Early Automobiles

Image archivist and transportation historian Jim Harter follows his work, Early Farm Tractors, with an even larger collection of images from advertising line art from 1880 to 1930, this time focused on Early Automobiles. Nearly 250 entrancing illustrations -- many suitable for framing -- are gems of the art of commercial engraving. Harter provides a very substantial, detailed history of the development of the "horseless carriage" into the brands famous from the early 20th century -- racers like Stutz, Dusenberg, Stanley, as well as those that became household names like Oldsmobile, Ford, Chrysler and others. Of special interest are the dozens of successful electric automobiles that flourished for 25 years. The history includes many colorful anecdotes about early long-distance races as well as interesting details of engineering breakthroughs. Full bibliography and index.

Traces the development of the automobile.

In the first decades after mass production, between 1913 and 1939, middle-class Americans not only bought cars but also enthusiastically redesigned them. By examining the ways Americans creatively adapted their automobiles, Tinkering takes a fresh look at automotive design from the bottom up, as a process that included manufacturers, engineers, advice experts, and consumers in various guises. Franz argues that automobile ownership opened new possibilities for ingenuity among consumers even as large corporations came to control innovation. Franz weaves together a variety of sources, from serial fiction to corporate documents, to explore tinkering as a form of authority in a culture that valued ingenuity. Women drivers represented one group of consumers who used tinkering to advance their claim to social autonomy. Some canny drivers moved beyond modifying their individual cars to become independent inventors, patenting and selling automotive accessories for the burgeoning national demand for aftermarket products. Earl S. Tupper was one such tinkerer who went on to invent Tupperware. These savvy tinkerers worked in a changing landscape of invention shaped increasingly by automotive giants. By the 1930s, Ford and General Motors worked to change the popular discourse of ingenuity and used the world's fairs of the Depression as a stage to promote a hierarchy of innovation. Franz not only demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit of American consumers but she engages larger historical questions about gender, consumption and ingenuity while charting the impact corporate expansion on tinkering during the first half of the twentieth century.

A succinct yet comprehensive history, Cars and Culture highlights the technical changes that altered the appearance and performance of automobiles, along with the myriad forces that have shaped the car's development.

... The complete story of cars and their builders ...

Automotive historian and former museum curator Eckermann describes the development of the automobile from its roots in human- and animal-drawn conveyances to recent technological advances. A sampling of topics includes early vehicles by Benz, motorized forces in WWII, the American oil crises of the

This book explores the invention of the automobile and its inventors.