The international travelling pass of 1909

Before the Paris convention of 1926 bound its first states on 24 October 1930, a motorist who took his car abroad carried the international certificate of the convention of 11 October 1909, known in Britain as the International Travelling Pass: issued for a year, it covered the car as well as the driver, and the car was described in it.

Annex A of the convention gives the whole booklet: a title page (valid in every contracting state for one year from the day of issue, where and by whom it was issued); an inside sheet with the car (owner, kind, maker, type and number of the chassis, cylinders and horse-power, body, seats, weight unladen, registration) and one or two drivers with their photographs; one such sheet in the language of each other contracting state (Annex B); and a last sheet with the customs' visas of entry and departure, the exclusion of a driver and the admission of a new one. Bearer prints the title page, the sheet in the pass's own language, one sheet in its other language, and the last sheet.

Bearer makes an investigator's papers for Call of Cthulhu and any 1920s or 1930s tabletop campaign: the passport a consul would have filled in, with the visas and frontier stamps a campaign leaves in it, and the permits, certificates and tickets of the period, to print or to share.

An example

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The paper

The same paper elsewhere

• Driving permits by country

Still to be confirmed

• Annex B asks for one inside sheet in the language of each other contracting State; Bearer prints one, in the other language of the pass. What would settle it: a certificate issued under the convention of 1909, with all its sheets.
• the list of the contracting States is left for the office to write, as the model leaves it. What would settle it: the ratifications and accessions to the convention of 1909, year by year.
• the size of the booklet. What would settle it: a certificate measured.

Sources

• Wikimedia Commons (British Treaty Series print), Convention internationale relative à la circulation des automobiles, Paris, 11 octobre 1909, with Annexes A (the model of the Certificat international de route) and B (its languages), French text and English translation, art. 3: international travelling passes drawn up in the form and giving the particulars annexed (Annexes A and B), valid one year from the date of issue, the manuscript entries in Latin characters; Annex A: title page (Circulation des automobiles, Convention internationale de 1909, Certificat international de Route pour la Circulation temporaire à l'Étranger, valable pendant un an, Délivrance du Carnet: Lieu, Date, signature of the authority or of the association empowered and its visa, Ces États sont); the inside sheets (Indications relatives au Véhicule; au Conducteur ou aux Conducteurs, two drivers, photographs); the last sheet (Visa de l'entrée, Visa de la sortie, Cachet de la Douane; Exclusion d'un Conducteur; Admission d'un nouveau Conducteur); Annex B: the title page, first and last sheets in the language of the issuing State, one inside sheet in the language of each other contracting State (read directly)

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