...I'm building up a nice old Bertin for a friend and it has one shifter boss brazed on, and a the other shifter on a clamp that fits around the braze-on. It works fine, but why would you do this?

5 speed > 10 Speed

There's the right way, the wrong way and the French way.

I believe it's a holdover from the early days, when the front derailleur was operated with a rod on the derailleur...

My wife's mid 70's Peugeot UJ10 is exactly the same way even though I don't think the frame was ever used in a 5 speed configuration.

I added new downtube shifters for indexing and I was sort of perplexed about what to do. I ended up leaving the one braze-on in place to hold help hold the clamp up for the new shifters. It doesn't interfere with the cable but it does mean that the shifters are a tad higher than normal. It also looks a little odd.

Yes, I have seen other Peugeots here on the Forum with that wierd configuration. Why they did it that way is unknown, perhaps the frame was manufactured for 5sp only, then they decided to go with 10, and found it easier to come up with a clamp-on that added the other side?

I have a peugeot like that too. Some times I think the French just wunna be wierd

Concur.
The only Peugeot that's passed through my hands had the same deal.
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In France back in the 70's there was a subculture that championed a return to simpler bikes. To serve that type of customer and in an implicit acknowledgment of the suckiness of the Simplex front derailleur, French bike makers made it easy for owners to convert their bikes to 5 speeds. This was a forerunner to today's fixie craze.

Can you document this statement? While I agree with you on the plastic Simplex FD (I replaced my first one in 1974) the OP has Huret comps installed. Nothing wrong with the Huret FD, as my daughter runs one on her Ficelle (the Huret RD were the problem).
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I suppose I could come up with fake document that would support my completely fabricated explanation ;-)

You must be a marketing type

I still agree with you on the Simplex FD. I have an early '70s Dutch Raleigh in the shop I'm converting to a fixie on the "strength" of the Simplex drivetrain comps.
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This configuration was standard on the Peugeot UO-8/AO-8 until they went to stem shifters in 1974. It allowed the familiar UO-8 10-speed to share a frameset with a European 5-speed model and simplified manufacture and inventory control for the company. The single-boss configuration probably did start in the 1930s or 1940s with nonexistent or suicide front shifters, and it was easier to add an asymmetrical clamp than to add a left-side braze-on selectively.

When I converted my Peugeot to barcons, I had only one braze-on to knock off.

I have absolutely no complaints about the plastic Simplex FD on my Gitane, but I suppose shifting a 52-42 double isn't a challenge for any FD. It's not the common Prestige, it's a slightly upscale model with a chrome clamp and tire relief on the back side. It's still a simple plunger type, though. Competition? Criterium? I can't remember.

I took both Simplex derailleurs off my wife's bike. They functioned, but yikes, shifting was rough. Maybe they were better when new.

I also broke one of the pulleys while putting the rear wheel back on, then broke the other one shortly after I replaced the first with one off of a Suntour RD (good thing I already had an extra spare). I'd never had a pully break before.

nah. Shifting was rough new or old. until they broke. then it usually improved. Anyone have an extra one of these shifter clamps? I've never seen one before.

The origin of this probably dates back to lever front derailluers, an adaptation bit to bring cable shifting to existing bikes. While it is oddball, it does keep the clamp from sliding down which happens to cheaper clamps and or those without a brazed on bit to stop the slide. If you must braze on a bit there, why not make it useful?
Huret and Simplex made clamps to work with this.

I have a Bertin frameset that has this unit, a C-34, nice frame, rides beyond its Durifort tubing. The clamps surface on ebay from time to time, often with descriptions that only guess as to their purpose.

Very French. How can 19 million Frenchmen be wrong went the Huret advert copy, or something very close to that...

My first though, but wouldn't almost all bikes of that vintage have clamp on single shifters anyway?

Its a French thing... defies human logic!

My Peugeot UO8 has the same setup with Simplex shifters. Oddly, I've never seen any other bikes beside French ones from that period that have any shifter braze-ons at all. The French have always been weird. Just to be different I'd like to buy a new all-French bike today. Between Look, Time, and Mavic you could come close but there just isn't anybody making French a derrailleur/shifter any more that I know of.

My hetchins only had the right shifter boss. I am guessing that a cyclo front rod derailleur was pretty common, early on.

Seems to me that it can only be French weirdness....brazing takes time in the manufacturing process, and it appears from the comments that Peugeot and others used this config for some time (years). Since this was done on the entry level Pugs, you would think saving a couple of pennies would be high on the priority list - with this configuration you have to both braze (reasonably accurately) and still put on a clamp on shifter. If I wanted to save $ I'd delete the brazing operation and use the normal double sided clamp on. Hence, this is illogical, and therefore French!

Mark

ps. Anyone know of a source for the Huret shifter like in the OP's picture?

The boss acts as a stop for the clamp, so they would have to braze on a stop if they eliminated the boss.

I've got a NOS Simplex version of that one sided clamp if anyone needs it.