Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1892 — GOOD-BY TO WOODEN WHEELS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOOD-BY TO WOODEN WHEELS.

Horsemen Are Having Their bulkier Altered to the New Style. There is a panic in the sulky market Horsemen are stampeding in the direction of the bicycle factories to get bicycle wheels and pneuaiatic tires. Two whole seconds for the mile have been stolen away from the old woodeu, lron-tlred, 64-inch buggy wheel by the lowly 30-inch bicycle wheel with Its fat tires. “There is a perfect avalanche from trotting-track headquarters,” said a carriage man to a Chicago News re. porter, as a race-track patron came In oarrying a sulky frame while a companion held a bicycle wheel In each hand. “The horsemen are trooping toward the sulky-builders’ shops to havo pneumatic-tired wheels fitted to tho old frames, for the sun has surely set upon the day of the old wooden wheel with Its Iron tire. About two weeks ago we fitted out Mr. Gerome’s sulky with the ‘blown-up’ tires and a trial on the Washington Park track had the effect to send other turfmen to me for a similar equipment. “It Is tho revolution of the trotting race and record,” said the carriage

SULKY WITH PNEUMATIC WHEELS.

builder, “and when I sart in the grand stand and watched Nancy Hanks go around the curves with tho wheels of tho sulky following as accurately as If they were running in grooves, I knew that there was record in those wheels.

“If I had been in tho sulky business when tho first trials woro made with the bicycle wheels I should have taken summary steps to patent a complete sulky with frame and wheels specially built, and had a caveat in work before an hour had elapsed.” The pneumatic-tired sulky follows the horse around the curves without tho slightest tendency toward “skidding,” and although it looks queer, the drivers say that the usual sliding and creaking of wheel parts is entirely absent, and tho long-endured jar has gono away to be hung up with the wooden wheels on a peg In the paddock. Tho bicycle riders are feeling badly in one sense and jubilant In another. They are now five and three-fourths seconds short of the horse record, toward which they have been striding for years, but they are entitled to the

credit of mating the pneumatic wheels and presenting them to their rivals, the horse men, thus helping to defeat themselves. Tho bicycle record has gono down one minute and forty-two seconds, while the horse record has been improved only eight seconds. The improvement of bicycle mechanism has, however, been largely instrumental in the marvelous improvement of speed, ajid yet, under the same conditions, with the pneumatic tire, in two years 2:20 has given place to 2:11. The original adaption of the bicycle wheels to the sulky frame was by Sterling Elliott, the maker of hickory blcyles at Newton, Mass. The regulation steel bicycle wheel is, however, perfectly adapted to the purpose.

RIVAL OF THE NSW SULKY.