The Motorist.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 835, 8 March 1906, Page 15

The Motorist.

(By

“Petrol.”)

MOTOR CAR BOOM. The Hon. A. Stanley, M.P., presided at the eighth annual dinner of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, held at the Hotel Cecil just before the mail left. The 564 persons who attended included Lord Suffield, Earl Russell, the Hon. Arthur Lee, M.P. (Civil Lord of the Admiralty), Mr. Whitelaw Reid (the American Ambassador), Sir Albert Rollit, M.P., Sir Hiram Maxim, and the Chinese, Ambassador. The chairman said that at the last dinner he had calculated that the motor cars to be sold in Great Britain during the ensuing season would amount in value to £3,000,000, but he could now say, from information obtained at the Olympia Show that the sales would come to more than £4,000,000 in England alone in the next year. Mr. Lee declared that if a motorboat could be produced' which could be propelled by heavy oil, he believed the Admiralty would adopt it, but until that essential was complied with his department would not be able to take up the question of motor vessels for the Navy. Major-General Benson, who responded for the Army, said that if motorcars could be mobilised at an hour’s notice to proceed to the coast at a rate of 34 miles an hour, they would

be very useful to the Army in case of an invasion of this country. Mr. Whitelaw Reid confessed that he did not know much about motoring, but he thought that the police of the country were not rightly employed in timing motorists who might possibly be travelling at a few yards per minute above the regulation speed.

TIME-RECORDING CAMERA

A time-recording camera which will prove of great utility in timing automobile races, where exactitude is such a great requisite, has been devised by two English inventors. The feature of the apparatus is that a photograph of the car is obtained when passing a given spot at a given time, recording the actual time to the fraction of a second. The shutter speeds give a rang;© of exposures from 1-25 of a second to 1-1000 of a second, while at the same time and with the same movement a photograph is taken of a watch, and in an opening above the latter, a card is inserted giving the date, which can be signed by the officer responsible for the time test. Underneath the dial is a numbering apparatus. The case is so made that after the official has placed the watch in the case it can be sealed up, and it is impossible to tamper with the watch without breaking and destroying the seal. The record thus procured can be referred to at any future time.

According to the English press, the most striking feature in, connection with the recent English general elections was the tremendqus use of the motor car for canvassing and polling purposes. In small provincial towns the whole populace turned out to watch the cars; whilst in London and the big cities thousands of cars dashed about in the interests of their respective candidates. In one instance a fleet of no less than eighty cars looked after the interests of one candidate.

Mr. Gus Elen, the well-known English artist, is an ardent motorist. He says: “I have accomplished to date something like 14,000 miles on my

Panhard Levassor car, and for the first 600 miles I have not once cleaned the valves of my engines, or unscrewed a single nut, which speaks volumes for these wonderful cars. My car is running beautifully. 1 have had eight chauffeurs, and discharged them all. On referring to my dictionary I find ‘ chauffeur’ is a small iron furnace, which evidently means something hot. If ‘ chauffeur’ is not spelt exactly as its English equivalent, it doesn’t matter much. H-o-t is certainly the way ‘ chauffeur’ should be spelt in the future, for he is decidedly a very ‘ hot’ person.”