There' nothing new under the sun, the old saying goes.
While nothing could be further from the truth regarding innovation in today's transportation industry, it is interesting to look back at the vision of yesterday's dreamers.
I've been told that to look 10 years into the future, you need to look back 30 and observe trends. Well, I decided to look back as far as I could into transportation technology to see just how far we've come (or not) - to see if there were some good ideas out there from an era when folks were not overstimulated or distracted by constant communications and continually bombarded by massive amounts of electronic data. An era when people had time to think (or so we assume).
I decided to actually visit a library in person (yikes) to see what might be out there that is not yet on Google. Back issues of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Scientific American from the turn of the century (the one before the turn of the millennium) provide for some interesting reading.
Did you know that exposure to radium painted on gas caps was intended as a safety measure? (Can you think of why?) That an accurate clock was necessary for trans-Atlantic exploration in the 15th century? Or, that cars were initially considered much safer than horses (at a time when one out of every 250 cars sold would be expected to be involved in a fatal collision)?
Scientific American reported, in the year 1900, "If there are faults with cars, only time is wanted to make them disappear ... there is no mechanism more inoffensive, no means of transportation more sure and safe." Unlike horses, cars would not run away, bite or kick their owner, plus they were less costly to maintain. Cars had less "byproduct" and concomitant airborne bacteria.
By the 1920's, when cars had chiefly replaced horses as a means of transportation in New York City, tuberculosis rates dropped dramatically (horses may transmit TB to humans). There were predictions of NYC ten feet deep in "byproduct," and much of the arable land proximate to the City was used to grow oats, driving up food prices.
On another note, did you know that the electric car of 1901 had a range of 40 miles? Or that a giant parachute for a commercial aircraft in danger (an idea actually considered recently) was successfully deployed on a smaller aircraft, saving the lives of its passengers in the 1930s? How about a 1910 touring car with a map that automatically tracked the vehicle's progress?
For more information, you may access power point slides on the topic available here: ppt (notes are available on many of the slides) or pdf version (no notes). Enjoy! To contact the author or share some of your own historical images, please contact Reg at Souleyrette@uky.edu.
