In response to the Jan's posts about wingnuts and quick releases, I will stay away from the former topic as it would be way too easy ;-) however, as far as the latter topic, I have a completely different understanding.
Jan claims that original pre-1950 Campagnolo Q/R skewers required tools to loosen off the nuts to adjust the width. It is my experience that this is not true in the least. Being pedantic, I believe that one can readily see that the sole nut used on the Campagnolo Q/R that can be adjusted with a wrench or tool, is the one holding the lever in place. These nuts have absolutely no impact whatsoever to skewer width. I therefore guess that Jan meant to write "frankenstein" bolts, but even here I feel that his interpretation is incorrect. These two bolts, found on early Campagnolo Q/R, that I suppose resemble those seen in Frankenstein's neck, thread into the cone-shaped skewer lock nut. Between the tip of these bolts and the skewer rod there is a brass disk. When you snug down the bolts, these disks prevent the bolts from both damaging and making a solid lock on the skewer rod. You can therefore still turn the skewer lock nut. You can still adjust the width to make up for a 1 mm width difference in dropout thickness. This slight adjustability was apparently deemed sufficiently important to encourage Campagnolo to use this more complex and costly solution over that of two counteracting nuts on the skewer itself (a bit like the cones and lock-nuts on the axles) In fact, in the patent application, it uses the verb 'bloccare' to describe the bolts action. 'Bloccare' is defined in the Italian dictionaries that I have at hand as: the arrest, immobilization or interruption of function or movement. The same dictionaries state that 'fissare' means to locate and/or apply in a stable manner by means of the occurrence of one or more points of contact. Had the goal of the bolts therefore been to make a solid, stable lock, Campagnolo should have used the word 'fissare' as it is the sole one that correctly describes a stable, unchanging lock. The word 'bloccare' has a meaning that indicates a more transitory locking. To therefore ascribe the delayed universal adoption of the hub Q/R to a problem with adaptability to drop-out thickness seems to be rather naive. Beyond which it should be pointed out that to this day, there is no standard drop-out thickness, nor has there ever been one. I measured some of my bikes and simple differences in paint and chroming alone account for at least 10% variation in actual drop-out thicknesses, when comparing bikes that were built with 'identical' dropouts.
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
USA