The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 24, No 124
Articles in this issue
- The trade in American bicycle component parts was growing rapidly in Australia, with Melbourne assemblers switching from English to American frame sets and fittings, while the Morrow coaster brake was being actively promoted at prices that made it accessible to local builders.
- Bicycle dealers in Poughkeepsie reported fine weather had opened a promising spring trade, with confidence growing that 1900 would be a banner year despite lingering doubts, as coaster brakes emerged as a key selling point and repair prices held firm.
- Salt Lake City dealers had already sold 800 bicycles by early April 1900 compared to only 300 at the same time the previous year, with Browning Bros. leading at 350 machines, and dealers signing racing teams to promote their brands on the track.
- The newly formed Cycle Board of Trade of Portland, Oregon published a uniform schedule of bicycle repair charges signed by twenty-nine member dealers, standardizing everything from axle work to tire repairs and chain fixes at set rates to prevent destructive price-cutting.
- The Bicycle Bell Association pool for maintaining schedule prices collapsed at a New Haven meeting after the New Departure Co. accused other members of cutting below the agreed minimum, with the dispute further embittered by longstanding accusations of patent infringement among the rival bell manufacturers.
- The second annual cycle show at the Chicago Fair opened with a thirty-space exhibit that drew large crowds and confirmed dealers' widely held expectation that 1900 business would far exceed the previous year, with attendance and enthusiasm reinforcing the sense of an industry revival.
- A bicycle patent story was recounted in which ownership of a key early-period patent had become entangled between the original inventor and his assignees, with neither party willing to sell and the patent itself of doubtful enforceability, illustrating the hazards of relying on contested patent claims as a commercial asset.
- A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision reversed a lower court ruling in a cyclist-driver collision case, holding that cyclists had rights on the road reciprocal with vehicle drivers and making a motorist responsible for turning a corner too sharply into a cyclist's lawful path.