Sidecar Sunday

Freddy Dixon breaking the sidecar speed record in 1923. The unnamed passenger looks completely underwhelmed- or possibly drugged.

Swap Meet Tomorrow!

Milton Ontario, Canada

Knapp's Roller Boat

From Willis Metcalfe, Marine Memories.  Picton Gazette, 1975.

In the late 1890's a Prescott, Ontario lawyer named F.A. Knapp contracted with the Folson Iron Works in Toronto to build an unusual ship of his own design.  It was a cylinder 22 feet in diameter and 110 feet in length, with both ends tapered to keep water out.  Two 200-horsepower steam engines were installed on a steel platform that rotated on circular tracts around the circumference of the cylinder.  Ribs or paddles were attached to the outside of the cylinder.  The idea was that the engines would rotate the whole cylinder, while remaining upright themselves and that when sufficient speed was obtained the cylinder would roll across the water like a rolling pin over pastry.  Knapp suggested that the engines would act like squirrels running in a rolling cage.  How it was to be steered remains a mystery.

The vessel was launched in Toronto in 1897, watched by thousands of residents.  Unfortunately for Mr. Knapp, the maiden voyage was not a resounding success, as it took almost five hours for the "Roller Boat" to cross one and a half miles of harbour.  Some wag suggested a change of name to "Knapp's Folly" and, to the inventor's chagrin, this became the name by which it was known.

Undeterred (and in fact planning for a entire fleet of such vessels) he managed to convince investors to cough up $105,000 on improvements.  The next summer, it set off towards Prescott at six knots, but ran aground several times and was eventually towed back to Toronto.  For three years nothing happened, and then Knapp decided it should be equipped with a screw at one end, and a bow at the other like a conventional ship.  It was never tested in this new configuration, but instead was left in the Toronto dock where it was particularly apt at tearing loose from its moorings during storms and crashing into other things as it was tossed around the harbour.  During one such excursion, it caused $250 damage to another boat,  and Knapp sold the Roller Boat to scrappers for $595 to pay for the damages. The "floating rolling pin" was never retrieved by its buyer, and eventually it sank at its moorings.  Some accounts say it was eventually cut up for scrap, others that it now lies under the Gardiner Expressway that runs along the lake in Toronto, but there are those who believe that it just rolled away and now lies forgotten somewhere on the bottom of Toronto Bay.

Gordon Johnston.  It Happened in Canada.  Scholastic-Tab Publications Ltd., 1973, 1977.

Housewives against Hitler!

1966 Ducati Mach1 specs

Chainsaws in 1978

Sears catalogue, Fall/Winter 1978

Corsair plane discovered at a yard sale!

Accurate description, but probably not what aviation enthusiasts were expecting.

Samuel Jacoff and his wife Sarah began manufacturing hacksaw blades in Pitssburgh in 1919.  In 1923, they moved the business to Flushing, New York to get closer to the New York market.  A fire destroyed their factory in 1929, after which they merged with the Great Neck Manufacturing Company in Great Neck, New York.  In 1941, they acquired a Pennsylvania hand saw company, and then moved the entire business to a new plant in Mineola, New York.  After World War II, Mr. Jacoff's four sons entered the business, and the business was further expanded when they bought Buck Bros., a chisel company in Milbury, Massachusetts and Mayes Brothers, a level company in Johnson City, Tennessee.  Mr. Jacoff died in 1971.  The company appears to remain family owned, and is still headquartered in Mineola.  

I don't often find Great Neck tools in Ontario, and the ones I have encountered (including the plane above--hollow plastic handles, of all things!) are of middling to poor quality.  The wrenches are particularly shabby.  However, I recently went into a local outlet store and discovered low-priced socket sets bearing this brand name, but unsurprisingly they are made in Taiwan and China.  As Aldo Gucci once said, "The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory."

Press cameras

Thomas H. Miller & Wyatt Brummitt.  Eastman Kodak Company.  This Is Photography.  Its Means and Ends.  Published by the Case-Hoyt Corporation for Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1945,  1952, 1955, 1959, 1963.

The kind that Alfred Eisenstaedt probably would have used. The authors write, "A press camera without a good lens would be an anachronism, a Rolls-Royce with a scooter motor."

Another job you wouldn't want to do: Routine Zeppelin maintenance

Jet Tales.  The Luft Hansa Magazine.  3/81.

Repairing the airship Graf Zeppelin over the South Atlantic in 1934.  Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, who would have had to be standing on the wind-blown airship holding his camera!  He was born in Germany but emigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and a year later became one of the original four photographers for Life magazine, remaining there until it folded in 1972.  At the time of the 1981 article, he had completed more than 2600 assignments and nine books, and Philip P. Kunhardt, Life's managing editor, commented that Eisenstaedt "surely recorded more famous people and great events than anyone else who has ever hefted a camera."

CCM Motor Bicycle

Canada Cycle and Motor was a bicycle manufacturer who did what so many other people did just after the turn of the century, get into the motorcyle market by installing an engine in a bicycle chassis. They used a Swiss Motosacoche 241 cc engine producing 1.5 hp. Unfortunately it was not a success, and by 1912 was out of production.

From The Spirit of the Motorcycle by Michael Dregni. 2000. Photograph by John Dean

Despite that though, motorcycling was alive and well in Canada by the second decade of the 20th Century, below a 1911 motorcycle display at Eatons department store and the Klondyke motor bike trials on Bathurst Hill in Toronto in 1912.

City of Toronto Archives

City of Toronto Archives