The Cycle Age and Trade Review, Vol 25, No 148
Articles in this issue
- Cleveland bicycle trade veterans reorganized wholesale and retail operations to pursue the automobile business, with Collister & Sayle incorporating the Cleveland Automobile & Supply Co. with $25,000 capital and Locomotile, Waverly, and Elmore agencies, while the Lozier retail store was taken over by the Diebold brothers and several bicycle jobbers prepared to stock automobile parts and sundries.
- The Inter-Ocean motor vehicle show at Washington Park opened to chaos, with exhibits incomplete, rules unclear, and attendance under 1,500 on opening day, though a dramatic ten-mile race between Alexander Winton's automobile and Orient motor tricycles provided genuine excitement, with Winton winning by two yards in a hair-raising finish over DeDion-powered machines.
- The Riggs-Spencer Co. was nearly ready to begin producing chainless bicycle frame sets in its new Rochester factory by October 1, and was already turning out its new coaster brake — a design it claimed was the only one that allowed the wheel to run freely both backwards and forwards.
- A consular briefing described the business customs, credit terms, traveling expenses, and shipping routes for dealers seeking to enter the South African market, noting that business had been seriously hindered by the Boer War and that marked improvement was expected now that hostilities were nearing a close.
- The Cycle Age editorial followed up on a Texas dealer's account of a successful bicycle club installment scheme, responding to two correspondents who objected that the arrangement was unprofitable by presenting financial calculations showing that well-managed club schemes could be viable for the dealer.
- Pacific Coast bicycle dealers were described as overcoming the trade's general slump through energetic promotion, active club organizing, and continued racing, with the press in the region beginning to give cycling more favorable coverage than it had received in recent years.
- Washington, D.C. cycle trade veterans organized a corporation to take over a large automobile dealership, convinced that the automobile offered brighter prospects than bicycles; an A.B.C. branch was also moving into the automobile business in the same market, reflecting the industry-wide shift.
- A review of the latest bicycle patent batch found every design save one — a seat post by George Spencer of the Chicago Handle Bar Co. — commercially worthless, with inventors proposing air-tight frames for whistles, pneumatic handle bar grips, and other impractical devices that ignored fundamental manufacturing constraints.
- Three newly identified plant-derived gum compounds were described as potential commercial substitutes for Para rubber in bicycle tire manufacture, raising again the prospect of a cheaper alternative to the costly South American raw material that had previously been explored in the trade press.
- The sports column argued that Harry Elkes's earlier defeat by Stinson proved nothing except that he was exhausted from his European campaign and ocean crossing; his subsequent victory over Nelson demonstrated he was returning to the form that had made him nearly invincible in middle-distance racing.
- Frank Kramer won the flying-start quarter mile at Vailsburg in 28⅕ seconds in a blanket finish over Fisher, Kimble, Krebs, and Butler; the column also covered European results including the world championship races at the Paris Exposition where Meyers, Cooper, and McFarland competed.