The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 16
Articles in this issue
- Sea Island cotton and Egyptian combings have been cornered and priced almost out of reach, leaving makers who failed to book fabric facing cheaper, more hazardous tires; the Association of Sea Island Cotton Growers of Georgia and Florida meanwhile voted at its annual meeting to form a million-dollar corporation to buy and hold the staple and regulate its price.
- C. E. Ericson, general manager of the Aurora Automatic Machinery Co., makers of Thor motors, quits on the 15th inst. after a torrid directors' meeting adopted recommendations he had said he would resign over; his duties pass to department heads Felp, Ottoway and Rheutan.
- B. G. Work has been formally elected president of the B. F. Goodrich Co. of Akron, Ohio, after years as its guiding hand, the office falling vacant on the resignation of Col. George T. Perkins through ill health.
- Elon B. Nobles, formerly of the Fisk Rubber Co.'s Boston branch, takes over the G & J Tire Co.'s Boston establishment from H. L. Johnson and is at the Indianapolis factory learning the products.
- E. L. Ovington of the Ovington Motor Co. has booked passage for February 1st to visit the Belgian factory and hurry shipments of F. N. four-cylinder motorcycles, hoping to bring 500 machines back on the same steamer.
- L. B. Stevens of 35 Warren street, New York, who specialises in dress-guards and lacings for women's bicycles, reports orders larger than last year—including a San Francisco jobber's order for 1,500 pairs—and steady export trade to Canada, South America, Germany, Denmark and Japan.
- D. F. and J. C. Benson, who had opened a bicycle and repair shop in Carthage, Mo., two months earlier, traded their stock for an automobile and left town without warning, leaving surprised creditors and a hostile write-up in the local paper.
- Stanley Bowmar, the cross-continent motorcyclist whose journey is running serially in the Bicycling World, is now covering California appointing agents for the Merkel Motor Co. and riding its new three-horsepower machine before returning to his New Zealand home.
- C. H. Smith, previously O. S. Tweedy's lieutenant, has been promoted to manage the Diamond Rubber Co.'s Chicago branch after Tweedy resigned to engage in other business.
- Elliott Mason, for a quarter of a century manager of the Pope Mfg. Co.'s New York branch and left stranded when the automobile establishment was disposed of, is back in Pope harness at the Hartford headquarters.
- Trade changes among dealers: Nelson Mattice of Catskill, N. Y., has sold out to Theodore Wynkoop, and Applegate Bros. have opened a new store at 17 North Fourth street, Newark, O.
- Two radical departures among 1907 motorcycle carburetters, both illustrated: the Indian, regulated by a diaphragm opened and closed by engine suction, and the R-S, with twin floats and central draft, a cone-shaped tube on the throttle and an auxiliary cold-air throttle.
- The R-S motor tandem's drop front frame for ladies has drawn correspondence to the Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co., including a rider whose wife threatened divorce over his motorcycling until the New York Show Number won her round to a motor tandem.
- The Kelly Handle Bar Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, has added the reversible Kelly No. 7, which by loosening a clamp screw changes from a forward extension drop bar to an upturned touring bar.
- W. G. Schack built the Emblem Mfg. Co. of Angola, N. Y., from a tiny dealership through the lean years of '97-'99 to a concrete factory turning out 15,000 machines a year—the only bicycle factory erected in America in ten years—educating local farmer boys into foremen and giving them a stock interest.
- A contributor to Cycling argues that an experienced rider never parts with a comfortable old saddle, and urges buyers to choose an ample size, blaming most saddle trouble on a diminutive triangle of leather fit only for a schoolboy or a racing man.
- The National Cycling Association's readiness to assume control of road racing is welcomed as a move toward clean sport, and the paper urges the N. C. A. at its annual meeting to establish a Junior or Public School championship to encourage the rising generation.
- Argues that the magneto's growing popularity in Europe is not enough to convert the average rider, who—like the Mark Twain of the anecdote who still wanted to know what made the front wheels go round—needs its principles explained in plain words before he will trust it over the dry cell.
- A British engineer computes the theoretical case for ankling, comparing a 35-degree ankler with a non-ankler by the secants of the angles between pedal pressure and resistance, and illustrating foot and leg positions at every 30 degrees of the circle in Figs. I and II to show 210 degrees of effective travel against 150.
- Warns that "loose ends" hanging about a machine mark neglect and trouble to come, particularly ragged wires at the electrical connections, which work loose and break for want of a little care.
- A conference of leading N. C. A. officials this week decided that the unwholesome state of road racing merits intervention, and a proposal to extend the association's dominion over it will be offered at the annual meeting, to be held Feb. 14th at the Bartholdi Hotel, New York.
- The so-called National Association of Motorcyclists has incorporated under New York law to control motorcycling, though the sport is already governed by the F. A. M.; it was organised by a disgruntled manufacturer whose rider was disqualified for "ringing" a racing machine into a stock event.
- Salt Lake City's track took over $27,000 in 1906, leaving $8,000 clear profit on $19,000 of expenses, with prize lists of $375 to $2,875 a meet and a $2,500 purse plus $375 extra for the Frank Kramer-Iver Lawson match race.
- At its annual meeting on the 10th inst. the New York Motorcycle Club elected R. H. Nickerson president, F. A. Roy vice-president, D. Patterson secretary, F. M. Manning treasurer and M. E. Toepel captain, Roland Douglas having declined nomination for the presidency.
- Calvin Coolidge has introduced a bill in the Massachusetts House applying the state's drastic automobile laws to motorcyclists, prohibiting any motor vehicle capable of more than 20 miles an hour on level road from using the public highways.
- The Muskegon (Mich.) Motorcycle Club is planning a race meet on the ice of Lake Muskegon late this month or early in February, the lake admitting a three-mile course.
- The St. Louis board of police commissioners will abandon automobiles for speed-law enforcement in favour of a squad of six motorcycle patrols, rising to twenty, after a tour of New York and other Eastern cities; the city's 8-mile limit is so loosely enforced that arrests run at two a week and cost offenders $15 and costs.
- Practical instruction on patching cuts in outer casings: cleanliness above all, patches cut from the tread of old sprint tires with sides chamfered to a thin edge, then scoured with fine sand paper, coated with solution and pressed firmly to exclude air-bubbles.
- Walter A. Bardgett of Buffalo unexpectedly beat six-day winner Joe Fogler in an unlimited match pursuit on home trainers at the National Athletic Club, Brooklyn, catching him at 5.5 miles in 10 min. 15 sec.; Owen J. Devine beat Walter Goerke by six inches and Louis J. Weintz beat Franklyn Fisher by an inch.
- Although the Cyclists' Touring Club voted overwhelmingly to drop "Cyclists" from its title so as to admit automobilists, pedestrians and all other tourists, Mr. Justice Warrington refused to sanction the change with costs, holding it would materially alter the nature of the business.
- Ed Delling of the Ariel A. C. won both the two-mile handicap and the pursuit race at Buffalo's 65th Regiment games on January 4, clipping two-fifths of a second off his own armory record with 5:08 and riding a mile in 2:34 to beat Warren Zurbrich's 2:36.
- Replying to an article of Dec. 22nd, the writer denies that a deranged magneto is beyond repair outside a laboratory and explains from first principles—zinc and sal ammoniac cells, Oersted's compass experiment, induction in a coil—why the magneto's induction method is simpler and more reliable than the battery and coil.
- A correspondent signing H. E. D. writes that although he agrees with Mr. Ovington on the magneto's fine running qualities, he must pedal anywhere from 100 to 500 feet to start his Simms-Bosch on the road, and asks for hints on easier starting.
- Advises lining a spare-tire box across the bottom with thin sheet metal and fitting a metal false bottom on short wooden legs, then pouring in rubber solution thinned with gasolene or naphtha so the vapour excludes air and keeps the rubber soft indefinitely.
- Part IV—Denver to Ogden—of Stanley Bowmar's transcontinental motorcycle trip: nearly fined for not registering at Denver, a somersault over a barb-wire gate near Dover, three punctures before Cheyenne, the Happy Jack road passed over for Telephone Canyon, a night in a deserted ranch house near Fort Steele, a blizzard on the Red Desert and a 40-mile trundle from Bitter Creek to Rock Springs.
- A lengthy Louisville Courier Journal editorial, quoted at length, argues that a cycling revival has cogent reasons behind it: physical culture authorities hold that city dwellers need out-of-door exercise in pure air, and the bicycle was abandoned just as it was perfected and priced within reach of the salaried man who can afford neither motor car nor horse.
- Prof. Luther Gulick, writing in a current magazine, argues that Indian clubs and pulley weights build muscle but do not improve health like vigorous movement in pure air, and that a run through the park on a bicycle or a ride to and from business is within reach of almost every busy American.
- Paris, where cycle policemen number in the hundreds, has only now inaugurated a bicycle messenger service—promoted by an American woman who formed a company with prominent French financiers and went before the Minister of Commerce, Industries, Posts and Telegraphs to secure the legal right to mount boys on bicycles.