Hilary,
Your point about aluminum rims on British roadster bikes is well taken.
When I pointed to Mavic as a pioneer, I was thinking about the professional racing peloton. It appears that until the early 1930s, most (all?) racers still rode wooden rims. Then, within a few years, they all switched to aluminum rims, and at least in France, many (most?) used Mavic.
Among French cyclotourists, the Mavic rims had a similar impact, and wooden rims were passé within a few years of the Mavic's introduction. Steel rims continued to be used on inexpensive machines, of course.
I would be very interested to learn when Italian racers switched from wooden to aluminum rims, and what the British racers/time trialists used in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, the history of rims is not documented as well as that of derailleurs.
Between Italy and France, there appears to have been a lot of exchange in those years. Oscar Egg was the French distributor for the Italian Vittoria gear changer. When he introduced his "Champion," it was a close copy of the Italian system. His "Super Champion" was a development of that, and it equipped most French racers in the 1930s. When the Tour finally allowed derailleurs, everybody had to use the Super Champion, except the Italians, who were allowed to ride the Vittoria... All the bike companies took out patents in many countries to protect their inventions, so each new design had to circumvent the existing patents.
How was the exchange between Britain and the "Continent"? On the one hand, it has been my impression that the Continental influence was felt in Britain only after World War II, but on the other hand, you have British importers for Caminargents and other French machines during the 1930s... Were these ignored by the "mainstream" racing/time trialing community, or was the isolation less pronounced than we sometimes think?
The literature to which I have access is mostly French, so it is difficult for me to say whether something was happening simultaneous everywhere - say new aluminum alloys were available, and everybody used them - or whether something was unique. After the war, people like Daniel Rebour traveled to the bike shows around Europe (and even in the U.S.) and reported about products they considered noteworthy. There are Rebour drawings of Thanet Silverlights, of Holdsworth lugs and even an early Masi from the 1950s, which Rebour obviously liked. For the Campagnolo Gran Sport, the best information so far has come from Rebour. In Le Cycle, he documented the changes from year to year (with dates). Perhaps there are better sources from Italy, but so far, I haven't seen them.
Jan Heine
Editor
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