A bit of instrument information from the Velobanjogent...The earliest use of a tachometer on a racing motorcycle?

I posed a question on a Facebook group site I run...Motorcycle speedos,tachos and other instruments  .... the earliest use of a tachometer on a racing motorcycle...? 
 I illustrated it with a French Jaeger tacho on Roger Loyer's 1933 KTT Velocette during the IOM Junior TT, but Andrew Rachstraw found a 1922 photo from Brooklands with a 494cc Douglas using what looked like a Smiths governor instrument clipped to the handlebar... well I searched though my 1919-20 and 1924 Smiths catalogues featuring the governor speedo and tacho...the only type Smiths offered at that time as it was not until the late 1920's they acquired the rights to make the chronometric from Jaeger (Paris) by purchasing the newly formed UK, Jaeger E.D. ( and renaming it British Jaeger around 1930). And there was the tacho drive..as illustrated and the tacho, obviously with likely a special dial face made probably to around 6000rpm. Illustrated is a dial from my master catalogue of when I printed dials for a 5000rpm gnvr tacho, My artwork was done from an original dial I had.

Roger Loyer astride his 1933 KTT Velocette at the IOM TT races of that year... the Jaeger tachometer is visible mounted low down near the front of the petrol tank and it is driven by a bronze tacho drive from the bottom magneto chain sprocket...

T.Eve on his 494cc Douglas in 1922 at Brooklands, UK...the tachometer is a Smiths governor principle tacho, unsure of the ratio or dial scale...

The tacho drive from a 1919-20 Smiths catalogue.... 

The Smiths "domeback" type governor tachometer and clip mounting to a motorcycle handlebar...

Tachometers from the 1919-20 Smiths catalogue...the latter mounting is for a car and attaches to the car dashboard.

 Illustration of the internals of the Smiths governor instrument showing the rotor which operates in the same way as a steam governor...the weights swing out as the cable speed increases and the collar at the top of the rotor moves down, and via a rocker arrangement swings the pointer around the dial face.

Above is an original Smiths governor dial face from the 1920's ...and the scale is non linear, which is a characteristic of the Smiths governor instrument. It makes calibration difficult.

The Jones mechanical Tachometer...one of the last maximum hand tachometers still around...part 2, calibration info from the factory....

As mentioned in the previous post on Jones  tachometers this second post contains the calibration instruction for the Jones centrifugal mechanical tachometer and completes the information I have on them.
They differ from the Smiths centrifugal speedometer and tachometer in the method of calibration and is more precise as a result. The Smiths instrument had a dial scale which was not linear whereas the Jones is linear. This meant the Smiths instrument had a series of different dial scales available as part of the calibration method, some seven different dial for their 60mph speedo for example...I will do a post on the Smiths centrifugal/governor speedometer in a future post...
Service Instructions for the Jones Motrola 5100-5200 series speedometer and tachometer..

The Jones mechanical Tachometer...one of the last maximum hand tachometers still around.....all the service and calibration info from the factory....part 1.

As some of you will have realised, perusing my weblog, The Velobanjogent was in the automotive, more specifically the motorcycle instrument business for over 30 years and during this time worked on just about all the various speedometers and tachometers that were used on vehicles.
I've done numerous posts on them from my personal memory and large archive of literature and photographs of automotive instruments....
I can't take them with me "when I leave this mortal coil" so I get great pleasure in sharing as much as I can....
What have I this time...?
The Jones Instrument Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut,USA were making speedometers from the start of the 20th century....

Pretty poor condition 1910 Jones speedometer....

Advert from the English "The Motorcycle" magazine, November 1908...

In 1986 I made a visit to Jones Corpn. in Stamford, CT after struggling with the repair and calibration of the racing tachometers I occasionally had pass through my instrument shop....so I was unsure what to expect when I went there, flying across the Pacific and the USA to visit them...they were more than helpful, no speedometer parts left and not prepared to sell parts for the maximum hand racing tachometers they still made, but quite happy to provide me with catalogues and the service/calibration sheets for these tachos....
Lets look for a start at a some catalogues from around the late 1960s
and 1980s....

Because of the number of pages in the repair/calibration manual I'll feature it in my next blog which as I'm off to Europe for 18days from the 21st March on another Velocette historical/archival foray will be mid April.....
The Velobanjogent is meeting up with some Velo friends in Germany and Holland and Dai Gibbison in the UK....
Pictured is myself with the guys with Gert Boll's rare mk.6 KTT Velocette in August 2013...

Gert, Carl,DQ,Heinz.....