I did some quick research on Falck/Falk (AFTER I posted, of course) and found that I'm only partly correct (as usual). They have spelled it both ways, but the Family name is Falck and tho patron was originally from Alsace, the factory was/is in Italy. They were making tubing and other steel products for many years before they made bike tubing, even so there is some mention of thin-walled steel tubes for bikes mfg. by them in the '20s. It seems they continued production up through the '80s and at that point were making a DB chro-moly alloy tube, but they are beter known for '60s-'70s production of lower cost alternative to Columbus, but still lightweight, tubesets, including stays, of either carbon steel or prehaps chro-moly alloy, and apparently they did seamless as well as seamed/welded. Frequently Italian builders have used Columbus main tubes and Falck stays, so says the web. And it seems that I did remember one detail correctly, Masi and Cinelli have both used SOME Falck products in their output, the Cinelli model "B" is one known to have had at least some Falck content, and the Frejus Tour De France was perhaps all Falck tubing and highly regarded, Ochsner in Switzerland made a lot of Falck tubed bikes. I think any connection between Falck and Mannesman was conjecture that I just repeated, but there may be some truth to it, Mannesman is a very large and old enterprise...that's all I got.