ROAD PARADE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 516, 27 April 1933, Page 3

ROAD PARADE

VETERAN MOTOR CARS 1

INTERESTING MECHANICAL GHGSTS OF THE HIGHWAY. MACHINES OF OLD. The road parade of veteran motor cars arranged by the Light Car Glub of Australia will revive interest in such ancestors of the motor car as the bicycle and velocipede (writes John Kinsley in the Melbourne Augus). Although .a three-wheeled steam road carriage was run hy Nicholas Cugnot, a Frenchman, in 1770, and the nineteenth century saw many such coaches careering over the roads of Europe and America, modern motoring began with the twentieth century. In 1900 England pioneered its famous 1000mile road test for motor cars. How crudely th'ose early mtors were constructed, in eomparison with the exquisite a.ccuracy and efficiency of the cars of to-day, may he gauiged from a critical snippet from a grave English journal of the time. "On the whole," it remarks in reviewing the historic road run, "the opinion .of the general .public with regard to motor cars is that they are very fast between .braakdowns, but that th'ere is too much noise, smell, and general unreliability ahout them." The piquant paragraph reminds us of the progress that has heen made since. The motor car, which slowly won the approval of a suspicious publis, has at lea,st cut out its own high niche in the hall of vehicular fame. Australia, in its eomparatively short history, has seen several radical changes. in traffie modes. Before motors, hansom cabs, or even "fourwheelers" . fLashed ahout our streets, we had the roaring coach days, and the more remote bullock team and dray days of the diggings. Only a few years ago the country coaches of Australia disappeared before the speedier (and more eomfortabla motor bus.

Built in 1905. Among the cars entered for the veteran road run in Melbourne is the first car built in Australia — a Tarrant, of 1905. Others now being doctored for the display are single-cylin-der, tiller-steered contraptions of 1902. A visit to the Melbourne Museum well repays any person who wants a plain epitome of the progress of evolution of the motor ca.r and its kindred road vehicles, with' samples illustrating the^ successive periods. Until abont 27 years ago the hansom cab — cahriolet, to give it the full title — was the f.astest vehicle on the road. It celebrated its centenary in 1923, and although a few hansoms still ply for those who fa,ncy them, the type has mainly gone the way of the sedan-chair and the landau. The British Museum treasures a hansom cab as &, venerahle relic, where it keeps company with the mummies and the mastodons. Just as the motor car beat the cab at its own game, so did it soon outrival the bicycle. Middle-aged citizens whose minds go back to the 'nineties remember how firmly established a.t that time was the "push hike." Sedate business men thus rode to and from business. Holiday aristocrats in knickerbockers and Norfolk jackets pedalled farther afield. During his 1895-1900 regime 'as Victoriap Governor, Lord Brassey frequently took a spin along St. Kilda Road .and some highway s in other parts of Victoria. The pedal bicycle may not regain such .patrician heights, but is is rightly regaining much p'opularity to-day. In hard times which call for simpler plea.sures, Victoria has more than 110,000 "push" cyclists. At the Melbourne Museum there is a splendid specimen of the -old "boneshaker." Joseph Harris, who died in England in 1927 at the age of 86, was the inventor of the Braille writing frame for the blind: He also claimed to have invented the first "boneshaker" bicycle . in 1867. But such machines were I known before that. In 1840 pedals were fixed to the front wheels of the still oldex velocipede, or hobby-horse. That takes the inquiry into a f ascinating field. Gruickshank, the satirical artist and cariaturist of the late nineteenth century, has left us several pictures of these velocipedes, which were the fashionahle instruments of exercise for the dandies of his day. According to his sketches, the gay young bloods of the town rode their dandyhorses round .a,nd round a tanned ciri cus, as if they were horses at a riding school, while near hy stabled horses snorted with wrath. The velocipede was propelled hy kicking the feet on the ground. The modern bicycle resembles the original velocipede more closely than it does the later development of the "boneshaker," or other types with' one large wheel and one small wheel. In fact, the first great_ adv.ance, in the construction of the bicycle1 was when the old "p enny-f arthinig" type— apt to turn a somersault at the slightest provocation — gave way to the safety build. Its next triumph was the introduction of the pneumatic tyre. • It is difficult to say who actually invented the air tyre. About 1845 when pedalled road machines ^ were serving their nncertain apprenticeship a hollow tyre for wheels was patented. But it was left to Dunlop to improve the idea for bicycles. Before that the rims of bicycle wheels were wood or iron, often without even a thin tyre or hard rubber. The modern pedal bicycle is the original velocipede brought up to date with: crank, air tubes and isprings. Although the old velocipede was clumsy, and often undignified, it was not disdained hy the elect of society or of science. Mi- . chael Faraday rode one, and it was the French Baron Drais who is supposed to have introdueed the velocipede to Enigland in 1818. Velocipedes were once manufactured in Australia entirely of iron. But the motor car, now the fastest land vehicle, can race at a speed that would have made a nineteenth century velocipede-rider gasp. Opinion ,a.pparently diifers upon the hlessings of speed. One cynic derides speed as "a mad metho wherehy you miss as much as possible between starting point and destination." But there is something m Macaulay's belief that of all inventions the alphabet and the printing press excepted, "those that have shortened disitance have done most for humanity." Both the cycle and the motor have rendered such' seryice, and the veteran car run in a few weeks may help us appreciate how road vehicles and roads have improved in recent years.