Steven is undoubtedly correct in stating that there was widespread use of aluminium rims before the 1930s. Many British roadster manufacturers - Sunbeam, Humber, Raleigh etc used Roman aluminium rims on their top roadster models in the seven to ten years preceding WW1. These rims continued to be made into the 1920s. They were a Westwood shape rim and were solid so were certainly not sophisticated. Constrictor however introduced an aluminium narrow aero section rim in 1927 - the first ones were solid but in 1933 Constrictor have them small box sections on the side much like a minature version of the corner box sections in Super Champion model 58s. The Constrictor rims were aimed at the racing and high end sports market and were really quite popular in the UK.
On to cotterless cranks - here I think the importance of Stronglight was not that they were the first with cotterless cranks but they were the first as far I am aware to market aluminium cranks with a tapered square fitting for AFTERMARKET use. The makes such as Taurus were only for use on their machines - and significantly it was Stronglight's design that became the de facto standard for cotterless cranks with a few exceptions for over 40 years. All tapers barring one or two rather rare exceptions are the same - the length of the taper varies and there are slight dimensional differences but the angle adopted by Stronglight remained the same on Campag, Shimano, TA, SunTour etc
Hilary Stone, Bristol, England
Steven Maasland wrote:
> I have been quietly letting certain known revisionists go on once more
> with their nonsense. But enough is enough. The main revisionist will
> undoubtedly claim, as is his wont, that he has qualified his posts in
> such a way as to make his answer truthful, but reality is simply not on
> his side.
>
> The first nonsense claim: "In the 1930s, it was Mavic who introduced the
> first aluminum rims that found widespread acceptance."
>
> Unless you have some twisted way of defining "widespread acceptance",
> Mavic was not the company to first introduce aluminum rims. Mention of
> aluminum rims dates back at least to the teens. They were common on
> roadsters in Italy from the late 20's onwards.
>
> Second nonsense claim: "In the 1940s and 1950s, the best bikes were
> equipped with Mavic, because their rims were the best."
>
> First of all, as has already been pointed out, this whole claim about
> being the "best" is nonsensical to start. To then claim that Mavic
> equipped the "best bikes" is utterly preposterous. In part, because it
> is not possible to define "best bike" and in part because Mavic simply
> did not supply anything approaching a number of bikes to be considered
> the supplier of even a significant part of the "better" bikes on a world
> scale. The fact of the matter is that the Europe of the 40's and 50's
> was made up of countries that generally had protectionist governments
> when it came to the bicycle trade. Duties were very high and there was
> virtually no international trade of bicycle parts, except in countries
> that were either very strong economically or had no or insufficient
> internal production. Mavic rims barely made it out of the borders of
> France. On the other hand, Clement, Fiamme, Ambrosio, Weinmann and
> Scheeren (among others) were widely sold outside of their countries of
> origin. The Fiamme patented eyelet reinforcement was commonly touted in
> foreign advertisements. Many competing rim manufacturers, both Italian
> and foreign, paid royalties to Fiamme for use of this feature. The
> preponderance of evidence would show that Mavic was little more than the
> best of the rest or perhaps among the best of French manufacturers in
> the 40's and 50's. Stating anything more is willfully misleading and/or
> inaccurate.
>
>
> A third quote made in response to Wesley's question: "Now that we seem
> to be entering the twilight of the reign of the taper square cotterless
> crank, I've been wondering about a couple of historical questions.
> First, did Stronglight originate the concept, and, if so, when? I'm
> guessing late '30's?" is terribly misleading inasmuch as it states that
> "Stronglight introduced square-taper aluminum cranks 1933 (...) I am
> sure there were others before, but they were not very successful. The
> Stronglight set the standard."
>
> Stronglight did not "invent" either the square taper or the cotterless
> crank as both of these ideas were already in use prior to 1933. Nor was
> Stronglight the first to successfully bring it to market, nor did they
> set the modern standard. Manufacturers like Taurus were continuously
> equipping all of their top of the line roadster bikes with cotterless
> cranks from the 20's onward. As far as setting standards go, Stronglight
> copied an already existing bottom bracket design with fixed and
> adjustable cups and axle and bearings, so nothing new there. They then
> used a square axle, so nothing new there. The only item that could be
> perceived as different is the fact of the taper fit of the crank on the
> square axle. In this, Stronglight has never been the standard-bearer as
> their taper was not widely adopted. In fact it is one of the less common
> tapers.
>
> Another fanciful claim is that Tullio Campagnolo took inspiration of
> "cyclotouring derailleurs and came up with his Gran Sport". If you look
> at patent documents, you will see that Campagnolo bought an Italian
> patent for a derailleur and that "his" Gran Sport was little more than a
> modified version of this first "modern style" Italian derailleur for
> which he was the holder of the patent. It had absolutely nothing to do
> with Cyclotouring derailleurs as such.
>
> Continuing on, there is the claim that Campagnolo paid "Fausto Coppi
> millions of lire to switch from Simplex". While the number stated in
> Lira would seem to be extravagant, it should be pointed out that 2
> million 1950 lira would be the equivalent of about $30-40,000 2008
> dollars adjusted for cost of living. So we are not really talking about
> anything out of the usual as there are many present-day cyclists of far
> lesser marketing value that get paid substantially more than this for
> their sponsorship support. The idea of Campagnolo paying Coppi to switch
> is as a whole correct but far from complete, as it was Lucien Juy of
> Simplex who first pulled the "sponsorship" card, long before Campagnolo
> even had the financial wherewithal to do the same. In fact, Campagnolo
> did not "outbid" Juy to get Coppi to switch in 1950, as Coppi received
> less money from Campagnolo than what he had received from Juy. It was
> sufficient that Campagnolo, a fellow Italian and highly respected among
> the racing establishment, could come up with a respectable counteroffer.
>
>
> Then you get to the oft-repeated but absolutely absurd comment that "the
> racers continued to ride cottered cranks, mostly because they offered a
> narrower tread (Q factor), for more than 20 years after Stronglight's
> cranks had proven themselves. See the archives for the discussion about
> why professional racers stuck to cottered cranks..." What careful
> reading of the archives will show is that there is apparently only an
> extremely small fringe contingent who claims this to be true. No
> widespread acceptance of this theory can be found anywhere, nor is there
> any commonly accepted logic to back this idea up either.
>
> Some people never learn and believe that saying things often enough will
> eventually make them become true.
>
> Time to go back into lurk mode.
>
> Steven Maasland
> Moorestown, NJ
> USA