Chuck Schmidt wrote: "...Bob, I was wondering when you say "for many more years" what years are you referring to exactly? Also, I would like to hear what Aldo Ross has to say since he has studied the the contemporary magazines so closely. Aldo, what was the last pro race you've seen photos of with wing nuts on the pros bikes?"
Chuck, I know I saw them still used in the early 1950s - on one of Kubler's bikes in the TDF, c.1950, for example. And I believe they were still common in some of the smaller British races for more years still - especially when not heavily subsidized/sponsored by the big names, like Campagnolo. Perhaps they were very VERY expensive options and therefore took much longer to trickle down to even the nicer production bikes available to the general consumer. I have still seen wingnuts used on high end bikes in mid-1950s catalogs. And, my impression was that q/r skewers took even longer, say into the 1960s, to become widely available on the somewhat lower tier racing bikes available to the retail consumer. Of course this is my "perception"... I could be entirely wrong. I'll see if I can find tacit examples, but I'm quite sure wingnuts were still prominent on even the nicest French touring bikes (eg. Herse, Singer) for many years after they became more commonplace on comparably costly Racing bikes. French stubbornness perhaps?
Bob Hanson, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA