The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1896-09-17

bicycle will be unduly heavy; it must
be finished and polished with the ut
most precision and scientific accuracy.
or the bicycle will run hard and the
riders pleasure be diminished. So
much for the original design.
But the troubles only Begin when
the pattern bicycle leaves the design
er's hands In order to produce hi
cycles at the standard prices prevail
ing to-day they must be turned out by
thousands, all precisely alike. The
cost of dies, machinery and special
tools is very great, and this cost would
eat up all the profits were it not dis
tributed over many, many bicycles.
Think how difficult it must be to have
the nine hundred thousand pieces rep,
resented in one thousand bicycles pre-,
cisely the same as the originally de-
sigCed pattern in material, strength,
size and finish, and you will realize
what problem the bicycle maker has
to face.
Skillful engineers calculated the
strains to be borne by each piece in the
original model. If any piece in the
thousands of reproductions of this
model be materially weaker in any
way, the bicycle may break, just as il
might if the engineer made a mistake
ia the original. If any piece be not as
accurately finished as the original, the
bicycle ceases to give pleasure.
OF course most makers of high grade
bicycles pay much attention to this
point, but it remains for the Pope Man
ufacturing Company, the makers of the
famous Columbia bicycles, to carry the
system of inspecting and testing to &
point where they are sure that every
part of every bicycle they make is as it
should be.
-Four years ago they organized as
complete a department of tests as is
maintained at any of the government
testing stations, and a newspaper man
who recently visited the great fac
tories at Hartford, Conn, found that
they had supplemented this by a sys-
TEN of 584 inspections, whereby every
piece of the bicycle goes many times
through the hands of expert men, vino
examine it with accurate gauges after
each operation, and instantly reject it
If it is not precisely up to the required
standard. All the material for the BIZ
cycles is ordered to accurate specifica-
tons, and the testing department sees
that in quality it accurately conforms
to the requirements.
There is much ingenious machinery
in this department of tests, and the re-
gDl+G from, fan,. E
1t have given surprising amount of in
formation which will be useful in still
further improving the bicycle. Deli
cate machinery registers the exact
amount of friction IN operating a BIZ
cycle under different conditions; an in
genious arrangement shows how long
steel tubing for bicycle frames will en-
dure the vibration to which a bicycle is
subjected on the road; another shows
how long a bicycle wheel of given con-
struction, or its rubber tires, will last
on the road. and other devices solve in
few hours problems that would take
months to determine exactly under
conditions of actual service. A COM
pIete chemical laboratory, too, is used
TO determine the quality of all the steel
bought by the concern.
1t is needless to say that only a con-
earn as great as the Pope Manufactur-
ing Company can afford to maintain
such an expensive testing plant. Or
J1narily, makers must depend upon the
GOOD faith Of those from whom they
%uy, and upon such tests as can be APP
piied without much cost. But the ac-
CITRATE, scientific method must be in
fnitely the best in the long run.