I brought a bivalent style hub to le cirque, that you can see in the first photos found at:
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/
I had surmised that the hub had predated the Cinelli ones and was hoping to find out more information about them. Hilary's keen eye pointed out that the freewheel spacing wouldn't have allowed anything more than a 3 or 4 block freewheel. So the educated guess was that it would indeed predate the Cinelli bivalent hubs which were officially launched at the Milan trade show in late 1963.
I have now found some corroborating evidence that would point to the fact that these hubs were Edoardo Palladini hubs and date from 1949! Quite impressive when you think that they have a full alloy shell and predate Cinelli by 14 years. Some of the engineering is actually better than the Cinelli design.
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Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ