MAN'S FASTEST MILE THE AUTOMOBILE AGE
A.D. 1911
C.F. CARTER ISAAC MARCOSSON
On April 23, 1911, an automobile was driven along the hard, smooth sand of a Florida sea beach, covering a mile in 25-2/5 seconds. And it continued for a second mile at the same tremendous speed. These were the fastest two miles ever made by man. They were at the rate of a trifle over 140 miles an hour. As this record was not equaled in the three years that followed, it may be regarded as approaching the maximum speed of which automobiles are capable. And as another automobile, in endeavoring to reach such a speed, dissolved into its separate parts, practically disintegrated, and left an astonished driver floundering by himself upon the sand, we may assume that no noticeably greater speed can be attained except by some wholly different method or new invention.
In contrast to this picture of "speed maniacs" darting more swiftly than ever eagle swooped or lightning express-train ran, let us contemplate for a moment that first automobile race held in Chicago in 1894. A twenty-four horse-power Panhard machine showed a speed of thirty miles an hour and was objected to by the newspapers as a "racing monster" likely to cause endless tragedy, menacing death to its owners and to the public. Thus in the brief space of seventeen years did the construction of automobiles improve and the temper of the world toward them change. The present day may almost be called the "automobile age." The progress by which this has come about, and the enormous development of this new industry is here traced by two men who have followed it most closely. The narrative of the "auto's" triumphs by Mr. C.F. Carter appeared first in the Outing Magazine. The account of the industry's growth by Mr. Isaac Marcosson appeared in Munsey's Magazine, of which he was the editor. Both are given here by the permission of the magazines.
C.F. CARTER
When the marine architects and engineers catch up with the automobile makers they can build a ship capable of crossing the Atlantic in twenty-three hours; or, if we forget to make allowance for the difference in longitude, capable of making the run from Liverpool to New York in the same apparent time in which the Twentieth Century Limited makes the run from New York to Chicago. That is, the vessel leaving Liverpool at three o'clock in the afternoon would arrive at New York at nine o'clock the following morning, which, allowing for the five hours' difference in time, would make twenty-three hours.
When the railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be but a day's run from the metropolis.
And when the airship enthusiasts are able to dart through the air at the speed attained by the automobile, it will be time enough to think of taking seriously the extravagant claims made in behalf of aviation.
For the automobile is the swiftest machine ever built by human hands. It is so much swifter than its nearest competitor that those who read these lines to-day are likely to be some years older before its speed is even equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed, by any other kind of vehicle.
So far as is known, but one human being ever traveled faster than Robert Burman did in his racing auto on the beach at Daytona, Florida, on April 23, 1911. This solitary exception was a Hindu carrier who chanced to tumble off the brink of a chasm in the Himalayas. His name has not been preserved, he never made any claim to the record, he was not officially timed, and altogether the event has no official standing. Still, as he is the only man who is ever alleged to have covered so great a distance as six thousand feet in an obstructed fall, the matter is not without interest; for, according to the accepted rule for finding the velocity of a body falling freely from rest, he must have been going at the rate of seven miles a second when he reached the bottom.
About Burman's record there can be no doubt, for it was made in the presence of many witnesses, and it was duly timed with stop-watches by men skilled in the art. The straightaway mile over the smooth, hard beach was covered from a running start in the almost incredibly short time of 25.40 seconds.
The next fastest mile ever traveled by human beings who lived to tell about it was made in an electric-car on the experimental track between Berlin and Zossen, in 1902. As the engineers who achieved this record for the advancement of scientific knowledge of the railroad considered such speed dangerous, it is not at all likely to become standard practise. The fastest time ever made by a steam locomotive of which there is any record, was the run of five miles from Fleming to Jacksonville, Florida, in two and a half minutes by a Plant system locomotive in March, 1901. This was at the rate of 120 miles an hour. As for steamships, the record of 30.53 miles per hour is held by the Mauretania.
These things, if borne in mind, will serve to throw into stronger relief the things that an automobile can do, and to supply a substantial basis for the premise that, at least in some respects, the automobile is the most marvelous machine the world has yet seen. It can go anywhere at any time, floundering through two feet of snow, ford any stream that isn't deep enough to drown out the magneto, triumph over mud axle deep, jump fences, and cavort over plowed ground at fifteen miles an hour. It has been used with brilliant success in various kinds of hunting, including coyote coursing on the prairies of Colorado, where it can run all around the bronco, formerly in favor, since it never runs any risk of breaking a leg in a prairie-dog hole. Educated automobiles have been trained to shell corn, saw wood, pump water, churn, plow, and, in short, do anything required of them except figure out where the consumer gets off under the new tariff law.
But to get back to the subject of speed, as automobile talk always does, the supremacy of the motor-car has been established by so many official records that any attempt to select the most striking only results in bewilderment. The best that can be done is to recite a few representative ones.
That was a most interesting illustration, for instance, of the capacity for sustained high speed made by a Stearns car on the mile track at Brighton Beach in 1910. In twenty-four hours the car covered the amazing distance of 1,253 miles, which was at the average speed of 52-1/5 miles per hour. This record is all the more remarkable from the fact the car was not a racer, but a stock car which had been driven for some months by its owner before it was borrowed for the race, and did not have any special preparation. The men who drove it were not notified that their services were wanted until the morning of the race.
While this is about the average rate per hour of the fastest train between New York and Chicago, it should be remembered that the trains run on steel rails, that curves are comparatively few, and they are not sharp, while the automobile was spinning around a mile track made of plain dirt, and was obliged to negotiate 2,506 sharp curves. Besides, the locomotives on the fast trains are changed every 120 to 150 miles, while the entire run of 1,253 miles was made by one auto which had already run 7,500 miles in ordinary service before it was entered in the race.
Unfortunately for the automobile, it has achieved so many remarkable speed records that its name is suggestive of swiftness. If the English language were not the stereotyped, inelastic vehicle for the communication of thought that it is we should now be speaking of "automobiling" a shady bill through the city council instead of "railroading" it. There are few places where it is permissible to attain record speed, and fewer men who, with safety to others, may be entrusted with the attempt. The true value of the automobile to the average man lies in its ability to keep right on going indefinitely at moderate speed under any and all conditions.
One of the innumerable tests in which the staying qualities of the automobile were brought out was the trip from Pittsburg to Philadelphia by way of Gettysburg by S.D. Waldon and four passengers in a Packard car, September 20, 1910. This run of 303 miles over three mountain ranges, with the usual accompaniments of steep grades, rocks, ruts, and thank-you-ma'ms to rack the machinery and bruise the feelings of the riders, was made in 12 hours and 51 minutes.
A little run of three or four hundred miles, though, is scarcely worth mentioning by way of showing what an auto can do in a real endurance contest. A much more notable trip was the non-stop run from Jackson, Michigan, to Bangor, Maine, in November, 1909, by E.P. Blake and Dr. Charles Percival. The distance of 1,600 miles was covered in 123 hours, which meant traveling at an average speed of 13 miles an hour in rain and snow and mud over country roads at their worst. In all that time the motor never once stopped. In the Munsey historical tour of 1910 a Brush single-cylinder car covered the 1,550 miles of a schedule designed for big cars and came through with a perfect score. If you know the hill roads of Pennsylvania you'll realize what that means in the way of car performance.
Still more remarkable endurance tests are the transcontinental trips which are undertaken so frequently nowadays that they no longer attract attention. One such trip which shows what very little trouble an automobile gives when handled with reasonable care was that made in 1909 by George C. Rew, W.H. Aldrich, Jr., R.A. Luckey, and H.G. Toney. Traveling by daylight only, they made the journey of 2,800 miles from San Francisco to Chicago in nineteen days in a Stearns car. They might have done better if they had not loitered along the way. On one occasion they stopped to haul water a distance of twenty-five miles for some cowboys on a round-up. The motor gave no trouble whatever, while the only trouble with tires was a single puncture caused by a spike when they tried to avoid a bad stretch of road by running on a railroad track.
The time record from ocean to ocean was held by L.L. Whitman, who left New York in a Reo four-thirty at 12.01 A.M. on Monday, August 8, 1910, and arrived in San Francisco on the 18th, covering the 3,557 miles in 10 days 15 hours and 13 minutes. This achievement may be more fully appreciated by comparing it with the transcontinental relay race in which a courier carried a message from President Taft to President Chilberg, of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in September-October, 1909, in 10 days 5 hours, by using thirty-two cars and as many different drivers who knew the roads over which they ran.
Those who are fortunate enough to have friends who own cars know that automobiles can climb hills; and that the accepted way to do it is to throw in the extra special high gear, tear the throttle out by the roots, advance the spark twenty minutes, and push hard on the steering wheel. The fact that the car will overlook such treatment and go ahead is a source of never-failing wonder. Indeed, when it comes to hill-climbing the automobile is so far ahead of the locomotive that it seems like wanton cruelty to drag the latter into the discussion at all.
The steepest grade on a railroad doing a miscellaneous transportation business climbed by a locomotive relying on adhesion only is on the Leopoldina system in Brazil between Bocca do Monte and Theodoso, where there is a stretch of 8-1/3 per cent. grade with curves of 130 feet radius. There are some logging roads in the United States with grades of 16 per cent. How trifling this seems when compared with the feat of a Thomas car which climbed Fillmore Street, San Francisco, which is alleged to have a gradient of 34 per cent., with twenty-three persons on board. As 25 per cent. is regarded as the maximum safe gradient for an Abt rack railway, since the cog-wheel is liable to climb out of the rack on any steeper grade, it will be seen that the strain upon the credulity of the hearer of this story is almost as great as that upon the car must have been.
Enthusiasm may be expected to run high in the presence of such astounding triumphs, and it should, therefore, not be deemed surprising that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally left to the imagination.
Among the few exceptions to this rule was the hill-climbing contest at Port Jefferson, Long Island, in which Ralph de Palma went up an ascent of two thousand feet with an average gradient of 10 per cent. and a maximum of 15 per cent. in 20.48 seconds in his 190-horse-power Fiat. A little Hupmobile, one of the lightest cars built, reached the top in 1 minute 10 seconds. De Palma climbed the "Giant's Despair" near Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, an ascent six thousand feet long, with grades varying from 10 to 22 per cent., in his big machine in 1 minute 28-2/5 seconds. A Marmon stock car reached the top in 1 minute 50-1/5 seconds. Pike's Peak, Mount Washington, Ensign Mountain, in Utah, and lesser mountains elsewhere have also been climbed repeatedly by automobiles. As the mere announcement of the fact vividly exhibits the staying powers of the auto in a long, stiff climb, the engineering details may be disregarded.
Next to its ability to do the exceptional things when required, the most useful accomplishment of the automobile is its wonderful capacity for standing up to its work day in and day out in fair weather or foul, regardless of the condition of the roads. This is shown every year in the spectacular Glidden tours, otherwise the National Reliability tests, in which a number of cars of various makes cover a scheduled route of two or three thousand miles, in which are included all the different kinds of abominations facetiously termed "roads." Other tests without number are constantly being evolved to demonstrate the already established fact that an automobile can do anything required of it.
There was the New York to Paris race, for instance. Starting from New York on February 12, 1908, when traveling was at its worst, and arriving in Paris July 30, the winner floundered in snow, mud, sand, and rocks, over mountain ranges and through swamps, in eighty-eight days' running time for the 12,116 miles of land travel. That was a demonstration of what an automobile can do that has never been surpassed. Yet the Thomas car that did it was restored to its original condition at a cost of only $90 after the trip was ended.
Another remarkable demonstration of endurance was that given by a Chalmers-Detroit touring car, which was driven 208 miles every day for a hundred consecutive days over average roads. When the 20,800 miles were finished, just to show that it still felt its oats, the car which had already covered 6,000 miles of roads through Western States before the test began, ran over to Pontiac, Michigan, and hauled the Mayor 26 miles to Detroit. Then it was run into the shops and taken down for examination. Being found to be in perfect condition except for the valves, which required some trifling adjustment to take up the wear on the valve stems, and for the piston rings, which needed setting out, it was reassembled and started on another test.
But, after all, the most wonderful thing about an automobile is its almost infinite capacity to endure cruel and inhuman treatment. No matter whether the brutality is inflicted through ignorance or awkwardness, or, rarest of all, through unavoidable accident, the effect on steel and wood and rubber is the same. Yet the auto stands it.
In brake tests it has been demonstrated that a car traveling at the rate of eighteen miles an hour can be stopped in a distance of twenty-five feet. The knowledge that this can be done in an emergency is a great comfort, but it should be equally well known that it does not improve the car to make all stops that way. Yet how often are drivers seen tearing up to the curb at twenty miles an hour or more to slam on the brakes at the last instant with a violence that nearly causes the car to turn a somersault, bringing it to a standstill in twenty feet, when there was no earthly reason why they should not have used four times that distance. Or if occasion arises for slowing down in a crowded street, the same kind of driver throws out his clutch and applies the brakes with the throttle wide open so the motor can race unhindered.
With the greenhorn the automobile is long-suffering. There was a new owner in Boston, whose name is mercifully suppressed, who took his family out for a first ride. In going down a hill on which the clay was slippery from recent rain it became necessary to turn out for a car coming up. The new driver made the turn so successfully that he turned clear over the edge of the embankment. Having nothing but air to support it, the auto turned completely over without spilling a passenger and landed right side up and on an even keel in a marsh fifteen feet below. It was necessary to get a team to pull the car out of the mud, but once on the solid road the new owner simply cranked 'er up and went on his way rejoicing.
Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been shipped from the factory. Nevertheless, he started up the motor according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel driving. By this time the outraged motor was red hot. Whereupon the new owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water on it. Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car didn't "pull" well.
Still another new owner complained that his car did not give satisfactory service. The agent was not at all surprised that it didn't when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to transmission gear and rear axle.
George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The car turned over twice, but finally stopped right side up. Robertson received a cut on one arm in the fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under their own power. There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5, the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson's arm at $2.
But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track. The flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences, one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up. E.H. Parker, the driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise undamaged. They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in the race again.
What the automobile can do in the way of cheapness was shown by the cost tests, sanctioned and confirmed by the American Automobile Association, between a Maxwell runabout and a horse and buggy. In seven days, in all kinds of weather and over city and country roads, the horse and buggy traveled 197 miles at a cost per passenger mile of 2-1/2 cents. The runabout made 457 miles in the same time, and the cost per passenger mile was 1.8 cents. This covered operation, maintenance, and depreciation, and, incidentally, all speed laws were observed.
The Winton Company, which conducts a sort of private Automobile Humane Society, offers prizes for chauffeurs who can show the greatest mileage on the lowest charge for upkeep. The first prize winner in the contest for the eight months ending June 30, 1909, drove his car 17,003 miles with no expense whatever for up-keep. The second prize winner drove 11,000 miles at an outlay of thirty cents, while the third man drove 10,595 miles without any expense. This makes a total of 38,598 miles by three cars at a cost of thirty cents for repairs. And all the cars were two years old when the contest began.
The moral for those who really want to see what an automobile can do is obvious.