What was buick's nickname in the 1920s

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Automobile, Its History and Influence, and Some Contradictions

1. Beginnings. From a Mechanical Curiosity to a Plaything for the Well- to-Do

2. The Inscrutable Henry Ford and the Rise of the Machine Age

3. The Rise of the Competion and the Consumer During the 1920s

4. From Out of the Mud to On the Open Road

5. Religion, Courtship, Sex, and Women Writers

6. The Interwar Years. The Great Depression, Aerodynamics, and Cars of the Olympian Age

7. World War II and the Reconversion Economy. No Time for Sergeants or Aspiring Automobile Manufacturers

8. The Golden Age of the Automobile. The 1950s in America

9. The Go-Go Years, 1959 to 1973

10. The Automobile World Upside Down, 1980s to the Present

Epilogue. The Automobile and One American Life

Chapter Notes

Select Bibliography

Index of Terms

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The Automobile and American Life

John Heitmann

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Heitmann, John Alfred. The automobile and American life / John A. Heitmann.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-4013-9

1. Automobile industry and trade—United States—History. 2. Automobile industry and trade—Social aspects—United States—History.

I. Title. HD9710.U52H39 2009

338.4'76292220973—dc22 2009001474

British Library cataloguing data are available

©2009 John A. Heitmann. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

Cover photograph ©2009 Classic Stock

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

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For Fred Schroth (1931–2007), who was the first to teach me about cars, and car culture.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people along the way were important to the completion of this study. During the summer of 2008, Peter Cajka, a former student of mine at the University of Dayton and now a graduate student at Marquette University, played a critical role in acquiring materials and in analysis. Peter exhibited considerable grace under pressure, and his efforts in exploring the topics of labor history and World War II were most significant. Niki Johnson, also a former student who is now an editor at the University of Dayton Research Institute, has done so much on this project over the years, beginning with a review of paper presentations and ending with a careful edit and reformatting of the manuscript for the publisher. Many students in my seminars taught me much over the years, including Elaine Berendsen, Caitlin Toner, Collin Delany, Maria Stanzak, and Greg Winters.

Student office assistant Rania Shakkour used her online and computer skills to help greatly in collecting a large number of historical images. My administrative assistant, Carolyn Ludwig, not only made numerous runs to the library, but also kept things going in the Alumni Chair in Humanities office when I had to sequester myself and write. Former colleague and friend Edward Garten not only supplied considerable information on his grandfather’s Ford dealership in Hinton, West Virginia, but also team-taught several auto history courses with me. Several of my colleagues in the history department at the University of Dayton were most supportive of my work, including Department Chair Julius Amin and Professor Marybeth Carlson, who encouraged me to follow my passion for automobile history and leave other studies behind. Professor Larry Schweikart, a former rock band drummer, made sure that I was up on a number of songs about cars. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Paul Benson not only provided funds, but also has been a constant source of encouragement. And finally, without folks in the Roesch Library —Robyn Reed, Bob Leach, and Diane Hoops—I never would have gotten the materials I needed to write the story that I did.

Outside of the University of Dayton community, a number of individuals also assisted me. My good friend Bill Leslie at Johns Hopkins University always believed in my ability to do good scholarship, and his Boss Kettering was one of the first serious scholarly works on auto history that I read. Further, it was his seminar on the automobile and American life that set me on my present course. At the National Automotive History Collection in Detroit, Mark Patrick and Barbara Thompson obtained the materials I asked for without delay. Jon Bill at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum was a great help in obtaining photographs.

I doubt if I would have written this work if I had not purchased a worn-out 1971

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Porsche 911T Targa twelve years ago. Over time, it has become my “solid gold” Irish green Porsche, so to speak. I got plenty of help from my mechanic and friend Cliff Brockman. And while my wife Kaye has never “got it” that when you work on your car you work on yourself, I thank her for putting up with a seemingly quixotic quest to raise “Lazarus” from the dead.

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INTRODUCTION: THE AUTOMOBILE, ITS HISTORY AND INFLUENCE, AND SOME CONTRADICTIONS

I wonder if anybody has yet written a History of the Motor-Car. I am certain thousands must have written books more or less purporting this; I am also certain that most of them consist of advertisements for particular makes and models.—G. K. Chesterton, 1936.1

In an introduction to an undergraduate course syllabus, historian of technology Stewart W. Leslie said it well with the assertion that “the automobile is the perfect technological symbol of modern American culture, a tangible expression of our quest to level space, time and class, and a reflection of our restless mobility, social and otherwise.” To expand on that comment with the goal of writing a definitive and complete monograph is daunting to say the least. However, in this work that has emerged from my teaching undergraduate students, I plan to expand on Leslie’s comment and explore how the automobile transformed business, life on the farm and in the city, the nature and organization of work, the environment, leisure time, sexuality, and the arts. It might seem that my foci are rather obvious, given the overall topic. However, my experience has been that despite the passing of more than 70 years, G. K. Chesterton’s above-quoted comments ring true to this day. Many of the books on the history of the automobile that can be found in bookstores remain advertisements of sorts, sometimes focusing on a single marque, sometimes on a decade or an era, but whatever the case uncritical, simplistic, and superficial. Whatever the shortcomings of this study, I promise the reader a different kind of book. While there must be sections that develop historical literacy about the automobile in American life, there are also encounters with new material not to be found in the literature to date. I want the reader to think deeply about the car and American culture, as well as the transformative power of technology upon society and everyday life.2

The automobile and its related infrastructure transformed everyday life as well as our basic values. From top to bottom in American society, it created wealth and jobs. It played a crucial role in transforming Americans from producers of a limited number of goods to mass production manufacturers and consumers living in a Machine Age. It influenced, among other things, the nature and structure of the communities we live in, how we define and value community, and the design of our homes and other living spaces. Over the course of the twentieth century, the car whetted our appetite for new things conveying status and personal attractiveness, petroleum-based energy sources, engaging action movies, primal rock-and-roll music, and high-fat fast food.

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To characterize this complex transition is quite a challenge, but crucial in developing a general understanding of the very essence of what it means to be human in a technologically-centered Western society. Our loves, hopes, fears, ambitions, and disappointments are all somehow tied to the automobile.

While sitting at a dinner table several years ago during a Society of the History of Technology annual meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, I became engaged in an interesting conversation with a talented graduate student from Columbia University, soon to become a successful academic. The topic was writing a book to supplant James Flink’s well-regarded Automobile Age, which I had used for several years in undergraduate classes focusing on the history of car culture in America.3 The two of us concluded that it would be extremely difficult to take on this task, and that it would take at least 10 years to accomplish it, if it was possible at all.

Despite this well-meant warning, I began to collect materials for precisely such a project. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. After all, my students resisted reading Flink’s book, unless they were prodded by the big stick of a weekly quiz. Despite my encouragement and enthusiasm for the substance, insights, and synthesis contained in it, students disliked the extreme detail of this definitive text. Secondly, Automobile Age was becoming dated, as the automobile industry and its technology and organization were being transformed at light-speed pace, and a vast amount of scholarship on the topic had been generated since the late 1980s. In this emerging new world of alternative energy sources, rising petroleum costs, shifting centers and methods of production, and differing generational responses to the automobile, a vastly different car culture has emerged, quite a contrast to that of 30 years ago.

Finally, as I became more and more involved in automobile history as opposed to my former interests in the history of chemical technology, I increasingly wanted to say something new about the automobile in American life. One can say only so much about Henry Ford, mass production, Alfred Sloan and organization, design and designers, and the decline of Detroit’s Big Three. The literature on the history of the automobile is replete with well-worn topics. Thus, the challenge was to get underneath the surface, address new questions, and to dig deep into American society and culture. And to me, new and fresh perspectives were far riper for picking on cultural fronts rather than in more well-worn areas of economic, business, or technological history. It was culture—film, literature, music—along with social change that piqued my students’ interests, far more than lectures on businessmen and their strategies or refinements of engines and powertrains.

That is not to say those areas are no longer worth pursuing. Rather, culture and the social construction of technology may be a way to readdress these more familiar areas of scholarly endeavor.4 What follows, then, is the result of this quixotic quest to learn more about the world that I have lived in and the cars I have loved, hated,

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felt indifferent towards, and sometimes driven. I make no claims concerning completeness or closure; it is merely an exploration. In a sense, this work is my “auto-biography,” as in the process of researching and writing I have learned much about myself, the times I have lived in, and my country.

* * *

The automobile is an inanimate thing that many Americans have fallen in love with, and continue to love in a new world of microprocessors, laptops, digital cameras, cell phones, and flat screens. Despite the proliferation of similar looking “econoboxes,” a large proportion of Americans do not see the car as simply an appliance, like a toaster or refrigerator. Elegantly shaped and finely engineered cars are loved by many and admired by many more. Despite the constraints of aerodynamics and increased gasoline costs, contemporary cars can still be luscious objects, like the Dutch Darrin-designed Packards of the late 1930s.

Choices on the personal and societal level concerning the automobile have led to sweeping economic, psychological, and social changes, and perhaps there should be more awareness brought to this one thing, the car, and its impact on our lives. For many Americans living in the twentieth century and beyond, the automobile has become an idol to be worshipped, conferring power, freedom, and pleasures to its owners. In ignoring the warnings of the prophet Isaiah concerning idols, however, perhaps it has brought judgment on us as well, particularly at the time I am writing this work.

Fundamentally, we may wonder to what degree we are masters of this technology, and to what degree we are its slaves. If we are its slaves, we rarely recognize it. David Gartman, in his interesting yet stretched Marxist analysis of the automobile assembly line, asserted that line-workers were akin to slaves, but it takes little thought before one may challenge that bizarre claim.5 Indeed, there is little, if anything, in common between a nineteenth century African American working on a Louisiana sugar plantation and the auto worker putting parts on a 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt at the Lordstown, Ohio, GM factory. In general, work and life are often hard, but for a twenty-first century American, the possibilities for living the good life remain endless. For an Antebellum slave, to be someone’s property and to be legally restricted in movement and class says it all.

Since its introduction more than a century ago, the car has often been seen as a freedom machine—ask any American teenager with a newly issued license. With it, we can go and come as we please, and whether the monitor is a parent or a government, our whereabouts and behavior are difficult to follow. It is a catalyst for the making of a mobile society in terms of race, class, and geographical location.

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Yet, for most Americans, the automobile is also seen as an absolute necessity. For a senior citizen, the loss of driving privileges is staggering. For a working adult, access to the automobile is often critical to get to the job and back home.

This often commonplace, sometimes beautiful vehicle is a manufactured, mass- produced product that has displaced the horse, omnibus, railroad, bicycle, and trolley in the course of history, and has brought with it a remarkable sense of individuality and autonomy. Along with the inherent freedom that the automobile has brought, however, have come constraints, to the degree that we may thoughtfully ask whether the automobile has led human beings into a largely unrecognized dependency in which the machine now rules over us in subtle if not imperceptible ways. While we are not slaves to the car, certainly many of us have made choices involving it that in the long term may not have been in our best interests. Economically, it saddles many Americans with car payments while at the same time greatly depreciating in real value. The family car is a poor investment. Young people often work during high school to pay for their cars at the expense of studies. Furthermore, the automobile demands a highway network requiring extensive capital investment, one that cuts through city neighborhoods, thus dividing urban communities and often aesthetically reducing the city to one largely consisting of concrete and asphalt. Its concentration in cities has resulted in extended commuting times; its misuse by negligent or risk-taking drivers, along with product failures, has led to more than 40,000 highway deaths each year. And yet within hours of a fatal accident the scene is cleaned up to the point where it appears the accident never happened, thus obliterating negative impressions of how the machine can change lives forever. Only rarely do we see roadside memorials that remind us of those loved ones who are now gone due to a fatal accident. Would we as Americans put up with any other technology that took so many more lives per year than any war since 1945?

* * *

Indeed, like the tension between freedom and constraints, the automobile has resulted in a number of other puzzling contradictions. Car culture, with two very different Janus-like faces, is associated with inherent dichotomies concerning uniform goods and individuality, and public and private space.

To begin with, the automobile is far more than a means of transportation; it is manufactured in all kinds of sizes, shapes and colors so that people can choose that which is best suited to them and best expresses their status, lifestyle and personality.6 It is the job of the automotive stylist and the advertising people to induce those personal feelings inside of us, so that we cannot live without the car of our dreams. Cars are also one measure of our identities. They provide hints to the world concerning our values, aspirations, and our present-day economic situation.

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Who among us has not felt the effects of depersonalization born out of the bureaucracy of the modern age, with its reliance on badges, identification numbers and cards, form letters, blanket e-mails, and all the rest? And yet they are means for us to assert individuality within a hostile, competitive environment that wants to reduce us and make us faceless. Certainly our automobiles are one rather powerful means to make us feel more important than we really are. Yet they are made of interchangeable parts by largely interchangeable workers.

Styling is an important attribute of the automobile in a way that is certainly unique in American life. Thus, the car is an expression of our individuality; it is very much like fashionable clothing that moves. Once an accessory market developed in the wake of the uniformly produced and black Model T, cars could be changed to suit personal taste. Therefore, the common citizen could distinguish himself from others. Beginning in the mid–1920s, this trend was accelerated with the development of flexible mass production, so that the range of colors, engine and transmission options, and accessory choices seemed nearly limitless. For example, in 1965, the Chevrolet division of General Motors offered 46 models, 32 engines, 20 transmissions, 21 colors plus 9 two-tone options and more than 400 accessories.7 Designer cars and sport utility vehicles bearing the names Bill Blass and Eddie Bauer have taken this desire for individual expression to the next level. But it is more than simply style. A Hyundai Tiburon has a serious style to it. It is Brand as well. And the badge that represents that Brand has enormous significance.

The owner of a Mercedes possesses refined elegance. Similarly, a Lexus driver is a person who has wealth and often a sense of economic stability. Audi owners are well-off and like to think of themselves as a bit different. Can anyone behind the wheel of a Porsche be a loser?8

Brands must be protected by their manufacturers at all costs. A C-30 Volvo with a problem of unintended acceleration must be dealt with by the organization immediately and conclusively, for above all Volvos are equated with safety. Some would argue that the Depression-era decision to broaden the Packard market base beyond its elite niche to the middle classes might have temporarily saved the company, but in the long run weakened the Brand.

Psychologists have asserted that the colors of our vehicles tell much about the owners. Supposedly, cars are usually painted in bright colors and primary tones like yellows, light blues and reds during economic boom times. On the other hand, when the economy cools, so do the colors to include gray, brown, and dark blue. On one website the following is said about colors and who you are:

Black: First choice of ambitious drivers who want to project an image of success.

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Red: You’re outgoing and impulsive with a youthful attitude, but easily bored.

Silver: You have great style and are often successful, but tend to be pompous.

White: The first choice of doctors and drivers who are reliable and methodical.

Gray: Expresses understated good taste and indicates a safe, cautious driver.

Blue: A team player who’s sociable and friendly, yet lacks imagination.9

To further individualize our cars, in more recent times we have resorted to “identity bracelets,” or vanity car tags that allow us to get in a final word about ourselves. These vanity tags may be official state license plates or custom tags that are especially popular in states where only one tag is required on the rear of the automobile. Of course names are important, proper or otherwise, including: “Parrot Head,” “High Roller,” “Country Boy,” and “Pork Chop.” So too are religious inscriptions, like “Meet Me in Church on Sunday,” “Galatians 2:20,” “Happy Christians,” “Prayer Changes Things,” or the sign of the fish, a fish encircling the name of Darwin, or cross. Then there are business names, patriotic license plates, and names and inscriptions about sweethearts.10

We often have a relationship with this mass-produced machine, right or wrong, demented or healthy. As in a more primitive society where one has a relationship with animals where both partners profit from it—say, the North American Indians who once relied on the buffalo for their existence—we live in a largely urban, third wave industrialized post-modern society, where we identify and depend on the car.11 We repay it with a passion often bordering on obsession. It is that affinity, or love, that results in our naming these machines Lulu, Lazarus (because it was raised from the dead), Betsy, Bessie, Freddy, Nellie, Pumpkin, Little Willy, White Pony, and so on. We talk to these machines as if they have a mind of their own, pleading with them to go another mile in a violent rainstorm, or in extreme hot or cold temperatures. We also pray for them as we would for an afflicted relative, as we drive through a storm or sense a faltering motor as we drive down a lonely stretch of highway.

For my generation, and the two generations before it, the automobile was at the center of our family life. It was so important that many of my photographs that include my mother, father, relatives and me feature an automobile at the center. For a family whose fortunes were ravaged by the rise of Nazism and World War II, the progression of photos reflected our annual increased fortunes, as well as the well- dressed children who were growing up.

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If we think about it, this behavior of attachment to a thing is rather silly, but it is one reflection of an attachment to more than an object. One such relationship is mentioned in the thoughtful book Driving Obsession. It is the case of multimillionaire oil heiress Sandra West, who stipulated in her will that upon her death she be buried in a lace nightgown in her baby-blue 1964 Ferrari, with the seat comfortably slanted. In 1977, with West dead, her executor, eager to comply with instructions because only then would he inherit $5 million, precisely followed instructions and buried her in a 9-foot deep concrete tomb at the wheel of her beloved car.12 Communities also bury cars. In 1957, the citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma, buried a 1957 Plymouth, using it as a 50-year time capsule. Oil, gasoline, and a case of Schlitz beer were put in the trunk, just in case these commodities would not be available in 2007.13 Unfortunately, 1957 Plymouths were prone to rust even without being buried, and thus when the car was unearthed during the summer of 2007 it was a near blob of iron oxide, although its elegant Virgil Exner–designed fins remained clearly recognizable.

For many Americans the automobile—the apex of twentieth century mass production technology—is also at the heart of an internal contradiction concerning individuality. Out of a drive for sameness and regularity, born on an assembly line so ably but comically depicted in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times or Ben Hamper’s Rivethead, we achieve the ultimate expression of self and personal freedom. At the extreme of expressions of individuality we have art cars. Harrod Blank, who wrote a book and made a video on the topic, has perhaps done more than anyone to publicize these very funny examples of artistic desire, like that of Volkswagen with a television mounted on top, a car covered with glued-on buttons, or a vehicle possessing scales imitative of a fish.14

Indeed, it can be said that cars are an art form, as Le Corbusier commented in 1928 when he claimed that the car was as powerful a symbol of the Machine Age as the Gothic Cathedral was of the Middle Ages. They can be very beautiful—or ugly— things, but whatever the case, we worshiped them at mid-twentieth century and for some, the obsession with them continues to this day.

Enhanced mobility brings with it not only the freedom to be a unique individual and associate with others of one’s choosing, but also isolation as well. Thus, we have a second important contradiction. Without doubt, the car has changed the nature of space and time, and with it human settlement patterns, social relations, and the spatial relationship between work and home and cities and industry. In the process of changing space, it has empowered people in many ways, most evidently women and teenagers, by enabling them to leave the confines of home. For many young people, it was a place for forbidden sexual activity. But along with this enhanced mobility came also an increased tendency towards social isolation, for the idea that the automobile is an extension of the home remains a central feature of car culture.

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Cars are parked in the home garage. It is a place no longer removed from the home proper like a shed, but rather integrally attached to the home and often a central design feature of it. So when we take to the road a part of our home goes with us, and indeed perhaps that is why agoraphobics (those who fear going outside the home) are usually quite content to go out in cars, but are terrified of using public transportation. Inside our cars we feel sheltered in a private place, so much so that people at a stop light pick their noses and put on makeup as if they were not observed. For the harried mother, driving alone is the one time during the day when she can re-establish her equilibrium.

There are undoubtedly many more inherent contradictions associated with the automobile and American life. But by focusing only on contradictions, one misses a full understanding of the role played by the automobile in shaping American life. What follows is the story of how the essence of life in America changed because of the widespread adoption of a complex machine. How those changes took place, in terms of key historical individuals and institutions, as well as how that change was represented in film, song, poetry and literature, is at the heart of what follows. In order to fully characterize this transition, a discussion of the history of automotive technology and its business and economic history, including organizations, markets, and consumer preferences, follows as well. Further, government is also a part of this story, as local, state, and federal authorities made public policy that created our roadways, often at the expense of mass transit, and regulated the auto in terms of safety, energy consumption, and the environment. It is also interesting to note that government is the largest single purchaser of automobiles, and this has been the case since the 1960s. The automobile and the nation-state is a topic that will be only cursorily addressed here, but one that demands further scholarly investigation.

To encapsulate all of these themes in a brief work is a daunting challenge, but one with extreme rewards, for with it comes an enhanced understanding of what it meant to be an American living in the twentieth century, and who we are as a people today in the early twenty-first century. With the future of the American automobile industry in flux, it may well be worth our time to revisit the past once again.

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1

BEGINNINGS: FROM A MECHANICAL CURIOSITY TO A PLAYTHING FOR THE WELL-TO-DO

Musicians, like poets, are often keen to comment on subtle changes that take place in everyday life. Frank Banta’s ragtime instrumental “Kareless Koon, an Ethiopian Two Step” was released in 1899. Unwittingly, perhaps, it was one of the first cultural representations of the automobile in America.1 The song’s sheet music cover depicts a wealthy and well-attired Black couple riding in a new electric vehicle driven by a White chauffer. Its occupants are shown throwing coins to a group largely comprised of White folks, in what was a total social reversal uncharacteristic of the age of Jim Crow.

It is doubtful, however, that the artist of this cover could have foreseen just how revolutionary the automobile would become, not only in terms of everyday life, but also in facilitating social change. The automobile would become a tremendous source of new wealth, and in the process elevate African Americans and Whites, but usually not to the extent projected on the cover. And while the automobile did not have its origins in America, it would transform her people and her land as no other technology during the twentieth century.

European by Birth, American by Adoption

An apt but worn-out cliché concerning the early history of the automobile is that “the automobile was European by birth, American by adoption.” Indeed, the visionary idea of the automobile—in the words of James Flink, “the combination of a light, sprung, wheeled vehicle; a compact, efficient power unit; and hard surfaced roads”—gradually became a reality during the last half of the nineteenth century, primarily in Europe and to a lesser degree in America.2 The idea was transformed into a complex artifact, one that quickly hardened in fundamental design. For example, the basic configuration of the modern automobile with the radiator and engine in the front, followed by the clutch, transmission and rear axle drive, the système Panhard, was devised in France in 1891.3 A decade later, the 1903 De Dion-Bouton followed this scheme with a honeycomb radiator, sliding design four- speed transmission, and a steel frame, clearly distinct from the horseless carriage. Most importantly, the De Dion used an ingenious rear axle that replaced the

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cumbersome chain drive with half shafts transmitting power to the drive wheels. And finally, the 1903 “Sixty” Mercedes, despite its chain drive, had a magneto ignition, six-cylinder engine, and a top speed of 60 miles per hour.4 In fundamental terms, the modern automobile crystallized technologically very quickly, and thus its origins are a most important object for study.

After the idea and pioneering artifact came the commonly-used term automobile. Tracing its introduction (a semantic history) tells us much about the early history of the automobile in America. As Patricia Lipski skillfully pointed out, the word was French, but key to its adoption in America was its acceptance by New York City’s high society.5 The term “automobile” was first used in America in 1895 and fully adopted in the U.S. by 1899, but other words were proposed and debated during this time—horseless carriage, motocycle, motor vehicle, automation, mocle, autom, polycycle. Members of high society in New York City, including William Rockefeller, George Gould, Edwin Gould, John Jacob Astor, Jacob Ruppert, C. P. Huntington, and Claus Spreckels, owned the first cars. This Gilded Age aristocracy paraded their vehicles at Newport, Rhode Island, in the summer of 1899, and influenced the editorial writers of the new magazines The Automobile and The Automobile Magazine to endorse automobile as a universally accepted term. In sum, while the beginnings of the automobile are often attributed to a group of visionary tinkerers, engineers, inventors, and mechanical geniuses, the upper classes were the consumers of this product, and they cast a lasting imprint on its place in culture in ways perhaps more complex than just the choice of a term.

The key innovations associated with this new transportation technology, its gradual diffusion and acceptance, first public impressions, and initial cultural responses are the most significant areas of research. These topics have received considerable scholarly attention, and indeed the present study must begin here, at the critical moment of creation.6

While the origins of a new technological system are undoubtedly important, historians often work backwards in time to fully trace strands of seminal ideas and techniques. That tendency can often prevent scholars from addressing more recent pressing and relevant matters. With the passage of time, perspectives become clearer, records are discovered and catalogued, and historical actors with a penchant to refute one’s story die. Yet the recent past often has the most relevance for the living, despite the many methodological and practical obstacles in pursuing it.

Whatever the time frame under investigation, the tension between continuity and change challenges the historian in a unique manner. What distinguishes the historian from the sociologist or philosopher, however, is the scrupulous adherence to chronology and time.

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Technological antecedents to the automobile included the work of Nicholas Joseph Cugnot between 1765 and 1770 on a three-wheel steam tractor for pulling cannons; Richard Trevithick and his experiments with a steam locomotive conducted during the years 1801 and 1803; and Philadelphia inventor Oliver Evans and his “Orukter Amphibolos” or “Amphibious Digger.” All of these early efforts have been described in detail elsewhere, but are mentioned here to provide a sense of the long sweep of history concerning this form of transportation technology.7

Steam carriages appeared on the scene primarily in England beginning in the 1820s, although in 1865 horse-drawn transportation interests suppressed mechanical road vehicles with the passage in Parliament of the so-called Red Flag Act. This legislation limited the speed of “road locomotives” to 2 mph in towns and 4 mph on the open highway. It also required that an attendant walk 60 yards ahead carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. Until its repeal in 1896 at the request of wealthy automobile pioneers, the act militated against the development of the automobile idea in Great Britain, for by 1890 there were light steam vehicles capable of speeds of 15 mph over long distances. David Beasley’s The Suppression of the Automobile: Skullduggery at the Crossroads discusses this chapter in history, important in terms of British developments, but tangential to mainstream developments in the emergence of the internal combustion engine (ICE) that would prove key to the automobile’s acceptance in Europe and America.8

Technological Antecedents: The Bicycle

Concurrent to ICE technological advances were developments related to the bicycle that took place in America between 1880 and 1900. The bicycle created a widespread demand for flexible, personal transportation, and it brought freedom to both women and young people. While the nineteenth century railroads exposed Americans to rapid (for the day) land transport, the very fact that tracks limited transverse spatial mobility opened the door to possibilities for more adaptable movement on roadways. Bicycles, despite their shortcomings associated with muscle power, difficult terrain, and weather, put urban dwellers in motion. In particular, their introduction and diffusion raised important questions concerning the quality of roads, manufacturing techniques, social changes, and legislation. Without exaggeration, the bicycle set the stage for the automobile that followed.

The bicycle story began in Europe around 1819 with the introduction of a hobbyhorse design. Its historical evolution is traced in David Herlihy’s beautifully illustrated monograph.9 The first mechanical bicycle is credited to the Scotsman Kirkpatrick Macmillan, who in 1839 constructed a home-built, treadle-driven

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device so that he could more easily visit his sister who lived some 40 miles away. This invention was for the most part ignored until the 1860s, when in France so- called pedal velocipedes were manufactured by carriage maker Pierre Michaux and his son Ernest. These designs were a cross between the modern bicycle and the wooden hobbyhorse. The velocipede’s wheels consisted of wooden spokes and rims held together by a steel band. The front wheel was larger than the rear, and pedals were attached directly to the axle. With ivory handlebar grips, and a seat resembling an animal’s spine, this awkward-looking device weighed sixty pounds. It quickly earned itself an appropriate nickname—“the bone-shaker”—as it traversed the rough roads of that era. In 1869 the velocipede made its way to American shores, where a number of American firms improved its design. An American version incorporated hollow instead of solid steel tubes, and a self- acting brake. To stop, the rider pushed against the handlebars, thus compressing the seat spring and causing a brake shoe to engage against the rear wheel. It was seat- of-the-pants driving at its best, more a curiosity and sport than everyday technology.

A brief velocipede craze followed in the late 1860s. At the same time, several social clubs were organized. It was difficult to ride the velocipede on the bumpy roads of the day, and one had to walk it uphill. But after 1871 interest in this less- than-practical device waned, in part because so many of the machines built were poorly designed. A radically new design was needed, and that would come as a result of the efforts of Englishman James Starley, whom, to this day, the British honor as the father of the bicycle industry.

In 1870 Starley introduced his Ariel bicycle. Like its predecessors, the Ariel featured front drive pedals. However, for greater efficiency Starley made the front wheel as large as it could be, limited only by the length of the rider’s legs, and thus increased the wheel circumference and relative efficiency. Correspondingly, the rear wheel was reduced in size, making it just large enough to maintain balance. Thus, the era of the bone-shaker had ended and that of the “high wheeler” or “ordinary” began.

English production techniques soon incorporated steel tubes, ball bearings, and solid rubber tires. One riding a high-wheeler could reach 20 mph, but it was dangerous and there was always the possibility of the rider “talking a header,” and flying over the handlebars. It was awkward and precarious, but in Britain a wide following soon emerged as clubs of cyclists were formed.

The American ordinary craze was fueled by the efforts of manufacturer Colonel Albert A. Pope, a Civil War veteran from Boston who traveled to England, began importing British models, took the lead in establishing the American League of Wheel Men in 1880 and built his own models under the Columbia trademark. By 1884, Pope’s firm made some 5,000 “Columbia” units, and the technological gap

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between the U.S. and the British narrowed.10 The inherent problem with the ordinary, however, was that its size was connected with the stature of its rider, and thus standardization was impossible. Therefore, economies of scale in manufacturing could not be truly achieved.

The greatest advantage of British bicycle manufacturers during the 1880s lay in superior metallurgical techniques. Birmingham’s W.C. Stiff (an appropriate name given the technology he developed!) perfected a method of weldless tube manufacture that permitted the brazing of light tubing to solid forging. By limiting the use of heavy gauge metal to stress points, a considerably lighter bicycle could be made without any loss of strength. Throughout the 1880s, American manufacturers were forced to use English tubes if they aspired to build first-class products. The British also modified the ordinary’s design by introducing gearing in the front of the vehicle, thus allowing the rider to pedal easier. These geared bicycles were called Dwarfs or Kangaroos, but most bicyclists saw them as no safer than the conventional design. If safety was an issue, and it certainly was for many women, they moved to a tricycle. American designers also attempted to reverse the large and small wheels of the ordinary, putting the large wheel in the back and gearing it, thus reducing the possibility of a rider going over the handlebars due to a sudden stop or maneuver.

Americans made valuable technical contributions to bicycle design, particularly during the 1880s and 1890s. Just as the Americans seemed to be taking a lead in bicycle technology, in the mid–1880s John Kemp Starley, nephew of the creator of the Ariel, came up with the concept of the safety bicycle. This design featured a triangular frame, two wheels of about 2 feet in diameter, and a rear wheel driven by a sprocket connected to a chain. While the idea was not totally new, it was the industrial commitment to this design that was so important. Indeed, what emerged was the notion that safety was important, so much so that high wheelers became market curiosities by 1890.

The social impact of the safety bicycle was enormous, particularly after 1888 when the design was coupled with John Boyd Dunlop’s pneumatic tires. The cycling population expanded greatly, and women, who had shunned the earlier models, embraced the dropped frame safety bicycle design. The dropped frame was introduced in 1888, and shortly thereafter women bicyclists’ skirts were shortened and their ankles exposed. Women began wearing bloomers, leading Elizabeth Cady Stanton to remark, “Many a woman is riding to the suffrage on a bicycle.”11 Further, young men and women could now go for rides without third party supervision. Patriarchal and matriarchal controls were increasingly being challenged by a machine, and as machines would become more complex with the coming of the automobile, so would the resulting social changes.

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Sales leaped forward in the 1890s, and an acetylene flame lamp was introduced in 1895 so that cyclists could travel safely at twilight and in the dark. For several years during the trend-driven Gay 90s, bicycling became a full-fledged boom. Bicycle racing became a popular sport, and many colleges established bicycling teams. Further, the bicycle inspired sheet music, trading cards, and board games. Undoubtedly the most famous of all songs inspired by the bicycle was Harry Dacre’s “Daisy Bell,” composed in 1892 with its chorus:

Daisy Daisy, Give me your answer do! I’m half crazy, All for the love of you! It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage, But you’ll look sweet upon the seat Of a bicycle built for two!12

By 1900, some 300 firms made more than a million bicycles in the United States, making it a world leader. Innovations that followed included the coaster brake, a springed fork in the front, and cushioned tires. The cost of the bicycle halved from $100 to $50 during the 1890s, and thus American industry liberated the bicycle from its status as a plaything for wealthy sportsmen to a far more popular tool for travel. In doing so, the bicycle in a sense paved the way for the automobile, including the innovations of Henry Ford that would follow in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Apart from raising consciousness concerning flexible travel and its impact on road improvements in the United States, no preceding technological innovation—not even the internal combustion engine—was as important to the development of the automobile as the bicycle. The bicycle was the object of scorn by horsemen and teamsters long before the appearance of the horseless carriage. Further, bicyclists gained the legislative right to use public roads in Massachusetts as early as 1879. Key elements of automotive technology that were first employed in the bicycle industry and then subsequently made their way into early automobiles included steel-tube framing, ball bearings, chain drive, and differential gearing. The bicycle industry also developed the techniques of quantity production using specialized machine tools, sheet metal, stamping, and electric resistance welding that would become essential elements in the volume production of motor vehicles.

An innovation of particular note is the pneumatic bicycle tire, invented by Dr. John B. Dunlop in Ireland in 1888.13 Dunlop was far from working in a vacuum, however, as numerous inventors patented similar designs during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Also, the rubber tire had a long history that Dunlop undoubtedly built

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upon. Solid rubber tires were first introduced around 1835, and in 1845 Robert William Thompson, a civil engineer from Middlesex, England, patented a pneumatic tire similar to Dunlop’s design. An important issue was how to keep the tire on the rim, and it was not until the early part of the twentieth century that a system employing a wire-reinforced bead was widely adopted. Bicycle tires were the basis of automobile tires in France by 1895 and in the United States in 1896 when the B. F. Goodrich Company scaled up a single-tube bicycle tire for one of Alexander Winton’s early vehicles.

The greatest contribution of the bicycle, however, was that it provided its owner with the ability to go when and where he wanted to. Sunday trips to out-of-the-way scenic places were now within the reach of the common man and his family. As one commentator of the period poignantly remarked, “Walking is on its last legs.”14 Thus, the bike was the first freedom machine, as it remains to this day for younger children who want to travel beyond the watchful eye of an observing and controlling parent. It demanded, however, muscle power and a willingness to be exposed to the weather. To this day in many European cities the bicycle is an environmentally friendly alternative to the automobile.15

Compact Power: The Internal Combustion Engine

Along with the development of the bicycle, the internal combustion engine (ICE) was most critical to developments in early automobile history. Credit for the ICE is normally given to Belgian inventor Étienne Lenoir (1822–1900). Living in France, Lenoir patented a two-stroke engine in 1860 that used illuminating gas (gas derived from heating coal in large retorts) that was ignited by a spark generated by a battery and coil. Lenoir’s engine was noisy and inefficient, and it tended to overheat. Used in stationary applications to power pumps and machines, some 250 were sold by 1865. And while the editor of Scientific American proclaimed in 1860 that with the coming of the Lenoir engine the Age of Steam was coming to an end, it took more than four decades before the ICE would eclipse the steam engine.16

In 1876, Nicholas Otto (1832–1891) developed a four-cycle engine (intake, compression, power, and exhaust), and Lenoir came up with a similar design during 1883 and 1884. Two engineers who had once worked for Otto, Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846–1929), designed a 1.5 horsepower, 110 pound, 600 rpm “high speed engine” in 1885, and built several experimental vehicles between 1885 and 1889. Maybach, one of the most important engineer- inventors of this early period, designed the modern carburetor for mixing air and gasoline in 1893.17

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De Dion motor carriage #2, 1901. The French and the Germans were the true pioneers of the automobile in terms of technology and manufacturing (Library of Congress).

In the meantime, Karl Benz (1844–1929) built a tricycle in 1885 to 1886 and exhibited a design at the 1889 Paris Exhibition. By 1893 he had constructed an improved four-wheel car with a three-horsepower engine that sold well and was fairly reliable. More than 100 Benz vehicles were sold by 1898. An early leader, Benz was soon passed technologically, especially by French manufacturers.

James Laux, in his book First Gear, discusses in detail the French automobile industry before 1914.18 The key French inventor-engineer of the late nineteenth century was Émile Constant Levassor, who took Gottlieb Daimler’s engine and placed it in the front of the vehicle. Before Levassor’s untimely death, he proved the merits of his design—that a vehicle of his design could be practical—in the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race. At first, and for only a relatively short time, Paris was the center of the nascent global automobile industry. Perhaps this was due to excellent French roads or social, economic, or political factors that remain to be explicated and are currently discounted. James Flink has argued that the importance of Paris was accidental rather than a crystallization of a complex network of

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relationships that included German, French, and Belgian inventors and businessmen.19

The importance of the early French auto industry is reflected in the following table.20

TABLE 1: GROWING POPULARITY OF THE AUTOMOBILE IN FRANCE, 1899–1908

Year—Vehicles in Use

1899—1,672 1900—2,897 1901—5,386 1902—9,207 1903—12,984 1904—17,107 1905—21,543 1906—26,262 1907—31,286 1908—37,586 1909—46,000

While a number of entrepreneurs in England, America, and Germany were only beginning to catch up to the French by the end of the nineteenth century, there was a concurrent Darwinian-like competition among three rival technologies in terms of power—the ICE already mentioned, steam, and electricity. In the end the most economically efficient technology would prevail, but that was by no means clear to those living in 1900.

Choices Made: Competition from Steam Engines and Electric Motors

The early designs of the internal combustion engine were primitive to say the least, and thus these power plants were anything but reliable and smooth running. At the turn of the century steam cars dominated the automotive field. An alternative was the electric car, but they were expensive and limited in range and speed. As it turned out, there was a short window of time in which these three technological rivals were engaged in a contest that revolved around which would be the chief power source for this new form of flexible and personal transportation, the automobile. The end result would have enormous consequences for the remainder of the twentieth century, economically and environmentally. As Tom McCarthy has

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pointed out, during the first decade of the twentieth century, a number of experts warned of the environmental consequences of ICE–powered vehicles, including the issues of oil depletion and toxic exhausts. However, McCarthy contends that the widespread adoption of the automobile by a consuming public allayed concerns at a time when adjustments could have been far more easily made than those that we, in the early twenty-first century, are now making.21

Steam had a long history going back to the eighteenth century as the chief power source for factories, railroad locomotives, and electrical generation. For automobiles, steam engines were quieter than internal combustion. With fewer moving parts, steam engines had been manufactured for generations, and with less exacting tolerances. In addition, a steam engine had remarkable torque, especially from a dead stop. Steam pressure could be built up and stored, to be released at full force on demand. An internal combustion engine must turn within a narrow range of revolutions per minute to operate efficiently. Additionally, as anyone who has looked at a schematic of a transmission or differential knows, gears and small parts result in a power transmission system that can only be deemed ingenious to the mechanically uninitiated. Moreover, in the cylinder of a gas engine, the greatest force is exerted at the explosive instant of ignition, with the power dissipating as the piston completes its stroke. But in the cylinder of a steam engine, the steam enters, expands and continues to push for as much as 90 percent of the stroke.

Steam engines had both limitations and advantages.22 With its extensive piping and metalwork, a steam car was heavier than an ICE car of comparable horsepower. Steam engines ran at lower thermal efficiencies than gas engines, losing much of their heat to the atmosphere. And while the working parts of a steam engine were quite simple and durable, the ancillary equipment—boiler, burner, and all manner of pumps, valves, and gauges—was dauntingly complex, demanding constant attention and maintenance. Most critically, the popular steam cars of the early 1900s—Stanley, White, and Locomobile—took 10 to 30 minutes to work up adequate steam pressure from a cold start and then had to stop for water every 30 to 100 miles. By contrast ICE–powered cars started faster and had greater range, an advantage in rural areas where service stations were sparse.

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A White Steamer is pushed across the finish line in a 1907 hill climb. Steamers were a very popular form of propulsion during the early days of motoring. Though reliable and fast, they were limited in range, expensive and heavy (Library of Congress).

After the turn of the century, steam car technology remained essentially stagnant for years until Abner Doble introduced advanced designs, while ICE–powered cars quickly improved. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, steam cars were technologically obsolete and economically unviable. Given these winds of change, White and Locomobile both converted to internal combustion by 1910, leaving only Stanley to fill a market with a curiosity that in recent times has been resurrected in as an interest in “buff” circles by car collector and comedian Jay Leno.

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Charging the battery of a Detroit electric automobile, 1919. It was the electric cord that ultimately limited the acceptance of the electric car in America during the first two decades of the twentieth century (Library of Congress).

In addition to the ICE– and steam-driven automobiles, there were also electric models at the turn of the century, partly the consequence of work by Thomas Edison and others to improve battery design.23 Electrics had several distinct advantages. They were especially attractive to those in the taxi business and women who wished to avoid the crank starting, noise, vibration, and pollution of ICE–powered vehicles. Low-end torque characteristics of electric motors ensured quick starts. However, in the early twentieth century any advantages were greatly outweighed by the many serious liabilities. Electrics were far more expensive than the gasoline automobile to manufacture and about three times more expensive to operate. Batteries could weigh a ton or more. There was the ever-present wire or cord that had to connect to a discharged electric car. As late as 1910, their range was only 50 to 80 miles on a battery charge, charging facilities were virtually nonexistent outside large cities, the storage batteries of the day deteriorated rapidly, and hill climbing ability was poor due to the excessive weight of the batteries for the horsepower generated.24 These relative liabilities have persisted to the present,

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despite recent improvement in storage batteries.

American Pioneers

The transition in national automotive leadership away from Europe and to the United States that took place during the first decade of the twentieth century is complex. One aspect that remains to be explored is the immigration of European automotive engineers to the United States. This matter of technology transfer certainly happened in the case of the Thomas Company located in Buffalo, New York, where a number of French engineers were employed, and may have occurred elsewhere as well.25 Much of the automotive history literature published in the United States celebrates American innovation but ignores European influence on the early development of the industry, as if the American industry evolved out of virgin soil—a highly unlikely proposition given the nature of the trans–Atlantic connections of that day. Certainly the United States had its native pioneers who constructed prototype vehicles or produced cars in small numbers. It also had automobile manufacturers, who more often than not had previously been bicycle or carriage and wagon manufacturers.

The pioneers included Charles and Frank Duryea, who assembled their first vehicle in 1893.26 The brothers would later engage in bitter priority disputes that continued to the early 1940s. Elwood Haynes and Edgar and Elmer Apperson built their first car in 1894 in Kokomo, Indiana. In 1895 Hiram Maxim installed a gasoline engine on a tricycle, and a year later Henry Ford demonstrated his Quadricycle.27 Alexander Winton, a bicycle manufacturer in Cleveland, Ohio, would soon follow with an unoriginal design of his own, but he was also among the first to manufacture vehicles in some quantity, marking him as a leader in the early automobile business, along with the aforementioned bicycle manufacturer Colonel Albert A. Pope of Hartford, Connecticut.

While Pope’s influence in the business would last only two years, to 1899, the Winton Motor Carriage Company flourished into the early twentieth century. Winton, like Henry Ford, raced his cars, and in 1903 a Winton became the first car to cross the continental United States.

Other manufacturers of the period included George N. Pierce in Buffalo and Thomas L. Jeffery, who built the Rambler. Most significant was Ransom Eli Olds, whose curved-dash “Merry Oldsmobile,” built in Michigan, became an industry leader, with a production volume of 5,000 units in 1904. A dispute unfortunately followed—disputes were all too common among pioneer inventors and

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manufacturers of the era—and while Olds would later set up another company called REO, his influence on the industry diminished. Former employees of Olds who got their start there and then proved to be influential later in the automobile industry included Jonathan D. Maxwell, Robert C. Hupp, Roy D. Chapin and Howard E. Coffin.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the number of firms active in the industry is staggering by today’s standards. Some of the names of the early car companies were Orient, Monarch, Walker, Gale, Wolverine, Maxwell, Stoddard- Dayton, Wayne, Holsman, Logan, and Lambert. John Rae summarized the state of the infant industry as characterized by easy entry, virtually no government restrictions, literally hundreds of companies, and sources of capital varying from giants like J. P. Morgan to local banks and patrons.28

As the superiority of the gasoline automobile was increasingly demonstrated over its steam and electric competitors, the geographic center of automobile manufacturing in the U.S. shifted from New England to the Midwest. The early, overwhelming choice of the internal combustion engine by Midwestern manufacturers was influenced by the region’s poor roads, which were nearly impossible for electrics to negotiate, relatively vast spaces when compared to the East, and by the availability of gasoline for fuel in sparsely settled rural areas that lacked electricity. Since village blacksmiths were accustomed to repairing wagons and carriages, they can be considered the first generation of auto mechanics.