I'm the Veteran-Cycle Club Marque Enthusiast for R O Harrison, and I've pointed out the discrepancy to the website owner, Peter Underwood. I haven't checked, but I believe he will have corrected the date to 1949 by now.
This model is, indeed to unique to R O Harrison, and it's yet another method of obtaining a short wheelbase (others being, for example, curved seat tube designs like Claud Butler, Jack Taylor and others, truncated seat tube designs like the Baines "Flying Gate" and Waller, split seat tube designs like Saxon and Claud Butler, and, no doubt, other variations).
The short wheelbase is intended to make the machine more responsive when climbing hills, and was sometimes marketed for this purpose and for short distance time trials, when the ride, usually reckoned to be more uncomfortable than a longer wheelbase machine, isn't an issue.
You may also have noticed that the Shortwin has a twin downtube, and this was claimed by the maker to provide better rigidity in the bottom bracket area.
If I might hijack your email, I would like again to ask any R O Harrison owners on the CR list to get in touch with me, since I am compiling records of known machines. I have a range of ROH catalogues from 1934 to the early 1950's, and I would be pleased to help with identigying and dating models.
Neil Foddering Weymouth, Dorset, England
>From: "Tom Sanders" <tsan7759142@sbcglobal.net>
>To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
>Subject: [CR]'49 R O Harrison Shortwin...what a strange seat tube!
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 06:35:09 -0400
>
>I am on the UK Classic light Weights site looking at a bike called a R O
>Harrison Shortwin. The year seems seems a bit uncertain being given in
>the
>URL as 1947 and on the caption as 1949.
>http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/ROHarrisonShortwin1947.html
>This has the seat tube joining the down tube a couple of inches forward of
>the bottom bracket shell. This gives a very strange angle to the seat
>tube.
>I am wondering if this is unique to this maker? Is there a logic for this
>arrangement that escapes me? Perhaps some of our Brit members has some
>light to shed on this? Never seen such an arrangement before.
>Tom Sanders
>Lansing, Mi