The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 104
Articles in this issue
- A U.S. Circuit Court upheld the Tillinghast single tube tire patent, a decision that greatly benefited the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company, which held a controlling interest in the patent, effectively requiring all unlicensed single tube tire manufacturers to take out licenses or face injunctions.
- The Tillinghast tire patent suit, begun by Colonel Dodge in 1896 against the United States Rubber Company, was one of the most voluminous patent cases on record, with 3,000 pages of typewritten evidence before the court ruled in the patent holder's favor.
- A detailed account of the Tillinghast patent's specifications describes the construction of a pneumatic single tube tire with rubber inner tube, fabric layer, and outer rubber covering vulcanized together into an integral annular tire — a broad claim that appeared to cover virtually all single tube bicycle tires.
- Colonel Dodge, owner of the Tillinghast patent rights, said he intended to enforce his claims but would deal liberally with manufacturers seeking settlements, though an appeal by the United States Rubber Company was considered likely given the scope of the decision.
- The court held that Tillinghast invented the single-tube pneumatic tire as early as 1890, predating a rival's published design, and ruled that all twenty-one original licensees were estopped from ever challenging the patent's validity, whether or not their licenses had lapsed.
- Judge Townsend ruled largely in favor of the Morse-Keefer Cycle Supply Co. against the Excelsior Needle Co. in a dispute over William H. Dayton's patented double butt-swaged spoke-blank machinery, disallowing most of the plaintiff's key claims.
- Buffalo shopkeepers who installed bicycle racks were served notice by agents of patentee Edwin S. Calkins demanding a $5 royalty for infringing his design patent on spindle-constructed cycle racks, a demand nearly all of them refused.
- Charles Churchill, sent to London in 1862 to install machinery for six weeks, instead built Britain's leading American machine-tool importing house, now Chas. H. Churchill & Sons, Ltd., whose shareholders include Joseph Chamberlain.
- Fire believed caused by spontaneous combustion of oily waste destroyed much of the Norwood Bicycle Company's Cincinnati plant, causing an adjusted $61,000 loss, though the company said its 1900 models were untouched and work would not be delayed.
- Annual balance sheets showed the Swift Cycle Company, J. B. Brooks & Co. and the Rudge-Whitworth Cycle Company posting solid profits and dividends, while the Centaur Company and the Perfecta Seamless Steel Tube Co. reported losses blamed on competition from popular-priced machines and new tube makers.
- The latest instalment of L. H. Manson's satirical serial on the "Amalgamated Bluff Combine" has the trust boss Squeeze scheming to absorb both the rival forty-four-firm protective association and independent parts makers through agents named Promoter, Backer and Slickman.
- Editorial noting that Colonel Dodge, closely tied to the American Bicycle Company and Colonel Pope, is likely to license all reputable tire makers, including former opponents, now that the Tillinghast patent has been sustained at a 12 1/2-cent royalty per tire.
- Editorial reporting that A.B.C. plants were requesting quotations on parts roughly matching last year's purchases, with the trade speculating whether purchasing agent J. B. Bromley would centralize buying for all divisions from New York.
- Editorial on reports that A.B.C. president Spalding met with the International Bicycle Workers' Union president to discuss unionizing the company's factories and establishing uniform wage scales nationwide.
- Editorial defending the Cycle Trades Protective Association's conservative, protection-only mandate against critics who wanted a more aggressive policy, stressing it would fight patent-infringement suits only when many members' interests were at stake.
- Dealer-growth stories including Frank H. Drew buying out the failed Cedar Rapids Cyclery, Arthur L. Tabor's new two-story store under construction in Corona, Cal., and the Globe Bicycle Company of Reading, Pa. expanding into sewing machines.
- A first local of a proposed national tube-workers' union was organized at the National Tube Company's Youngstown, Ohio plant, though a company source argued the timing was poor since wages there had just been voluntarily raised and equalized across plants.
- A nationwide listing of dealer ownership changes, new repair shops, address changes, retirements and fire losses, including Rodgers & Co. of Knoxville, Tenn. and I. C. Miller of Alexandria, La.
- The newly incorporated Empire State Bicycle Company, led by president James G. Harrison and general manager Willis H. Ives, was moving its factory from Oneonta to Addison, N.Y., expecting to employ up to 100 mechanics from December.
- Capt. William Mitchell Lewis of the Mitchell & Lewis Wagon Co. bought out C. S. Beebe's interest in the Beebe Mfg. Co. of Racine, Wis., which was renamed the Wisconsin Wheel Works.
- The fifth annual automobile and bicycle exhibition at Madison Square Garden, managed by Frank W. Sanger, would divide 143 main-floor spaces plus 81 balcony spaces among makers of motor vehicles and their parts.
- The American Bicycle Company consolidated its four Milwaukee plants into two, folding the Milwaukee Manufacturing Company and Milwaukee Engineering Company into the Meiselbach branch, which expected to cut its combined workforce from up to 900 to 650-700 men.
- Contributor Hillary Hillard dissected the rival Owen and Edwards crank-hanger patents, concluding that Charles F. Stokes's new two-part hanger bracket, based on 1891-92 Edwards patents, likely avoided infringing the A.B.C.-owned Owen bottom-bracket patent.
- A newly patented furnace by Leon F. Schulze of Cleveland fed small parts like balls and chain links through heated conduits and dropped them individually into a quenching bath to ensure uniform hardening.
- Shop tips included an English brazing ferrule sold as a substitute for loose spelter, leather-faced vise jaws for holding finished parts without marring them, and J. B. Howe's new changeable driving gear housed in an enlarged crank bracket.
- Trade notes including the White Sewing Machine Co. moving its bicycle department from Cleveland to Geneva at a cost of 250 jobs, a fifteen-car trainload of Meiselbach-built Oxford bicycles shipped to Duluth, and Japan's bicycle imports rising to 240,800 yen in 1898.
- Consul General Frank H. Mason reported on Berlin's International Motor Carriage Exhibition, opened by the Kaiser, where a Kruger two-seat electric tricycle and the Peiper Company's combined gasoline-and-electric "double-motor carriage" were the standout novelties.
- Report dismissing talk of a $75 million Anglo-American automobile trust absorbing rival combinations as improbable, since steam, electric and gasoline advocates remained too divided on motor power to unite.
- The Huntington Mfg. Co.'s $35 Model A Pioneer and $25 Model B bicycles led a buyers' column that also covered new Manhattan Brass acetylene lamps and the Eclipse Bicycle Co.'s 25,000 orders for Morrow coaster hub brakes in six days.
- Covered cycling clubs broadening into social and sporting activities as the Englewood and Woodlawn Wheelmen scaled back racing, the N.C.A.'s growing hold on race control outside the L.A.W., and Abbott Bassett's call for the league to abandon racing control for touring and road-book work.
- McDuffee and Major Taylor traded motor-paced records at Chicago's Garfield Park track, with Taylor breaking the half-mile mark in :41 and McDuffee tying his own mile record of 1:21 despite chilly weather.
- Victor Breyer was bringing a squad of European stars — Tommaselli, Meyers, George Banker and the middle-distance rider Champion — to compete in the December six-day and sprint races at Madison Square Garden.
- The Paris Exposition's bicycle-racing commission adopted a seven-day program of international events worth $20,000 in prizes on an enlarged Vincennes track, to be built with $30,000 each from the exposition and the city of Paris.
- A cable report said the French and Italian racing unions would stop recognizing L.A.W. control in America regardless of the International Cyclists' Association's decision, raising the prospect of a rival international body built around the N.C.A.
- Edouard Taylor clinched Europe's middle-distance championship with an hour record of 35 miles 480 yards in Paris, while Jacquelin narrowly beat Huret in a fifty-kilometer match after Huret's pacing machine broke down near the finish.