The Cycle, Vol 1, No 17
Articles in this issue
- Dr. N. Malon Beckwith, League president, is arrested on a criminal libel charge brought by D. H. Renton of Broadway — the same man previously expelled from the League for threatening an officer — and ex-chief consul Edward F. Hill is also arrested, both later released on their own recognizance pending a preliminary hearing.
- The Worcester Gazette reports that Mrs. Herbert Moulton and Mrs. Charles Hopkins rode tandem tricycles from Medford to Worcester alongside their husbands, covering over 150 miles in three days, with Mr. Hopkins predicting tandem machines will grow popular despite makers having cancelled all new orders.
- Alfred A. McCurdy attempts to exceed 281 miles in 24 hours on a Star bicycle over a measured course in Waltham, covering 275 miles in just over 22.5 hours of riding but ultimately falling about two miles short of Hollinsworth's western record.
- After McCurdy finishes, F. W. Perry of the Massachusetts Bicycle Club rides his 55-inch Apollo with pacemakers and sets new road records: twenty miles in 1:12:35, and twenty-five miles in 1:32, bettering previous marks by Eldred and Hunger.
- Weekly list of U.S. patents granted for cycle inventions, covering an elastic tire (Barrett & Varley, London), a polycycle (Coudyser, Hartford), a velocipede (Waite, Hartford), a saddle (Fish, Newark), and a bicycle tire (Whiton, West Stafford, Conn.).
- Columnist "Daisie" argues that city wheelmen are wise to stay near Boston for day trips rather than surrender their machines for the country, and praises the handle-bar-steered Marlboro Club tricycle as especially well suited to ladies, noting Mr. Gaskell is selling them in large numbers.
- George W. reviews the Courier safety bicycle, imported by W. B. Everett & Co. and made by Singer & Co. of Coventry, praising its rear-wheel drive and small front wheel as making headers impossible, its hill-climbing ability superior to any machine he has ridden, and its steering quickly mastered after a brief period of adjustment.
- A party of twenty-nine wheelmen — including F. A. Elwell, E. G. Whitney, and others — leaves Boston by train for a tour through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a dispatch from Grand Falls reporting their arrival during a thunderstorm and three riders drenched after riding the train's cow-catcher.
- The Connecticut Bicycle Club of Hartford votes to table its motion to remove the L.A.W. clause from its by-laws, citing steps taken by L.A.W. officers to remedy the breach caused by Racing Board decisions that prompted the club's initial move to leave the League.
- George B. Thayer of Hartford, correspondent for the Evening Post, is mid-way through a transcontinental bicycle journey begun 10 April, having passed through New York, the Erie Canal towpath, Niagara Falls, Chicago, and Omaha toward Salt Lake City, averaging less than $1 a day in expenses.
- James Ricalton of Maplewood, N.J., an experienced traveller who has previously toured Iceland and Brazil, sets out through Russia in the interest of Outing magazine, carrying a self-built boat-tent-darkroom vehicle and a rifle, intending to photograph and report on his journey.
- Gormully & Jeffery have broken ground on a new Chicago factory — to be completed by late September — that will be the largest bicycle manufacturing plant in the world, capable of producing seventy-five bicycles a day and employing four hundred skilled mechanics.
- Robert Todd, Secretary of the National Cyclists' Union, writes to Racing Board Chairman Abbot Bassett confirming that the N.C.U. has recognised L.A.W. decisions in the past and intends to support the L.A.W. in every reasonable action taken to purify the sport, vindicating The Cycle's earlier prediction that the N.C.U. would not recognise the A.C.U.
- "L.W.S." recounts in the Washington Evening Star the Capital Club's excursion by rail and bicycle to Hagerstown, Md., joining a parade of 155 wheelmen from eleven clubs, with humorous episodes including an impromptu tenor performance on the train, five photographers discharging cameras at once, and a wild rush to catch the midnight train before discovering it left at twelve.
- "Hawkshaw" recalls the velocipede craze of December 1868 to spring 1869, describing riding schools with sawdust floors at sixty cents an hour, indoor championship races decided by who could cover a mile without falling, and his own venture taking six boneshakers to North Adams before the craze collapsed when machines proved useless on outdoor roads.
- H.J.L., writing from the Cyclist, argues that safety bicycles of the Bicyclette and Rover pattern can achieve true automatic steering — where a rider may remove both hands and feet on a downhill and the machine will balance and steer itself — through correct fork rake, and dismisses spring-assisted straight-line steering as a misunderstanding of bicycle balance.
- Miscellaneous short notes covering the League's new seersucker touring jacket at $5.00, Herbert W. Hayes's appointment as chief consul of Massachusetts, the amateur status of Rowe and Hendee under A.C.U. rules, R. J. Mecredy's three Irish championships, Furnivall's synovitis, G. P. Mills's John-o'-Groat's run, and various club and racing items from England and America.
- Race results from Newark (E. P. Baird wins Orange Wanderers' ten-mile road race in 36:51½, a potential American road record), Wilmington Del., Brooklyn, and Toronto, plus details of upcoming Berkshire County Wheelmen and Pittsburg race meets.
- Club news including officers elected by the District Wheelmen of Washington and the Berkshire County Wheelmen, and the formation of a new bicycle club at Jamaica Plain with thirteen charter members.
- Calendar of upcoming cycling events through September 1886, listing races by the Trojan Wheelmen at Troy, Chicago Bicycle Club, Iowa Division meet at Spirit Lake, Pennsylvania Division at Williamsport, Cleveland Bicycle Club, New York Division at Buffalo, L.A.W. tour from Rochester, and the Connecticut Bicycle Club at Hartford.