The inventor who claimed the first U.S. car ever sold recalls the birth of the industry and the general public skepticism about automobiles.
www.saturdayeveningpost.com
When I first contemplated the application of gasoline for vehicles, I had a bicycle plant in Cleveland. Because bikes interested me, my mind naturally turned to something a rider wouldn’t have to push and keep pushing if he was trying to get some place. But the great obstacle to the development of the automobile was the lack of public inter- est. To advocate replacing the horse, which had served man through centuries, marked one as an imbecile. Things are very different today. But in the ’90s, even though I had a successful bicycle business, and was building my first car in the privacy of the cellar in my home, I began to be pointed out as “the fool who is fiddling with a buggy that will run without being hitched to a horse.” My banker called on me to say: “Winton, I am disappointed in you.”
That riled me, but I held my temper as I asked, “What’s the matter with you?” He bellowed: “There’s nothing the matter with me. It’s you! You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.”
Did some research last week that kind of coincides with this topic. The first mass produced tractors with rubber tires were very small. International under the Farmall name developed the letter series tractors back in the 1930's. There was the A, B, C (about 20 hp and 2,000 lbs) H and M. The H was the single most successful model and sold over 450,000 tractors in just a few short years. The secret, it was about the same power as a team of horses but could run all day, was similar in purchase cost and could be left unattended in the barn indefinitely vs the daily care of a horse.
The most intriguing thing to me is engineers knew we were headed for large tractors with many times the power of a team of horses. However, they had to wait for farmers to gain confidence in the tractor, and actually generate a benefit from the self propelled workhorse. Then farms needed to grow to finally market the machines in 1970 that they knew would be coming when the model H rolled off the line in 1947. It took 23 years to grow to the place where the John Deere 4020 and International 856 were common large farm tractors of their day.
By the end of the 1970's virtually all tractors had cabs on them for weather protection. Air conditioning was added along with a good sound system and lighting for night work. Today with the air ride seats, satellite guidance and auto steer, I can use my tractor as an office or post on Yappi while riding around in circles.
You know how many times I said auto steer will never work and I kept using foam markers as my preferred means of guiding my sprayer through the field? Then one day I decided to stop fighting change, and just enjoy the ride wherever government grants and carrots offered take me.