America Builds Steam and Electric Cars.
At this time, we, in this country, were following the steam and storage battery fetishes. The first steam car in the United States that might be called modern was built by S. H. Roper of Massachusetts, in 1889. In 1900, steam car building in America gave promise of disputing the gasoline car records then being made in France, but by 1905 the gasoline car manufacturers had taken the cue from the European gasoline successes, and this form of motor came to the front.
Contemporaneously with the activities in steam car building in the United States, was the pioneer electric car construction era.
The first electric automobile was built in 1891, and made its first exhibition appearance in the streets of Chicago in September, 1892. The builder of this, the first electric driven vehicle, was William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa. It was bought by J. B. McDonald, president of the American Battery Company, Chicago. Description of the street scenes attending the showing of this car bring home to us the extent to which an automobile was a novelty so short a time ago, comparatively, as 1892. “Ever since its arrival,” said the Western Electrician of September 17, 1892, “it has attracted the greatest attention. The sight of a well loaded carriage moving along the streets at a spanking pace, with no horses in front, and apparently with nothing on board to give it motion, was one that has been too much, even for the wide-awake Chicagoan. In passing through the business section, way had to be cleared by the police for the passage of the carriage.”
To think that this description fits a scene enacted during the period of the present generation! Eighty-eight years before in Philadelphia, Oliver Evans’ steam propelled wagon, bearing in triumph a flatboat surmounted by an engine, moved along Market Street with no horses in front, and was a sight that was too much for the Philadelphian.
The world “do move,” but very slowly, and this 88-year span of time is practically the measure of the period consumed by automobile development to the point where a motor carriage would really run, and keep on running.
The date of the building of the first American gasoline automobile that ran was 1892. The man who performed the feat was Charles E. Duryea. He had the assistance of his brother, Frank Duryea, but what was more, he had the benefit of knowledge of what had been accomplished in Europe in the gasoline motor field.
Panhard, Levassor, Peugeot, De Dion, Bouton, and Serpollet were Frenchmen who had done things with gasoline cars, all (except Serpollet and Levassor) principally through the manufacture of finished cars. Levassor conceived the idea of a central frame to carry the power plant, and thus solved the problem of road shock.
Serpollet had done more. He had invented the flash boiler, reviving an art the English had previously discovered, which made the use of dry or superheated steam possible. Higher pressure could be used, water economies effected and weight reduced.
When Duryea and others, about 1892, gave concentrated thought to gasoline propulsion, all the problems of automobile making had found solution, except two. They were a method of cushioning wheel rims, and some method by which the motor could be so placed that it would be immune from shocks and vibrations.
So, when Duryea, in 1892, built the first American gasoline car that would run successfully, he merely “assembled” the ideas that had then accumulated.
The first auto-race in the world was run from Paris to Rouen, about 80 miles. It was run in July, 1894. There were 46 cars entered, of which twelve only were steam cars. The Petit-Journal, a Parisian newspaper, was the organizer and patron of the race. The winners were all equipped with the Daimler gasoline motor.
A little over one year later—Thanksgiving Day, 1895—the first American automobile race was run from Chicago to Waukegan. The organizer and patron was a newspaper—the Chicago Times-Herald. Of two entrants, the “Buggyaut” of Charles E. Duryea was one.
Duryea built his first car in 1892.
Henry Ford built his in 1893.
Elwood Haynes built his in 1894.
There were but four gasoline cars in the United States in 1896—Duryea, Ford, Haynes, and Benz, the last being the German car which was imported.
With the accomplishments of the builders of steam, electric and gasoline motored vehicles at this time—1895—the practical success of horseless carriages had been definitely settled. Practically all fundamental problems had been solved. To make them finally an accepted addition to the world’s methods of transportation in general use, two things only were needed.
One was the development of perfecting devices, such as rubber tires, the production of which began about 1889; and the other was the general acceptance of automobiles by the people—a cordial, popular approval, manifested by their purchase and use. And while the development to greater perfection could be left to work itself out, the popular approval to the point of enthusiastic general adoption was another matter.
Inventors could develop, even if it took over a hundred years, a complete, perfect machine, finally. But human doubts, mental apathy, and man’s opposition can be overcome by only one means—enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is to man’s opposing mind what the oxyhydrogen flame is to steel, and it is one of the potent forces that will burn itself into mentality.
Around the period of 1893-1898, the attitude of the mass of the people in this country toward the automobile was one of good natured toleration, but indifference. A few of the “class” were interested and convinced that the automobile had arrived, but the “mass” believed it was a passing fad, and from its practical side, of particular interest chiefly to mechanics. If, in its opinion, the automobile had any future, it was as a luxury of the rich.
The people could not sense what they feel now—the value of the automobile in time, health and recreation, and in its possibilities as a factor in economics. They saw the disadvantages of owning an automobile, but were without appreciation of its benefits.
So one of the most interesting facts in the history of the development of the motor car is that the first American made gasoline automobile sold in the United States was disposed of March 24,1898. The sale of steamers and electrics had been going on for several years before, but not very extensively.
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.
The first American gasoline car thus sold was disposed of by Alexander Winton to Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pa.
So that, while Duryea completed his car in 1892, Ford his in 1893, and Haynes his in 1894, it was six, five and four years, respectively, later, that the first gasoline car was purchased in the United States.
From 1898, the time of the sale of the Winton car, dates substantially the development of the automobile industry in this country.
Beginning with this date, the first real enthusiasm was put into the sale of cars.
Enthusiasm had not existed before. Confidence, which is the mother of enthusiasm, had hesitated and halted. But now confidence believed the automobile was a reality—all doubts had been resolved—and confidence bade enthusiasm run, not creep, crawl or walk; and we see how enthusiasm obeyed. In the enthusiasm displayed in the manufacture and sale of automobiles today, we are disposed to think it does more than run, that it actually flies.
CHAPTER III.
COMMERCIALIZING THE MOTOR VEHICLE.
In the production of the automobile, America did comparatively little in the fundamentals of invention which are now found in the modern perfected car.
Selden invented the three-cylinder gasoline engine, by which the rapid revolution of the crankshaft of his day was converted into slower but higher powered motion of drive wheels.
White invented a generator for steam cars.
Haynes was responsible for a discovery that caused alloy and specially heat-treated steel to be introduced, and Knight produced a superior motor.
But these were discoveries, inventions or improvements that were supplemental and perfecting, not elemental.
It was chiefly the English, the French and the Germans, with the exception of Evans of Philadelphia, who first conceived the idea of the horseless carriage, and helped it to its final development by a series of successive inventions. The names of Cugnot, Trevithick, James, Pecqueur, Hancock, Gurney, Lenoir, Bollee, Benz, Daimler, Levassor and Serpollet should form the nomenclative setting of commemorative friezes on the walls of the grateful motor clubs of the future, as those of Liszt, Beethoven, Wagner, Gounod, Handel, Massenet, Bach, Mendelssohn, Grieg and Chopin take honored place in the shrines of Music, the “heavenly maid.”
Even in the production of automobiles in any quantity for use—the commercializing of the idea they represent—the United States did not lead at first. This honor belongs to France, as does the original conception by Cugnot of the horseless vehicle.
The first steam cars manufactured in the United States, on any basis entitling their manufacture to the dignity of a business, were made after 1894, and the names of Riker, White and Stanley are the prominent ones in the steam automobile field. Electric carriages were sold as commercial commodities in comparatively small quantities, beginning with 1897, and the first American gasoline car sold in the United States was made and sold by Alexander Winton in 1898.
Beginning prior to 1892, the French were selling automobiles by the hundred, while manufacturers in America were selling them by the dozen. Panhard and Peugeot were selling gasoline cars, and DeDion-Bouton was putting the steam automobile on the world’s market.
But the race is not always to the swiftest. While France started bravely on its commercialization of the automobile, and had in its favor what were then good roads of an old and well settled country to run them over, and perhaps the thriftiest people of any nation to buy them, there were causes existing in the United States destined to make of it the greatest automobile producing country in the world, and its people the largest users of the new invention, while at the same time operating to cause the United States to sell more cars outside its confines, to Europe and elsewhere, than are sold by any other country.
And inasmuch as these underlying causes, while explaining the supremacy of this country to this date in the manufacture and sale of automobiles, also explain the reason for believing that the future of the automobile business will dwarf the proportions it has up to this time reached, they will bear analysis.
In the first place, European manufacturers of automobiles, as well as of other products generally, with the possible exception in a degree, of the Germans, are bound hand and foot, and therefore handicapped, by tradition and convention. They make the automobile, especially the French and English, so solidly, with such fidelity to tradition and with such conscientious care as to detail, elaboration and finish, that the price to the buyer, when it is put beside that of a similar American made product, will not meet competition.
The American has a knack of turning out an article which is mechanically correct, has the wearing qualities, but is simpler in detail, and hence can be sold at a lower cost. Simplicity is the American manufacturer’s keynote.
Back of this is business organization system, standardization of parts used in the automobile, and that high order of constructive and executive talent that gives the American business man the distinctive reputation he enjoys and enables him successfully to compete in price and quality with the rest of the world. There has been a rare combination of inventive and business abilities in American automobile manufacturers.
American mechanical genius has been given great credit, but wherein is it any greater than that of the German, French or English? In one particular—its simplicity. The Europeans are elaborate—the Americans plain and simple.
It is possible that no European manufacturer would have conceived an automobile embodying the essentials of small size, simplicity and speed represented by a Ford car. His tradition and training would have impelled him to elaboration in size and finish. In this, he is, of course, moulded by European needs and tastes which differ, in many respects, from those of the people of this country.
He does not possess the American’s practical vision in successful salesmanship. Ford made his car with an eye to quantity. He was not only an inventor, but a salesman. As he worked on his motor, he worked on the problems of sales—producing a car that would sell to the largest number. The larger the number sold, the smaller the price could be made.
“Large sales and small profits” has been a principle which has made many American fortunes. Note how this same idea of Ford has been followed by Willys in the Overland, Olds in the Reo, the makers of the Maxwell, and half a score of other manufacturers in varying degrees, causing the gamut of prices of the most popular cars to run from $360 to $1,200 each.
This is one reason why the American car could invade England and her dominions beyond the seas, why Ford has factories in the British Isles and Canada, and why our yearly exports of automobiles have increased in the last five years over $100,000,000 in value.
Other reasons that make us an exporting country of automobiles through their low prices are our natural resources of iron, steel, lumber, coal and alloys, enabling us, by their plentifulness and accessibility, to manufacture at cheap cost, thus offsetting the higher price we pay for labor in this country than the European manufacturers pay.
But the biggest factor in the lead which the United States has taken in the production of automobiles, both for export and consumption within her own borders, is the universal method of standardizing in manufacture, adopted by the automobile producers of the nation.
The manufacturers of this country shine in the field of cost production, in the economies of purchase of raw materials, in the method of manufacture, and in marketing their product.