John,
La Pedale Touristique was started sometime in the 1930s, folded around 1937 or 1938. Some of the people seem to have gone on to Le Cycliste or L'Auto. It was a weekly publication, thin at 8-12 pages. Mostly news about rides, reports on travels (some quite fascinating), a few nice ads, and once in a while, some technical stuff. It took me a long time to find a very incomplete set, at a very high price! I guess it being thin, rather than a "real" magazine, made people not keep it after they were done reading it.
BTW, at the VBQ web site, there is a glossary (http://www.mindspring.com/~heine/bikesite/bikesite/glossary.html) that has some info on things like these.
Jan Heine, Seattle
>Jan,
>
>Until I read VBQ I'd never heard of La Pedale Touristique. I'm guessing
>this is a magazine that no longer exists, correct ? Are old ones hard to
>find ? When were they published ?
>
>John Price
>Denver CO
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jan Heine [mailto:heine@mindspring.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 10:56 AM
>To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>Subject: [CR]How old are square-tapered BBs? Answer...
>
>
>As far as I can ascertain, Stronglight were the first to offer square
>tapered BB spindles (and cranks to go with them) in 1933. In fact,
>this was Stronglight's first product. For detailed quotes, see
>Vintage Bicycle Quarterly No. 4, p. 4-5. These cranks quickly were
>adopted by the French cyclotourists, influenced by the technical
>trials, where these cranks proved their durability and performance.
>
>There may have been others, but Herse is the second French one
>mentioned, introduced in 1938. See VBQ No. 4, p. 16-17.
>
>Together with the alloy cranks (later called 49D), Stronglight also
>introduced a traditional steel crankset for cottered BBs (shown in
>the same ad in La Pedale Touristique quoted above). Racers didn't
>adopt the square tapered spindles until the 1950s, so Stronglight
>probably wanted to capture some of that market, too. I read somewhere
>(Le Cycliste, 1930s?) that the racers' reluctance was due to the
>higher Q factor of the alloy cranks (which by modern standards were
>super-low, but times change).
>
>There were several attempts at splined BB axles. I have a Gnutti
>crankset from the 1950s (?). Anybody got an axle to go with that?
>
>Jan Heine, Seattle
>Editor/Publisher
>Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
>http://www.mindspring.com/~heine/bikesite/bikesite/index.html