FYI,
I feel like I am being picked clean like a dog's bone. But that is the
nature of the beast.
Anyway, I found a copy of a Caminargent catalog on Joel Metz' site. A
British one dating to 1936. Take a close look at the crankset and blow the
PDF file up a bit. Looks like points to me and just like on the one I now
own. IMHO
http://www.blackbirdsf.org/
Edward Albert Chappaqua, New York, U.S.A.
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> wrote:
> In the hopes of advancing the dialogue on dating the Stronglight 49D
>> crank through it's unparalleled history I've uploaded a collection of
>> photos that will hopefully illustrate most if not all of the general
>> variants that can be seen and perhaps referenced to provide examples
>> useful to this end.
>>
>> http://picasaweb.google.com/
>>
>>
> None of the cranks on your list appear to be pre-war, from my quick glance.
> Compare to the LEFT crank of the bike in the auction. (The right crank is a
> post-war model - I just noticed that now.)
>
> ebay 370196769044
>
> The 49D is to me the ultimate single component spanning the on-topic
>> era of the CR list. In terms of longevity, performance and utility, I
>> can think of nothing that comes even remotely close. First built in
>> the 1930s and still almost fully competitive with the most advanced
>> current gear. If you told the people that built the first example that
>> their design wouldn't be significantly bettered in the following 70
>> years, I wonder what they'd have thought?
>>
>
> That is a good question. Who were the engineers? How did they manage to get
> it so right, on the first try? There is one other product that compares, but
> never had the success of the Stronglight: the Nivex rear derailleur. The
> first ads from 1938 or so talk about constant chain gap as a key toward
> consistent shifting. That reads like something straight out of Berto's
> "Dancing Chain" in the chapter "How to design a well-shifting derailleur."
> Other makers took decades to figure this out, and Campagnolo's early Syncro
> shifting would not have been doomed if they had understood this in the
> 1980s.
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterly
> 140 Lakeside Ave #C
> Seattle WA 98122
> http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com