixty-four miles an hour indoors.
- A motor bicyclist's tests of circuit-breaker contact metals found pure iridium better than the common iridium-platinum alloy — a thirty per cent alloy was of little value and sixty or seventy per cent added little — and a trifle cheaper than pure platinum, though hard and crystalline enough to need special mounting in the contact blade.