Automobiles and their uses were specifically needed and made into a necessity at the Turn of the Century. However, they date back to the 15th century, when Leonardo da Vinci created models that were intended to transport people and many objects. Way on down the road in time, steam, electric and gasoline powered car engines were all developed for various reasons and needs. The one man that can be credited with the most up-to-date version of a car would be a German, Karl Benz who went on to be the founder of Mercedes Benz. In 1885 the first gasoline powered engine was invented, paving the way for cars to become more complex, luxurious and easy to use.
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| 1900 Oldsmobile - First Mass Produced Car |
The first factory mass-produced car was the 1900 Oldsmobile. It is shown in the picture to the left, and as you can see it is very basic and bare. They were sold from 1901 to 1906 and costed a total of $650. Three years later, the Ford Motor Company was founded. Ford developed the Model T, in 1908, a popular and cheap car throughout the early 1900's. Middle class ownership skyrocketed and the History Study Center even said, "[the Model T was a] car for the great masses." The University of Vermont detailed that, "[Ford] revolutionized the design and production of the automobile. Now that times were changing, so did the design of cars change. No longer did they look like horse drawn buggies, they were distinctive in that they had four tires, and were powered by a combustion engine. According to the History Study Center, the most impacted areas of life in the United states were by means of social and economical status. The amount of traveling people were having to start do, as well as the distances at which they would have to travel, the increasing rural area home trend and the industrial city rise were all major factors in the rise of the automobile.
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| Newton, Massachusetts Early Freeway |
According to the American History: A Survey by Alan Brinkley, Charles and Frank Duryea were responsible for the first gasoline driven car that I mentioned above earlier. The automobile not only rose from small depths to great heights, but it did so at astonishingly high rates. In 1895, just four cars were on small, desolate highways. But by 1917 at least five million were on developed highways, traveling from one city to another or from the city to their rural or urban houses. The University of Colorado Boulder, explained that vehicles and roads connect rural and urban life on a daily basis. The more that cities got congested, the more people wanted to move in the suburbs, and that is exactly what they did. Not only did people live outside the city, but in special cases early on, business would relocate to the suburbs in search of better business opportunities. Inexpensive land, the ability to expand up and out and the fact that access to the business would be less stressful and simpler, were all reasons why the suburbs grew. Before the invention of the car, people would either have lived and worked in the city, or they would have live and worked in the country and the commute back to work. After the car was widely available, people travelled to and from work, cutting out living in the city for the most part, altogether. The University went on to say that "New jobs due to the impact of the automobile such as fast food, city/highway contraction, state patrol/police, convenience stores, gas stations, auto repair shops, etc. allow[ed] more employment for the world's growing population."
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| Early 1900's Congested City |
A chauffeur, Oswald Hessler, who drove a car in New York City, wrote an enraged letter to the editor of the New York Times, asking for him to investigate why there was such mayhem on the roads. "Why don't they do something or have something done to diminish these brutal affairs?" he went on saying. "Last Monday on 34th Street I saw a red taxicab doing all kinds of stunts." Accidents were a major part of everyday life in major cities such as; Chicago, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In the October 25, 1912 edition of The Day Book, out of the many crashes listed one detailed that two women were "seriously" hurt, but that no cause was ever released to the public. In the sam newspaper, on August 7, 1914, a woman by the name of Mrs. E. Winterling was involved in a wreck that gave her lacerations on her face, by glass being thrown from another cars' windshield. A final newspaper article, out of the many that I found, was in The Washington Times, written on May 14, 1919, that involved a police car who was trying to avoid an accident with another car, got involved in its' own accident by swerving too quickly and flipping over. He also was cut by glass on the face. In this same article, it told that a four year old boy was hit and bumped on the ground by another automobile. All of these accidents were just few of the many reasons that laws were created to keep drivers, pedestrians and everyone else safe.
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| The First Traffic Light - Cleveland |
According to the University of Michigan, the first law ever passed dealing with roads and driver responsibilities was in 1901. This law set up a speed limit for all driver; 12 miles-per-hour on the highway and 8 miles-per-hour on city streets. The growing number of pedestrians, horses, bicycles and streetcars made making these laws a necessity. However, by the numerous number of accidents in the 1910 to 1920 time frame, these laws proved to be ineffective. The post-Model T time era became the first use of traffic control. "[T]raffic lights, signs, and painted pavements...commanded a new physical presence in cities..." The first form of control was sending multiple policemen to hectic traffic corners to alleviate traffic manually. That proved to be too tedious and expensive. The first form of our modern traffic control that can be traced back would be traffic lights. However, these were in the middle of intersections and they simply didn't direct traffic like they should. The first red and green traffic light could be found in Cleveland in 1914, and while it was a step forward it still was slow. In 1917 the first red, yellow and green light was added into the city of Detroit. Another form of control was stop signs. In the 1900's it was known as a "boulevard stop" and was created because many of the right of way ordinances were unclear. And in all honesty, all these forms of control were simply ignored, which is very reminiscent of today. On the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History website, they talked about how paved roads were due to the amount of bicyclists, the increased need for sanitation, farmers wanting to export produce and the need for truckers to get from place to place. Up until 1916, individual cities and counties were responsible for their own roads, which funds were raised and collected through taxes. At that point Congress began to realize that roads were beneficial to the entire country, and in result, they invested millions of dollars into the road systems of America. Each individual stat would then put the same amount that Congress allocated to each state for roads, and thus created the paved roads, highways, freeways and interstates of today.
Automobiles directly impacted the growth of cities and urban/rural areas by making it easier to transport goods, travel to and from work and to make long distance journey's, which at the time were unheard of. From the 15th century to the Turn of the Century, all these small little laws and inventions impacted the course of the automobile and in which direction it tended to go towards. Cities became hubs of activity and congestion, while people began to move out of the city to the country, and become more of commuters.
Sources
I used this website by the Library of Congress for the very simple basic background information on the automobile.
This website helped me with the Ford side of the early automobile's. It gave me many facts about the technology and how it was mass produced.
This gave me background information on the time period, what was happening, the first true creator and specific detailed numbers.
I used this Chauffeur's testimony to show how the traffic was terrible, and how accidents and crazy drivers made cities mad houses.
I searched the archive of newspapers and found this newspaper article about two women being injured in a car crash, with the cause not being identified.
This article dealt with a woman who was cut by a piece of flying glass from the scene of a car crash.
Finally, this article told about a police car that was involved in a wreck when it tried to move from getting in another car accident.
Our history textbook provided me with details on the amount of cars on the highway in one year, as compared to another year.
This website told about how expanding outside of the city in urban areas, and roads or railroads would be connecting the big city to the urban country.
The NMoAH's website wrote about how highways were connected, paid for and how long it took before Congress realized a national highway system was needed.
This scholarly source told about the first instances of traffic control, as well as many failed and successful attempts at trying to find the right protocol.
