Automobile

“ I once owned a half interest in a sick automobile. It was one of those old-fashioned, late Victorian automobiles, cut princesse style, with a plaquette in the back; and it looked like a cross between a fiat-bed job press and a tailor's goose. It broke down so easily and was towed in so often by more powerful machines that every time a big car passed it on the road it stopped right where it was and nickered. ”

“ An automobile keeps up a continual clamour whenever you take it out: an automobile gets into the habit of blowing you up at regular intervals, and of running down your neighbours whenever opportunity offers: an automobile is forever in need of new and expensive trimmings and fittings — but then, you can always exchange an automobile for something useful. ”

“ Dad, we drove in the automobile along the Appian Way. It sounds shocking, but it wasn't; it was glorious. There is never anything jarring (I don't mean that for a pun) about going into the midst of old and wonderful things on a motor-car, for it is wonderful too, and it has a dignity of its own-the dignity of fine and perfect mechanism which seems alive, like a splendid Pegasus or an obedient unicorn, or some other strange legendary animal which you are obliged to respect and marvel at. ”

“ But that the electric car is a perfectly balanced piece of mechanism and the one type of the automobile with the least fits and starts, is conceded, and this superiority will doubtless enable the electric type to make up in the future in the motor truck field what it has lost to the gasoline type in the passenger field.
If the passenger automobile has not reached the length of its use and consumption, and it unquestionably has not, what shall be said of the freight automobile, the industry in which is yet in embryo? ”

“ Our “chauffeur” shook his head. “Not without wrecking the engine. There is nothing for it but to be towed to a machine shop.”
[19]
“And then?” I asked.
“That depends——” was his ambiguous answer, and we said nothing more.
Is there anything more exhilarating than an automobile running smoothly along? Is there anything more dispiriting than the same automobile unable to go? The bigger and heavier it is, the worse the situation seems to be. You might get out and push a little one, but a big car standing stonily silent portends something of the inexorability of Fate. ”

“ If automobiling on land in France is a pleasure, a voyage up a picturesque and historic French river in a canot-automobile is a dream, so at least we thought, four of us—and a boy to clean the engine, run errands, and to climb overboard and push us off when we got stuck in the mud. ”

“ It is most curious, but an automobile invents some new real or fancied complaint with each fresh internal upheaval, and requires, in each and every instance, an entirely new and original diagnosis.
With all its caprices, however, the automobile is the most efficient and satisfactory contrivance for getting about from place to place, for business or pleasure, that was ever devised. ”

“ The story of the automobile has herein been treated in a way that not only presents a graphic relation of the automobile’s development as an invention, its commercialization, its benefits to man and the position it occupies as a notable example of earning power, but in a manner that develops the many morals taught by its success. ”

“ But here again it was fortunate for humanity, reckoning the automobile as one of the greatest boons vouchsafed the human race, that the mechanical perfection of the automobile was reached at a date coincident with more enlightened thought, a liberalism of view and a clearer vision of the possibilities of the future by our men of business. ”

“ And in the early days of the automobile’s struggles for recognition as a promising investment, no banker or other moneyed man could be brought to believe that it held out any reasonable hopes of great gain. No one could foresee, not even the inventors of the automobile, that in less than two decades the business done through its comparative perfection would rank fourth in order of the industries of the United States. ”

“ The likelihood is that with the increased use of the automobile, benefits from it will multiply. These benefits are, naturally, not as great with only three and a half million automobiles in use as we can well imagine they would be with the use of the motor car practically universal for passenger, hauling and farm cultivation purposes.
Much bigger things for the automobile than it has yet accomplished can be safely predicted. ”

“ The automobile has given Americans unprecedented mobility-linking farms, towns, cities in a way that was unthinkable before its advent. Indeed, the effects of the automotive age, which began a century ago, have so pervaded every aspect of our lives as to make the automobile a central symbol of twentieth-century civilization in America. ”

“ The above seems incredible, now that we have passed through the various stages of motor car improvements and motor clothes creations. The rapid development of the automobile, with its windshields, limousine tops, shock absorbers, perfected engines and springs, has brought us to the point where no more preparation is needed for a thousand-mile run across country with an average speed of thirty miles an hour, than if we were boarding a train. ”

“ A one-seated buggy is Cupid's most formidable chariot. It beats an automobile farther than we can say. An automobile is an intricate piece of machinery and the driver, if he is of the right kind, will exercise the greatest care. He must look well to his steering, must diligently examine the road as he passes along to avoid obstructions, ruts and broken pieces of glass, and especially is it necessary for him to keep his car from colliding with other machines. ”

“ Individually they are clear presentations of the achievements of some of the most distinguished engineers and inventors of the last hundred years. Collectively they present a complete story of the inception and gradual development of the automobile from the first clumsy steam wagons of Cugnot, Trevithick, Evans and others to the perfected carriage of to-day. ”

“ I therefore hailed the automobile as a Heaven-sent means of swift motion with an agreeable companion, and with no danger of encountering either newspapers or cards. I have seen neither reading nor card-playing going on in any automobile. [Pg 1826]
The community in which I live is not progressive, and when I said that I expected to buy an automobile as soon as my ship came in I was frowned upon by my neighbors. Several of them have horses, and all, or nearly all, have feet. ”

“ When men who are not 40 years old today came out of high school they either did not3 know what an automobile was or, if they had seen one of the very earliest samples, they had no vision of what it would develop into—no conception of what the future had in store for the wabbly horseless vehicle, zig-zagging down the street, as a potential money-maker. ”

“ It describes the various stages of the evolution of the idea of motive force other than animal power, in France, England, Germany and the United States, and its triumphant culmination in a successful horseless vehicle. And it makes clear how, when the automobile became of practical use, its successful commercialization became most profitable in the shortest period of time of that of any product of man’s ingenuity supplying an article to meet human wants. ”

“ Names of automobile manufacturers who are prominent today were familiar names in the earlier stages of the industry, and more of the original automobile makers have survived than have fallen by the wayside.
107
Removing Obstacles to Automobile Production.
One objection the old philosopher has to the automobile is an objection that is strengthened by the fact that he does not own one. It is that the automobile contributes toward making the age one in which a really short time appears to be and is generally regarded as a long time. It destroys proportions as it annihilates space. ”

“ The farmer’s wife and daughters can now go to town more frequently, and multiply the number of their visits to friends. The automobile is the emancipator of the farm woman, bringing the scope of her activities out of the narrow circle of routine drudgery and monotony into the larger circle of inspiring activities. ”

“ A seat for the driver and sundry pedals and levers are needed to accomplish speed and steering control, and sundry other parts have their place, but the above covers in a general way the necessities of an automobile.
An automobile, as the name suggests, is a car which contains its own propelling force and to which it is not necessary to hitch a horse, or steam engine, or something else to make it go. ”

“ The medium priced car of today stands as the best exemplification of the approval of the Society of Automobile Engineers. This is an organization that has done so much for the manufacturer that most of the makers of cars are members. They point to the self-starter and the electric lighted car as the triumph of the Society of Automobile Engineers. And certainly from the original starter and the45 early lighting effects, enormous strides have been made in the industry. Fully equipped cars predominate now, where only a few years ago even tops were not provided with the car as sold on the floor. ”

“ All the business ability of all the automobile makers, however great, and all the advertising, however convincing, that could be written, could not have made the automobile business of today if the people had not taken hold of the automobile and put their stamp of approval on it. ”

“ Until the horse is accustomed to the machine, it is the duty—by law and common sense—of the automobile driver to take great care in passing; the care being measured by the possibility and probability of at accident.
The sympathy of every chauffeur must be entirely with the driver of the horse. Automobiles are not so numerous in this country that they may be looked for at every turn, and one cannot but feel for the man or woman who, while driving, sees one coming down the road. The best of drivers feel panicky, while women and children are terror-stricken. ”

“ The more you go into the study of the automobile on the farm, the bigger becomes its significance. In the United States, four hundred and twenty-five million acres of land are uncultivated, largely on account of their inaccessibility. The motor-car will make them more accessible. Through the wide use of automobiles by the farmer we shall get, in time, that most valuable agency for prosperity, the good road.
One emerges from an investigation of the automobile industry in wonder over its expansion, and with admiration for the men behind it. ”

“ In France the Bibliothèque of the Touring Club de France contains a hundred entries under the caption "Automobiles," besides complete files of eleven leading journals devoted to that industry. With these two sources of information at hand, and aided by the records of the Automobile Club de France and the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, the present-day historian of the automobile will find the subject well within his grasp.
There are those who doubt the utility of the automobile, as there have been scoffers at most new things under the sun ”

“ Few undertakings require more care and caution than the choice of a motor-car. Of the three or four hundred types and varieties now in existence, many are of no practical use, some are extremely complicated, not a few dangerous, and many more or less faulty in construction. The difficulty of the choice is increased by the fact that almost every enthusiast recommends the particular kind of carriage he himself possesses, and in addition every manufacturer claims, and possibly believes, that his is the only possible automobile. ”

“ It matters not whether one call it an automobile, a tin lizzie, a gas wagon, or what not, it consists of a steel frame upon which are mounted wheels, an engine, appliances for connecting the engine to the driving wheels, a fuel supply tank, a system for producing ignition at the right moment, and appliances for regulating the speed of the engine and the direction of the car. ”

“ The motor car has opened up the far reaches as nothing else has done.
Bigotry and prejudice are the fruits of ignorance. Where knowledge is they will not abide. In enabling people to acquire knowledge in their own way—the way that most impresses158 knowledge on them—the automobile is changing the thought and the habits of the denizens of the entire country. It is broadening the human mind, by giving it a solid foundation to work on. ”

“ This fact of the date of the first sale of a gasoline motor car fixes clearly that the use of automobiles in the United States practically increased from one car to over three million, in less than twenty years. ”

“ But for the manufacturers’ quick recognition that the future of the automobile did not rest with the rich, that to be a great money-making industry, they must make automobiles for the mass and not for the class, the business would probably today be no further advanced than it was fifteen years ago. ”

“ Once one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy, with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts of solitude to the winds. Two in the tonneau, and another on the seat beside you in front—a well-assorted couple of couples—and one may make the most ideal trips imaginable.
Every one looks straight ahead, there is no uncomfortable twisting and turning as there is on a boat or a railway train, and each can talk to the others, or all can talk at once, which is more often the case. ”