Originally Posted by Trakhak

That adaptor-on-the-pedal-screw trick takes me back.

I notice that all of the adapters pictured so far are the short version. In the mid-1960s, when I started riding racing bikes, the common Presta adapter was about a cm taller and would have been the standard version in Europe. But some, maybe most, ignorant American would-be racers (I include my 13-year-old self and the guys I rode with in the local bike club in that category) assumed that Presta valves worked like Schraeder valves and so insisted on short adapters where you could see the top of the valve stem. So the longer adapters eventually disappeared from the bike stores.