The Wheelmen's Gazette, Vol 3, No 11
Articles in this issue
- Gormully & Jeffery Mfg. Co. of Chicago call the American Rambler the season's greatest success and undoubtedly the king of rear-drivers, the best hill-climbing crank machine ever produced, now ready for immediate delivery through Central Indiana agent H. T. Hearsey.
- Warwick Cycle Mfg. Co. of Springfield, Mass., advertises the Warwick Perfection Bicycle and the Warwick Perfection Safety as the wheels for 1889, a machine a lady can ride with ease and grace, and invites agents to send for terms, prices, and circulars describing the improvements.
- The Ware Manufacturing Co. of Camden, New Jersey, advertises itself as maker of the best and only perfect bicycle suspensory bandage manufactured, with prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50 each.
- Springfield Bicycle Mfg. Co. prints a series of enthusiastic customer letters from Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Illinois, and Wisconsin, each praising the Roadster's reliability, ease of running, and all-round road performance.
- The Clark Cycle Company of Baltimore continues its part-exchange offer for second-hand machines against New Rapid Roadsters, Light Roadsters, and Quadrant Tricycles or Tandems, urging riders to act before the limited allocation runs out.
- The King Wheel Co. of 51 Barclay Street, New York, promotes the King's lever drive as giving constant power with economy of effort, its treadles placed behind the hub to prevent headers, and liberal agent terms available.
- Charles Scribner's Sons announce the publication of the second volume of Thomas Stevens' 'Around the World on a Bicycle,' covering the journey from Teheran to Yokohama, with press reviews calling it intensely interesting and a valuable contribution to travel literature.
- J. K. Starley & Co. of Meteor Works, Coventry, England (late Starley & Sutton) advertises the New Light Rover safety as the first machine to cover over 21 miles in an hour, with American agents L. H. Johnson of Orange, N.J., Meacham Arms Co. of St. Louis, and R. D. Addis of Lincoln, Nebraska.
- A humorous sketch recounts a self-important amateur poet named Demitrus Jaques who visits the Gazette's composing room on press day and insists on reading aloud his cycling epic 'The Birth of the Bicycle,' a bombastic verse about Thor crafting a cycle from cyclones and lightning.
- Thomas Stevens recounts being escorted by Ottoman zaptiehs (military police) through Angora and Yuzgat during his round-the-world bicycle journey, describing crowds so dense the zaptiehs had to flog a passage through them, and a roadside race in which his bicycle outran a zaptieh's horse.
- Two Stamford, Connecticut cyclers ride out through Hubbard's Hill, Palmer's Hill, North Mianus, and Putnam Avenue to Greenwich and the seaside resort of Belle Haven-on-the-Sound, passing the Edison Electric Light Company president's summer home before heading back at dusk.
- Reprinted from the English Illustrated Magazine, H. D. Traill recalls the exhausting spectacle of hired velocipede riders at Blackheath on Easter Monday a generation earlier, comparing the ungainly 20-pound machine unfavorably to a fairly speedy donkey.
- A state-by-state roundup of club runs, races, and results from mid-October to November 15, 1888 — including the Wilmington, Delaware fair races, a Chicago six-day race at Battery D Armory, the Danvers Cycling Club's fall meet, an Orange Wanderers 24-hour road race, and English results for S. G. Whittaker, Albone and Tingley, and Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Smith's tandem record — followed by a calendar of coming events through February 1889.
- A compiled list of U.S. bicycle, tricycle, and velocipede patents issued between October 2 and 30, 1888, compiled by patent solicitor Jos. A. Minturn, including W. E. Smith's tandem bicycle assigned to the Smith Cycle Manufacturing Co. of Washington, D.C., and several patents assigned to the Pope Manufacturing Co.
- A list of British cycle patents from late August through October 1888, including J. B. Brooks of Birmingham's improvements to velocipede saddles and saddle springs, J. W. Richardson's apparatus for indicating the speed of bicycles, and the Quadrant Tricycle Co.'s improvements to rear-driving machines.
- Reviews three new cycling books: George Lacy Hillier and T. H. S. Walker's trilingual 'The Art of Training for Cycle Racing'; Karl Kron's self-distributed pamphlet 'Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle'; and volume II of Thomas Stevens' 'Around the World on a Bicycle,' published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
- A column of short club and trade notes — the Cyclists' Union of Long Island reaching 200 members, a stolen New Rapid bicycle belonging to C. E. Urbahns of Fort Wayne, the new Wissahickon Wheelmen of Philadelphia, and the Holyoke Bicycle Club's whist tournament with Chicopee Falls — followed by miscellaneous squibs on racers Rowe, Temple, and S. G. Whittaker, a Kansas City parade of 260 wheels, and a juvenile road race at Leeds won by 15-year-old A. Aldred.
- A satirical two-page feature pairing roughly fifty named racers and officials — including Wm. A. Rowe, Ralph Temple, Tom Eck, Karl Kron, Thomas Stevens, Col. Albert A. Pope, T. B. Jeffery, and R. Phillip Gormully — with mock-flattering literary quotations from Shakespeare, Byron, Dryden, and others.
- An instructional piece on mounting, dismounting, and braking the 'cripper'-type tricycle for beginners, followed by notes on Germany's roughly 64 cycle factories and 20,000 machines sold annually, and Professor Drummond's account of bicycle-friendly native footpaths across Africa.
- Gerald Stoney compares band-brakes and spoon-brakes on bicycles, tricycles, and tandems, weighing certainty versus cleanliness and recounting a near-runaway when resin melted on a band-brake descending from Glencree to Enniskerry.
- A humorous sketch, signed 'Pres. Merg.,' follows cyclers who dismount at a rural church on a hot July Sunday and join its shabby, melodeon-accompanied Sabbath school, contrasting the poetry of the 'village church' with its threadbare reality.
- A cycling melodrama in which Stanley Parr, spurned by Amy Fawcet in favor of the pedantic Professor Waldruff, races his bicycle to warn the household when the Merlinford reservoir dam gives way, then rescues Amy from the flood by carrying her on his wheel before both are swept into the river.
- A six-panel cartoon page lampooning an inept 'artistic' cyclist's mishaps on an ordinary, from a wobbly mount to a final collision with a picture frame.
- The Clark Cycle Co. of Baltimore advertises its 'King of the Road' hub and head lamps with the new 1888 improvements — detachable reflector, ruby side prisms, and leak-proof, non-vibrating construction — as sole United States agents.
- H. B. Smith Machine Co. of Smithville, N.J., advertises the Star bicycle's accepted world road records from 150 to 305 miles and safety records from 1 to 20 miles on the track, plus every hill-climbing contest and first premium won since 1881.
- An advertisement for the Gazette's own 50-cent Reference Book, containing biographical sketches of over 200 leading wheelmen, English and American record tables, a club directory, and 49 lithograph portraits of named racers such as Thos. Stevens, Wm. A. Rowe, and W. M. Woodside.
- The Peoria, Illinois dealer advertises second-hand bicycles and tricycles bought, sold, and exchanged, plus new Victor, Springfield Roadster, New Rapid, American Champion, and Star machines on easy payments at 8 percent interest, with juvenile wheels from $6.40.
- The Overman Wheel Co. of Boston rebuts a correspondent's claim that Victor Light Roadsters swept all 21 events at the Kansas City Tournament, pointing out the machines used were ordinary roadsters sold to riders, not racers built to win races.
- At Maine's first L.A.W. meet at Fairfield Park on October 11th, Columbia-mounted 'Pine Tree' boys carried the first and second men over the tape as winners in every event, including the half-mile and mile L.A.W. championships.
- H. M. Saben, Boston manager for the Rudge, advertises a few slightly shop-worn new Rudge Tandems, Rudge Humber Tandems, and Rudge Bicycles at a reduction, and invites inquiries from prospective agents.