lienhard8

Lienhard 8

What patterns can we see in this complicated story?

the modern era was a change not just in way of life but in worldview
pattern by which a revolutionary new technology comes into use

initial reaction of skepticism, earliest version of the technology isn't very impressive
fear of new technologies, fear of change in way of life, though this is less than it was in earlier times
at first it isn't clear which version of the technology will be successful

in the modern era people get more comfortable with breaking tradition--on average but some groups resist
impact of technology on society
but also the impact of society on technology

How have technology and society become more and more interwoven? Technology is not just a tool. We use technology to express our values (like freedom and privacy). We develop technology in directions that express our values

What is freedom? word cloud

We use technology to express our values

the ideology of individual autonomy (or family autonomy)

independence
privacy
freedom of motion
private ownership
symbol that an individual can become anything he or she wants
feel in control
"no one can tell me what to do"

efficiency
sense of community
national pride

different cultures prioritize such values in different ways--
in Germany the automobile is less a symbol of autonomy and more a symbol of quality, people want the best performing automobile
values shape consumer choices and therefore which technologies succeed

The modern dream changed from the giant city to the suburbs as a result of the spread of the automobile. Americans valued freedom of movement.

the automobile was revolutionary compared to the the railroad because it allowed individualized travel
notice the experimenting with different ideas of what an automobile should be before one wins out

before that there was the horse and carriage

carriages weren't common until the 18th century even in Europe because roads weren't good enough
early colonial roads were cleared paths that quickly became rutted, not to mention the problem of mud
if you wanted to transport a heavy load in New England you waited until winter and used a sleigh
the most characteristic carriage in the U.S. was the American buggy--lightweight practical vehicles

Inventions of self-propelled road vehicles started in the late 18th and early 19th century, but low pressure steam engines just didn't make a worthwhile vehicle. (more early history )

Cugnot's Vehicle

A French artillery officer, Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, built and ran a 3 wheeled carriage powered by a steam engine in 1769, but which ran off the road the first time it went into a curve at its full speed--3 miles an hour. It was the first self-propelled highway vehicle, but it was no improvement over the horse.
Some steam powered busses were actually used commercially in England in the first half of the 19th century, but once the railroad took off it was clearly superior.
The railroad and stagecoach industries succeeded in having a law passed to stop these in 1865 (repealed 1896)--on the ground of the dangers of frightening horses self-propelled vehicles on public highways were limited to a speed of 4 miles an hour and had to be preceded by a man on foot carrying a red flag

what you need is an internal combustion engine (or a much improved steam engine or battery) and a market for highway vehicles:

An internal combustion engine burns the fuel inside the engine (as different from a steam engine)--usually uses gasoline
Etienne Lenoir (a Belgian mechanic working in Paris) developed a workable two cycle internal combustion engine in 1860, but it weighed several hundred pounds and developed 2 horsepower. He actually built and ran a vehicle using his engine, but it was an isolated experiment that didn't lead to anything.
Nicholas Otto did better with a four stroke engine, and a number of German inventors immediately wanted to put it in a road vehicle. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach and Karl Benz built the first workable vehicles with one cylinder engines (first a motorcycle and a tricycle) and developed workable automobiles in the 1880s and had them in commercial production in the early 1890s. Significant commercial production developed in the 1890s in Germany and France (whose advantage was good roads), with Britain trying to catch up. These were mostly playthings for wealthy sportsmen, though by 1900 touring cars were used some by wealthy families instead of carriages and there was some use of electric automobiles by wealthy ladies in the city.

Daimler 1886

you also needed decent roads, and the bicycle boom provided these, as well as a sense of the market. The automobile probably could have been built 20 years earlier, but the interest was not there.

J. K. Starley introduced the safety bicycle in 1885. People had been satisfied with the railroad--only with the bicycle did they think of long-distance travel over ordinary roads. Freedom to travel where you wanted.
the pneumatic tire was invented by John Dunlop in Ireland in 1888 specifically for use in bicycles
the automobile would not have been able to compete with the railroad in comfort and speed without the hard-surface road and the pneumatic tire

European automobiles were copied in the US 1893
Duryea

1893 Duryea

George Selden filed for a patent on an internal combustion engine and four wheel car in the U.S. in 1879 but he was a patent lawyer and realized that his patent would run out too soon to make money so he filed a series of amendments so the patent was not granted until 1895. Automobile makers had to pay him royalties until Ford won a court case against Selden's patent in 1911
The first workable American automobile was developed by two brothers who were bicycle mechanics, Charles and Frank Duryea, who copied a published description (Scientific American, 1889) of Benz's automobile and built a motor car with a one cylinder engine in 1893. Others quickly followed--the Chicago Times Herald sponsored the first American automobile race in 1895, which was won by Frank Duryea who covered a 55 mile course at an average speed of 8 miles an hour with a two cylinder automobile
enthusiasm for the automobile led to a lot of very amateur re-inventing. Hiram Percy Maxim, son of the inventor of the Maxim gun and an MIT graduate, claimed he had the idea for a powered vehicle when he was bicycling home late one night after a romantic evening. He knew that internal-combustion engines existed and might provide the mechanism he wanted, but he had never seen one, so he went to see a natural-gas powered Otto engine working a pump. He did not know if gasoline could be used as a fuel--he was completely unaware of what had been done in Europe and by the Duryea brothers. So he took himself to a remote corner of the land of the American Projectile Company where he worked with a half a pint of gasoline and some empty cartridge cases to find out what happened when gasoline was ignited in a cylinder. He was lucky and didn't kill himself, but it took him 3 years to develop a workable engine. His results attracted the attention of the Pope Bicycle Company and he went to Hartford to be chief engineer of Pope's attempt to establish the first large-scale commercial production of automobiles. Unfortunately Colonel Albert A. Pope thought people the gasoline engine was too dangerous ("You can't get people to sit over an explosion.") and in two years the company build 500 electric and 40 gasoline carriages. Maxim went on to pioneer amateur radio.
in the 1890s the technological choice was not clear, and gasoline, electric and steam cars were built in close to equal numbers. The electric was actually most popular at first, because it was silent, clean, and easy to operate, but battery technology did not allow long runs and high speeds. The early steam cars had more power than gasoline cars and did not require complicated transmissions, but high pressure steam engines required a lot of maintenance, a lot of water, and raised public fears of boiler explosions

By the end of 1895 something like three hundred companies were building and testing experimental automobiles

most of the early manufacturers bought parts from suppliers and assembled automobiles one by one--they were not much concerned with improvements of the parts (the part-makers generally had licensed the key technology)
production rose rapidly
by 1899 30 companies were producing vehicles commercially and had produced about 2500 vehicles--many were sold through bicycle dealers. In 1900 production was 4,192 units sold for an average price of just over $1000 each.
in 1908--the year the Model T was born and General Motors was founded, production had risen to 65,000.
By 1910 458,500 automobiles were registered in the United States, made by something over 1000 different manufacturers
and a whole range of motorcycles as well

The market had two segments

some manufacturers build cars like carriages--fairly heavy (with a lot of wood) touring cars that were often owned by well-to-do families and driven by chauffeurs who handled the maintenance of the car. Studebaker had been the largest manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in the world before turning to automobiles.

1897 Curved Dash Olds

other manufacturers imitated the mass production of bicycles--produced a standardized light-weight, low-price automobile. Ford was not the originator of this approach, but rather invented an improved method of mass production. Pope had been a bicycle maker, Pierce-Arrow started out making bird cages, then spokes for bicycle wheels, then complete bicycles and motorcycles, then automobiles. Ransom Olds designed an early low-priced car in 1899 and produced them in large numbers--5,000 in 1904--before deciding to concentrate on touring cars. It wasn't quite an early Model T--it was too small, too light, and too low powered for family transportation. Role of “tinkerers” and technology transfer

Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Ford's beginnings (Ford biography)

son of a Dearborn farmer, but with a talent for mechanics that led him to a series of engineering jobs before he got into automobiles
In 1896 Ford was chief engineer of the Edison Illuminating Co. (now Detroit Edison).
In that year he built a car called the Quadricycle and started looking for backers to produce it commercially (he later claimed to have built a car in 1892 but there is no evidence for that but Ford's claims).

Ford's Quadricycle

in 1899 he found a group of businessmen to support him, but they got impatient that he was building cars for automobile racing (which he thought was critical publicity) rather than concentrating on setting up commercial production. Ford and his backers parted ways in 1902 and his former backers found another engineer, Henry M. Leland, who gave the company a new name--Cadillac--and got it into commercial production.
Racing was a way to test out which car was better and get publicity, but it didn't lead to practical cars

Struggle to define the automobile

Brush Runabout

Ford started the Ford Motor Company in 1903 with a new set of backers.
- The Dodge brothers became stockholders in return for providing chassis, engines, and transmissions for the first Ford cars.
Ford initially made medium-priced cars--$1000-$1500.
by 1910 the industry was consolidating painfully
General Motors was about to go under under excessive debt and was saved only by new investors who advanced cash on very harsh terms (6% interest plus a 17% commission).
many of the smaller companies went bankrupt, and even the larger ones were better at finance than at solving technological problems.
a number of makers were thinking about low cost cars (an idea that was not tried in Europe until after its success in America). One notable example after the curved dash Oldsmobile was the Brush Runabout, which sold for $500 and had 10 HP and all-wood construction. It didn't hold up very well.
the key invention of this period was the electric starter
- It was invented by Henry M. Leland and Charles F. Kettering. Leland became interested in the problem because a friend of his had died in a bizarre accident. He went to the assistance of a lady whose car had stalled, and when he turned the crank to start it, the crank handle kicked back and broke his jaw. He died of the resulting gangrene.
- the electric starter meant that women and older men could drive cars

Ford first invents a better car, then leads assembly-line revolution (more on Ford as a businessman)

Ford first designed a mass market car and then studied how to cut costs in production. Mass market meant not only low cost but sturdy, easy to operate, and easy to repair. Ford was one of the first to use alloy steel in America.
Ford's engineers may have had the idea for the assembly line as early as 1908, but they didn't want to delay introduction of the model T to implement it. The Model T was the first low cost ($825-$850) high power (20 HP) car, also light (about 1,200 pounds) and fairly easy to drive, with a two-speed, foot-controlled "planetary" transmission. It was immediately very popular--compared to cars costing $2000. Ford decided in 1909 to produce nothing else.

Model T

Ford's business manager had calculated that to really hit the mass market the price had to be brought down to $600, and that could not be done with existing production methods.
Ford begins to focus on how his company can build this car cheaper--look for economies of scale
between 1913 and 1914 conveyor belts were introduced throughout the factory
time required to assemble the chassis fell from 12 hours 30 minutes to 2 hours 40 minutes, and then by 1914 to 1 1/2 hours
price of Model T dropped to $360 by 1916 and to $290 by 1927 (its last year of production). 577,000 sold in 1916. Within a decade all automobile manufacturers were using the assembly line.
in addition to the assembly line Ford lowers costs by economies of scale and vertical integration

Ford assembly line and Diego Rivera painting (Detroit Institute of Arts)

now Ford could hire unskilled workers

He paid average wages: $2.38 for a nine hour day. Workers hated the assembly line and turnover reached over 300%
in 1914 Ford began to offer selected workers $5 a day and an eight hour day--about twice the going rate in Detroit at the time. At one point fire hoses had to be used to disperse the mob of applicants around the Highland Park plant.
Between 1914 and 1916, the company's profits doubled from $30 million to $60 million.
Ford did believe that the gains made by improving techniques of production should be passed on to society in three ways--to stockholders through dividends, to consumers through lower prices, and to labor through higher wages. He understood that the worker was also a consumer. He wasn't fond of stockholders, particularly after the Dodge brothers set themselves up as competitors. In fact in 1916 (a year with record profits) he paid such low dividends that stockholders sued and won. Ford quotes

Model T Automobile Plant

Meanwhile Sloan at General Motors was revolutionizing organization and marketing

gave more responsibility to production divisions--decentralized organization
General Motors made cars for different markets (from Chevrolet at the bottom to Cadillac at the top) and pioneered the annual model change and a choice of colors. Worked out close relations with dealers. Consumers began to look for styling and excitement, not the lowest possible price.
Ford made the Model T until 1927--15 million of them--nearly driving the company into bankruptcy. Finally when he had to face reality and shut down Model T production he didn't have a new model designed yet.
Even then he played the publicity well and the new Model A was a success.

1927 Chevrolet Consider the advantages and limitations of mass production.

Lienhard points to automobile racing and luxury automobiles as showing important ways that automobile technology went in different directions from the practical car predicted by Henry Ford:

"The automobile delivered its conflicting messages of personal freedom, populism, luxury, economy, speed, and general excess." (p. 136)

This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack

HIST 1220
last updated 10/11/2023