I just finished the Campagnolo 75 years of cycling history. I nicely written & illustrated book. Tullio was an interesting man. He was a great engineer, salesman & full of Italian pride. Valentino, on the other hand, would be just as happy building washing machines if that were the family business. The book also seems to bleed animosity towards Shimano because they copied the quick release that Tullio invented almost 50 years before.

Any one else get the book for Christmas?

I wish I had, and thanks for the tip. Barnes & Noble, here I come.

I haven't read the book but patents are good for 20 years. Other companies were using the design other than Shimano when the patent expired. And the Grand Sport parallelogram RD, the thing that gave Tullio his greatest success, was not his design.

I've heard disappointing reviews on the book. Someone here, perhaps? I can't remember.

BTW, It's $40 shipped on eBay.

I bought it for myself through work on my last personal parts order. It is disappointing if you ask me. Many of the illustrations are very poor quality. The editor of it should be fired. There are spots were a section starts off in the middle of a sentence. It also jumps around a lot with no real order to it so that makes it a bit harder to read.

IMO Shimano was the Best thing that happened to Campy from the customers standpoint. It forced them to be innovative again after building basically the same groups for 20+ years. Sure it took away market share they thought that they had a stranglehold on but without Shimano they might still be building Nuevo Record and Super Record.

Campy has had to work like hell to catch up with Shimano and then remain competitive with their innovations at the high end. Good for the customers and bad for Campy costs of doing business.

Shimano's old pricing policy to bike manufacturers was challenged by SRAM and declared illegal as I recall. That could be a sticking point for Campy I suppose. None the less Campy has survived and thrived while Shimano has put practically every other complete group or derailleur manufacturer out of business except SRAM. What was dozens of manufacturers of components and component groups has basically become three.

I intend to get the book but do not have it yet.

I bet redxj would give you a deal on a slightly used one.

Most of the old equipment did look as though it were just pulled from a parts bin. I was puzzled that they could not get better examples of not so rare parts to photograph. redjx is right, the set up is sometimes odd. All in all the info is there & worth a read.

I'm sending my copy back to Amazon, horrible job in my opinion. I was expecting a detailed and well-photographed history of the product lines to be included, but there is very limited info. Bicycle Quarterly gave it a bad review as well, citing many factual errors within. I was also deeply disappointed in the poor photo/print quality. Campy deserves better.

The book really tries hard, as it should, to pump up the Campagnolo name. I think that they tried a bit to hard & it somewhat backfires. The history is somewhat selective & revisionist. As I stated above Shimano is belittled over & over. I left with the impression that Campy died along with Tullio. The company has been trying to survive on his legacy sense. I think the book is a pretty good fit with the modern company called Campagnolo.
I had that bias before i read the book so others will probably come away with a different story.

[QUOTE=redxj;8084447]I bought it for myself through work on my last personal parts order. It is disappointing if you ask me. Many of the illustrations are very poor quality. The editor of it should be fired. There are spots were a section starts off in the middle of a sentence. It also jumps around a lot with no real order to it so that makes it a bit harder to read.[/QUOTE]

(Sounds a bit like the 1970's Campagnolo Gran Sport & Valentino derailleurs!) - and I'm a Campag fan !!!

Santa brought me a copy, I think he got it from the amazon. Anyway, has some good information, and some glaring errors, and variable photography, too bad it was not printed in Italy as there are many great printers there, but the quality of the contents is on par with the printing.

A comprehensive history of the company or even only the the bicycle product line, would be nice, would be a multi-year, multi country effort though. Some significant collections exist in Japan as well as a number of tribute specialty magazines over time.

The book is politically correct in that it skirts the slant parallelogram Suntour mechanism except as from Maeda Industries. Too bad it did not play up this, as a great idea does not continue to keep a company alive.

Some Italian companies such as Olivetti have done a great job of tracing their design histories, and maintaining archives. I think a better idea of the Campagnolo histroy can be found from the CD rom archive of Campagnolo patent applications that a company was selling some time ago, now there was a great insight into how desperate they were in the 80's to figure out how to move forward before the Suntour patent ran out. There is some pride there showing, it could have been much more prudent to strike a deal with them at the time, Campagnolo did have to pay royalties to Look for a time, ater the SGR flopped.

The book suggests that Shimano is only good at copying others ideas & not inventing new ones. Shimano was a fishing & golf club manufacturer that also makes bike parts. Shimano's success was mainly due to their cheep asian labor. Shimano has it's place on lesser bikes.
These statements may be true on some small level they are however not an accurate portrayal of the company & it's achievements. I can't say they painted Shimano in any positive way.

It didn't get a very good review in Bicycle Quarterly. Among other things, the reviewer said several images were simply ripped off other websites and there were many historical errors.

Shimano has been manufacturing bicycle parts for longer than Campagnolo. Shimano started as a bike company.

I've heard that a couple individuals had their lower resolution photos simply STOLEN outright off the internet... And, they would have gladly offered much better quality photos - for FREE - if they had only been asked.

I have only browsed through the book for a couple hours one afternoon, and I quickly decided it would be a disappointing purchase. Personally, I would have been more interested in a more formal scholarly look at the components as they evolved... But, this was intended as a more casual read and not really organized to even focus primarily on components. Actually, I could not see any specific focus at all, just a mosaic of disconnected observations concerning any and all aspects of the Campagnolo legacy and with fragments of the technical history necessarily inserted... which even I had also noticed were sometimes incorrectly cited!

I agree with redxj that it seemed just carelessly tossed together in considerable haste and without any apparent proof reading. This is pretty inexcusable considering the many far better quality but less hyped books which have been printed in the English language in China where there would certainly be a MAJOR language barrier for the printers to cope with.

I'm clearly coming from a different discipline than the Italian journalist hacks responsible for this book. I was truly shocked with the lack of any acknowledgments offered - even as simple end note photo credits, which would have been easy to add, and not as distracting in a general interest tome as formal footnotes might be. Maybe that is just an observation on modern journalistic "style" - which allows anything to enter tabloids without benefit of verification, authentication, and certainly without requesting permissions. Just a quick spatter of ink on the page and a gamble that there will be no formal court actions in time to slow publication deadlines. I will certainly remember the authors of this work as names to be avoided in any future publications they may attempt.

And, above all, SHOOT THE PUBLISHER! ... THAT is where any of the carelessness should have ended in the first place. Even a High School newspaper editor would have required a simple proof read before allowing the final release of this book into the International marketplace. I am almost surprised that the (generally litigious) House of Campagnolo was not actually offended by this careless book. But, I suppose any kind of a printed "Tribute" is worth casting a blind eye in that direction simply for the Free advertising which would be gained. ~ How sad.

I will sadly have to agree with Mr Stronglight above. I will send my copy back to Velopress with a lot of red markings in it!

This is true. My friends Jeremy's wife was the photographer who took the shot of the woman wearing the Campagnolo belt buckle. They took the picture off her flickr and cropped the watermark out.

here is the image in question
here it is on her flickr

As I have mentioned in another post, the failure of

"THE ART OF WHEELBUILDING", by Gert Schraner

(backed I believe by D T) suffers from the same mindset.


Regards,
J T

For anyone who hasn't read this, "The Dancing Chain" is the best book I have found about derailleur development and the competition between the different companies from the 30's through the 90's. It's very well researched and the illustrations and photos are eye candy. I keep going back and reading chapters, it never gets old. This book is of the quality I had expected for the Campy book.

https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Chain-...0485089&sr=1-1

SHOULDA, WOULDA, COULDA . . .

Frank J Berto, the author of "THE DANCING CHAIN", and

"COMPLETE GUIDE TO UPGRADING YOUR BIKE", among

more books and periodicals than one can shake a spoke at . . .


Beyond the above, he is one who gives a fair report with his

writings and goings on. I mention this even though he perfers

the "S", company over

CAMPAGNOLO !


Regards,
J T

Once again I will have to agree with the above, "the dancing chain" is a great book.

Whoa there with the congrats on "The Dancing Chain". It is chock full of errors and was not written by Frank Berto, but rather by three authors each writing their own part. The part compiled by Frank Berto is the part where I found the most errors, even though being the newest part it should have been the easiest to get right. I was gifted a copy of the first edition by one of the co-authors. I then bought a second edition hoping that the numerous glaring errors had been corrected, but found very little to have been modified. I therefore sold it onwards to somebody else. I also found it in very poor taste that the name of one of the co-authors was removed from the second edition after his death. Notwithstanding the many errors, it is still a noteworthy book and valuable to the average collector. Just don't put too much value in everything that is said. I rate "The Dancing Chain" as head and shoulders above the Campagnolo fluff piece that was put together by two rank amateurs and journalistic thieves. The pitiful accuracy of the Campagnolo book is all the more glaring because the authors are supposedly "true" journalists (In Italy, there is an "ordine dei giornalisti" or Order of Journalists, which requires certification and examination for admission.) I guess they both missed the parts relating to quoting your sources and respecting the work of others.

CdM, I agree with several of your comments regarding "The Dancing Chain" but I thought that a significant improvement in accuracy had been made with the second edition. The Dedication, Acknowledgments and Introduction note the various contributors fairly well. Arguably, it would have been better if Ron Shepherd had still been listed as an author though.

I also read the comments about the poor quality and the stolen pictures, hence i will not buy it.
If you want a "coffee table" book about racing bicycles history of very high quality, check out "The competition bicycle" by Jan Heine, i have a copy and love it...