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Niotorcab Topics.

28th January 1909
Page 11
Page 11, 28th January 1909 — Niotorcab Topics.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

News contributions are invited : payment will be ma.le on publication.

Southampton Town Council is asking tenders for a new four-cylinder motorcar, to cost not more than £300 : a cab chassis might be the very thing.

The Unic Motor Cab Company, Limited, has been registered, with offices at 4 and 6, Copthall Avenue, E.C. The authorised capital of the company is ,,(30,000 A Severe Fine.

£20 and .475 ss. costs, or two months' imprisonment in default, is admittedly a severe penalty. It was required, on the 22nd instant, by Mr. Curtis-Bennett, when he convicted a driver named Dowdall for driving to the danger of the public. Sir John C. Bell, Bart., ex-Lord Mayor of London, was the complainant.

Evidence showed that Sir John Bell, at 7.15 p.m., was crossing Northumberland Avenue. He was knocked down and carried some yards, but, by clinging to the cab, luckily escaped serious injury.

An independent witness, Dr. 11. Randall Wadd, of Queen's Road, Richmond, himself a motorist, put the speed of the taxicab at from 18 to zo miles an hour : the defendant sounded his horn, but did not apply the brakes. The driver, whose evidence in his own defence appears to have told against him, was fined as related. It seems that he reckoned he had " a right to the road" when he had sounded the horn, but a driver must at all times give pedestrians the opportunity to get clear safely, and the hooter should be used as a reasonable means of warning—not as an order to run for one's life. A Pre-historic Taxicab.

A correspondent writes :--" The saying that there is nothing new under the sun 'is becoming, perhaps, a little trite, but never, surely, has it been so strikingly exemplified as in some reoent researches of Dr_ Giles, Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. This gentleman, while laboriously tracing the history of dynastic changes in the celestial empire about the beginning of the Christian era, was

somewhat nonplussed by frequent refer. ences in documents of this period to a strange vehicle which apparently possessed ingenious mechanism registering the distance over which it travelled. The learned professor has actually succeeded in unearthing a complete specification ' according to which it appeared quite feasible to reconstruct the true and original ' taxicab. These carriages date back to the Chin dynasty, which extended from the third to the fifth centuries A.D., and for the next thousand years, approximately, frequent allusions are made in native historic documents to the vehicles, which are lucidly. described therein—to employ a free rendering— as measure-mile-drum-chariots.' Full dotails as to their construction are found in histories referring to the years 1027 A.D. and 1107 A.D., definite information being given as to the number and position of various wheels, and the size and number of the cogs used to regulate and number their revolutions. These particulars being duly translated, were handed to Professor Hopkinson, of the Engineering Laboratory, who lost no time in constructing a model.

" For the benefit of your readers, I may explain that the Chinese unit for the measurement of long distance is the 'Ii,' which is equivalent to about 600 English yards. At the end of each

' a drum is struck, and at the completion of the tenth `Ii' a bell is rung."

We understand that a fully-illustrated translation of this remarkable specification is shortly to be published.


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