The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 7
Articles in this issue
- New York's Bureau of Combustibles inspectors had harassed Manhattan motorcycle dealers over gasolene; F.A.M. president Betts got bureau head Franz S. Wolf to overrule the order banning even empty tanks, and is pressing for a sub-quart exemption from the $10 permit fee.
- W. J. Surre of the Corbin Screw Corporation is back from the Pacific Coast with a full order book, and the new Corbin two-speed coaster brake he showed for the first time has demand running ahead of supply.
- The Pope Mfg. Co. has leased quarters at Clark and Monroe streets in downtown Chicago and will open a sales office there on Dec. 1st, sparing jobbers the trip out to Franklin street.
- Humber's net profit reached $530,000 for the year ending August 31st, equal to 53 per cent. of capital, and Rudge-Whitworth earned $265,000; Triumph, Enfield, New Hudson, Joseph Lucas and J. B. Brooks all report sharp gains.
- Describes the German Adler friction cone clutch, worked by a flexible cable from a short handlebar lever, which lets the motor idle and permits a start either by pedalling or by pushing off from the baggage-carrier stand.
- The Pope Mfg. Co. has closed its last branch house, at Washington, D. C., and split the agencies: Columbia Bicycle Co. (Columbias and Ramblers), C. E. Miller & Bros. (Tribunes), H. W. Higham, Jr. (Imperials) and B. L. Wrenn (Monarchs).
- Trade changes of the week: N. Fields of McPherson, Kas., sold out to O. W. Johnson; Walter Scott bought a half interest in the Fairbault Cycle Co., Fairbault, Minn., which becomes the Auto Supply Co. as Mr. Thomas retires.
- The Cycle Manufacturers Association meets in the Auditorium Annex, Chicago, on Wednesday, 14th inst.
- La Chasseur Francais describes the frame-testing machine of the Manufacteurs Francais d'Armes et Cycles, makers of the Hirondelle, which loads frames to 550 pounds, forks to 176 pounds and crank hangers to 440 pounds to check for permanent distortion.
- A flickering acetylene lamp signals wet gas, so the strainer should be examined and renewed, or blotting paper inserted between the carbide and the metallic disc to dry the gas.
- The paper rebuts the suspicion that it invited police interference with last Sunday's abortive 100-mile motorpaced record trial on Long Island, and warns that abuse of the courtesy-license extended to road racers in bathing suits will see it revoked.
- Argues that uniformity of production turns on final testing and inspection rather than earlier stages, and that in shops too small for automatic machinery the quality of the finished machine rests on the assembler's fidelity.
- Obituary of the 57-year-old president of the New York Motorcycle Club, who died of pneumonia at his New York home on Sunday, 4th inst., days after presenting the club's "President's Cup"; he was interred at Cambridge, Mass.
- H. H. Hintze's plan to break the 100-mile motorpaced record on Long Island collapsed at Valley Stream when the sheriff of Nassau county sent word that any attempt would bring "something doing" on his part.
- T. Owen of Owestry, a 69-year-old English vegetarian cyclist, told the Manchester vegetarian conference that he fasts twenty hours in each twenty-four and takes two meals of bread, dried fruit and nuts, chewing each mouthful fifty to a hundred times.
- Marseilles has formed a corps of cycling firemen, six attached to each city brigade, carrying a folding ladder, lamps, axes, a shovel, a ram and remedies for asphyxiation, and usually first at conflagrations.
- The Ed Hagenbuch Motorcycle Club of Allentown, Pa., celebrated its first anniversary with a pig roast.
- Fifteen teams are now engaged for the Madison Square Garden six-day race of December 10th to 15th, among them Root and Fogler, Walthour and MacLean, Vanderstuyft and Stol, and Rutt and McFarland; Paul Guignard replaces Darragon, who priced himself out.
- Walter Davidson's Harley-Davidson tri-car walked away with the three-mile novelty handicap in 5:30 at the Milwaukee Motorcycle Club's State fair grounds meet, and Davidson also won the five-mile open in 6:17.
- Frank L. Kramer has declined P. T. Powers's $1,500 purse for a series of match races with Iver Lawson during the Madison Square Garden carnival, saying he could not get into condition; Lawson stays in Salt Lake City.
- The Prospect Park Cork Pullers' second championship series on the Twenty-second avenue course, Brooklyn, went to "Sir Walter" Raleigh, Louis Weintz and Fred Warner; Weintz leads on 14 points and a gold corkscrew is the prize in to-morrow's 10-mile handicap.
- Brooklyn bicycle policeman "Mile-a-Minute" Murphy ran down two racing cyclists training lampless at a twenty-mile gait on the cycle path; each was fined $5 in police court next morning.
- Hugh MacLean of Chelsea, Mass., and Louis E. Mettling of Jamaica Plains landed at Boston off the Saxonian; MacLean will train at Revere Beach until Walthour arrives, then go to Atlanta for race meets before the six-day.
- A Scotch mutual benefit society refused compensation to a member injured in a bicycle accident on the plea that cycling is "an unlawful practice," but the county court decided otherwise.
- P. T. Powers holds an option on the Chicago Coliseum from February 17th to March 10th, planning sprint and paced racing from Washington's Birthday and a six-day race March 3rd to 9th; James J. Callahan and George McGurn are among the local backers.
- The Prospect Park Cork Pullers of Brooklyn will hold a New Year's Eve bicycle race, insisting it be styled a "race" and not a "run," with prizes "up to value stuff and not junk."
- Ernest Grupe, secretary-treasurer of the New York Division of the Century Road Club, fell while "hanging on" to an automobile near Stamford, Conn.; the motorist stopped, had the wheel repaired and convoyed him to a drug store.
- An illustrated freak machine whose designer used the seat post as a steering column, rigged an automobile wheel above it, and connected the head by a pair of bridle reins to a yoke replacing the handle bars.
- T. K. Hastings, Eastern vice-president of the F. A. M., was stung by an air-gun pellet while riding his tricar on the Brooklyn shore road; he chased and walloped the culprit and presented the confiscated gun to his son.
- An Englishman recommending carborundum as the keenest powder for valve grinding admitted he believed it was chiefly the waste dust from facetting diamonds.
- "Mac, the poet" of the Prospect Park Cork Pullers prints a long doggerel roll-call of the Brooklyn club, from Larry Hoppe and Frankie Fisher to Herman Lind, Arthur Wilcox and Jody Fogler.
- Nicholas Kind clinched the Edgecombe Wheelmen's 1906 club championship at Valley Stream; Sheriff Gildersleeve stopped the motorpaced record attempt but not the fight between MacDinald and Brandes, and first finisher Emil Koster was disqualified for illegal pacing.
- Hugh MacLean beat Robert Walthour, Nat Butler and Louis Darragon over 100 kilometres at the Velodrome du Parc des Princes, Paris, on October 28th, finishing in 1:21:39 2/5, a half-lap ahead of Butler.
- Denver loses some $35,000 of bicycles a year against $80,000 of new sales; the dealers have threatened to withhold the $10 second-hand licence fee unless Detective Captain A. W. Loomis assigns a man to bicycle theft, and daily repair reports are now required.
- Pedal bearings flood with water and mud in wet weather and, if their cleaning is put off, score and wear until they rattle or squeak.
- Never burn a gas lamp turned low or let it burn itself out: the reduced pressure clogs the burner with impurities and encourages carbonization from the heat.
- Check important bolts for tightness whenever the machine is taken on the road, or better still fit lock-nuts at every critical point and save the time of regular inspection.
- Touring cyclists George E. Holt and Lester R. Creutz write from Glasgow of riding from Edinburgh past Linlithgow Palace, Bannockburn and Stirling to Callender, and of a punishing six-hour, twelve-mile scramble around trackless Loch Katrine in the Trossachs.
- Two consecutive Nanticoke items in a Wilkes-Barre paper: on Oct. 24 Frank Lape had already mastered the town's first Indian motorcycle; on Oct. 25 he ran into a dog on Market street and was thrown under a horse.
- A rider whose inlet valve spring broke six miles from the nearest repair man extracted the helical spring from his tire pump, cut it to length and fitted it in the valve cage, restarting the motor.
- Mrs. Caroline Bache Barnes of Vineland, N. J., a 72-year-old professional nurse and great-grand-daughter of Benjamin Franklin, rides daily and lately covered Vineland to Atlantic City.
- A Pennsylvania statistician reckons the man who rides a wheel to business gains nearly half an hour each way, six hours a week, worth $5 a month in time plus $5 saved in car fare.
- A burlesque dream in which the narrator swigs "Pellet's Purple Pulling Pills" and "Dr. Val's Instantaneous Green Mixture," beats Kramer and Lawson for Pat Powers's $100,000 at Madison Square Garden, and wakes on the morning of the Edgecombe Wheelmen's club race.
- Ann Arbor, Mich., has started prosecuting sidewalk riding; two young men arrested last week were let off with a severe reprimand, the judge promising summary treatment for the next offenders.
- The New Century Wheelmen of San Francisco took the annual five-man relay for the Stockton trophy at Alameda on Oct. 28th with 16 points; Plinn Maggini broke his collarbone in a second-relay collision and Fred McLaughlin rode the fastest five miles in 13:51.
- The week's list of cycle and motorcycle patents, including George Ross and Stephen F. Deal's roadway-facing process, William H. Cress's two-speed motor-cycle gear, Frederick O. Hanson's bicycle-boat and several sparking plugs and detachable tires.