Transitions

TRANSITIONS

IGNITION

TOC

SIMPLY PUT, THEY'RE UNAVOIDABLE

KEVIN CAMERON

A detectable measure of conde scension creeps into the voices of parents and teachers when they say, "Transitions are not easy for children." But the fact is, transitions are difficult for all of us.

Back in 1926, former Canadian fighter pilot Alec Bennett won the Junior (350cc) Isle of Man TT on a Velocette-the first-ever TT win by an overhead-cam machine. The hard thing about transi tions is that we are already doing some thing when the new activity or mode presents itself, and we don't want to give it up, whether that means coming away from the TV when dinner is announced or adopting a new method of operating an engine's valves.

For 1927, AJS joined the trend to OHC but wasn't immediately successful (third in the Junior TT) and reverted to pushrod OHV the following year. In doing this, the company was going back to what it understood best. By now, however, Norton had shown that OHC was truly the wave of the future, and AJS now readopted overhead cams, coming second in the Junior TT and dominating the Ulster TT.

Ships made a similar transition. At first, steam engines used a lot of coal and weren't all that reliable, so early steamers had masts and sails, as well as steam engines. As more efficient steam engines became available, the auxiliary masts and sails became smaller and finally wasted away to nothing. Transition complete!

Motorcycles had done very well with simple three-speed transmissions for years, but in the later '20s, as engine power narrowed and top speeds rose, four speeds were required. True to form, some firms tried the newfangled four-speeds only to return to the tried-and-true.

Before World War I, the English Royal Navy was fueled by coal, which was securely available from domestic mines. But forward-thinking officers knew that petroleum contained far more energy per pound and could be efficiently pumped rather than shoveled into fireboxes. For senior men, "forward thinking" meant "unsound" because change itself was seen as unsound. Compromises were cautiously tried, such as spraying oil onto coal or carrying both coal and oil. Oil's big drawback was that it came from abroad, from places like Russia and Persia, where it was controlled by commercial agencies not reliably friendly to the Crown. Ultimately, England's global empire forced the change to oil. Oil-fired capital ships had longer range and could steam at higher speeds, essential to the maintenance of political power in faraway domains (hence the durable formula for colonial stability: "Give 'em a whiff of grapeshot").

From the vantage point of later history, we look upon these transitions as necessary and inevitable. But to those in their midst, unable to see the future, they were a time of confusion, even of fear. In the five years immediately following World War II, strange hybrid aircraft, such as the Ryan Fireball, were built with a reliable, mass-produced piston engine on the front, driving a propeller, and a novel unreliable jet engine in the tail (US factories built 812,000 of the piston engines from 1940 to 1945). What sound businessman, what career military officer, what ambitious engineer could say definitely what was coming next? High-temperature metals necessary for improved jet engines arrived much faster than anyone thought possible. Yet sensible conservatism led to half steps into the future, such as combining piston engines with power-recovery turbines driven by their exhaust or turbo-prop engines, powering aircraft a bit faster than those with pure piston engines but a lot slower than pure jets. Nearly all such half-and-half novelties were swept away by Boeing's all-jet 707 airliner. Transition complete!

Sorry, no such thing. The next transition is from metal airframes to carbonfiber-reinforced plastic. Or is it? Boeing's pioneering 787 plastic airliner has been delayed over and over, plagued with teething troubles. Of course, the future has to be with the new material, whose stiffness-to-weight ratio is so superior. But they've been saying that about aluminum automobiles for decades. And with cars, steel remains clearly dominant.

BY THE NUMBERS

POUNDS OF COAL NEEDED TO GENERATE ONE KILOWATT. HOUR OF ENERGY

0.56

POUNDS OF FUEL OIL NEEDED TO GENERATE ONE KILOWATT-HOUR OF ENERGY

1963

THE YEAR SAROLEA CEASED TO EXIST AS A COMPANY

Now, your magazine is in transition. How important will the Internet become in motorcyclerelated publishing? Twenty years ago, a futurist friend, speaking of the onrush of the Internet, said, "Print is dead. I give it six months." Then came the Internet bubble. Stock values of "idea companies" that manufactured nothing and delivered no services shot to incredible numbers. Then, as bubbles so often do, it popped.

Here we are, working hard to produce both print and Internet material. We're trying to appreciate what the future role of print may be and fathom how best to use the instant information delivery of the Internet. No one knows how this will unfold. Magazines such as Newsweek and Cycle News have given up print entirely. Is that the wave of the future? Or will readers still want the feel and substance of magazines and newspapers?

Only you, the reader, can determine what succeeds. This particular transition has never happened before, and so there is zero information. Internet publishers can use everything they upload as a nearly instant experiment—how many readers went to the page, how long did they stay, etc.—so there is continuous feedback. ("Hey, guys. We only got 12 hits on that item on the Belgian Sarolea, so you can roundfile the history thing.")

The Cycle World website gives us the feel of conversation with our readers, yet the traditions of print remain attractive. Print is a high-quality product. Much writing on the web gives the reader little confidence simply because it is full of misspellings and poor grammar. Or duz por speling just show the writer cares more about speed than fussy rules from English? That's a matter of taste, and it's changing with time. But we definitely need correct information. Who wants to be lying in a hospital bed, hearing a nurse say, "The doc said to give him see of methyl or dimethyl whatever?"

WE NTY YEARS AGO, A FUTURIST FRIEND, S P E AI< INC O~THE ONRUSH O~THE NTERNET, SAID, "PR NT DEAD. IVE IT Sx MONT-IS"

We need solid information, but we want it instantly, not after some Gutenberg copyedit process.

So it's complicated. We're trying things and guessing. Some media will guess right, and they will then write the success books on how to make the print-to-web transition. Then we will all say, "Of course! It's all so clear now!" EUi