A Letter From The Publisher, Jun. 30, 1947

For three and a half years during the late war, William Dailey, now 23, a blue-eyed, dark-haired, happy-go-lucky Irish-American, had plenty of opportunity to get acquainted with his favorite vehicle: the motorcycle. As a member of a U.S. Army reconnaissance group for a tank battalion, his job was motorcycle reconnaissance ahead of the armor. It was an all-out job with an understandably final objective. “If we came back,” says Dailey, “they knew they could advance.”

Obviously, Bill Dailey came back—with one wound, a .45 caliber slug in the face, suffered in training in Kentucky, and a confirmed belief that nothing quite equalled the satisfaction of riding and caring for your own motorcycle. About a year ago he turned up at TIME with his machine, a recommendation from the Associated Press, and a conviction that it was time we hired a motorcycle courier. Our editors, recalling the days when copy boys disappeared for hours on their way to trains and planes with editorial copy and pictures, were skeptical. Dailey talked himself into a job, however, and the editors have been thankful ever since.

TIME’S editorial operation is geared to handle the vagaries of the news, which has no respect for editorial deadlines, and such high-speed devices as the radio, telephone and telegraph are generally equal to this challenge. Some of the critical materials we work with also use older, slower methods of communication. Newspictures, for instance, generally go by plane or train—as does background editorial copy designed to be kept on file until events make it news. Dailey’s job, in part, is to dispatch and pick up these slower moving materials with the least loss of time.

He now makes LaGuardia airport in an average 20 minutes (12 minutes, if pressed) with pictures and maps for the printing plants in Chicago and Los Angeles. He has yet to miss a plane. He meets trains, buses, ships, picks up urgently needed research books, out-of-town newspapers, late pictures from the picture services, etc.

Other divisions of TIME Inc. also borrow him in times of crisis — such as last week’s SOS from the Paris printer of one of our overseas editions for a plane-sped package of extender (ink dryer). He has even been useful in getting people to work. Recently, one of our researchers injured a kneecap and another, who had just recovered from a broken leg, offered to lend the invalid her idle crutches to come to the office on. Scorning a taxicab, Dailey strapped the crutches on either side of his motorcycle and admired the way people gaped at him in the streets. He would like to know, however, whether they thought he was already incapacitated or just using commendable foresight.

Dailey’s boss insists that Dailey’s motorcycle is an incorrigible piece of machinery suffering from perpetual hypochondria. It seems to need some new “indispensable” gadget every other week. To Dailey, however, it is the instrument with which he makes a living and nothing is too good for it. As a result, its own maker would have a hard time recognizing his product.

To date, Dailey has re-equipped it with 26 special features, including a high speed damper that controls the tension on the handlebars at top speeds; front and rear bumpers (Dailey averages a spill a week in traffic); aluminum cylinder heads for faster cooling, greater power; an extra footrest for relief on long trips; three special stoplights; $250 worth of extra chrome trim; and his nameplate (Bill) on the gas tank.

Aside from spending his spare time tinkering with his machine, Dailey passes weekends and vacations touring the U.S. (This summer he figures on making Yellowstone Park in five days. ) Occasionally, after an especially hard week, he has questioned the advisability of being a motorcyclist. At that juncture, his boss has a standard reply: he offers him a safe, steady, inside desk job. That is sufficient to send Bill Dailey off in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

Cordially,