Mike asked:
I have just bought a 1940s Italian frame with internally routed brake
> cable and derailleur cable. My question is when was this first done and
> by whom? So far the only other "old" bike I have found on the Internet,
> with an internally routed brake cable, is a 1950s Olmo on a German web
> site. Just goes to show nothing is new - just reinvented!
I don't know when they were first used, but by the 40's it was very common to route rear cables internally in Italy. Sometimes people would even do it on their own by simply drilling the holes in the frames, at other times they would use nice braze-ons. In the early 50's Bozzi catalog that Chuck sells reprints of, you can find the braze-ons on page 77 part 1895.
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Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ