The Ford Motor Company

The fourth of the major automobile companies to get under way in the Detroit area was the Ford Motor Company, which was organized in June, 1903. The Ford Company is a good example of the importance of timing. The 1903 Ford was a success from its beginning, yet by 1903 Ford had been working on [...]

The Buick

Two references have already been made to the formation of General Motors, but the car which became the nucleus of General Motors was at first one of the least prepossessing in the automobile trade. This car was the Buick, which passed through three ownerships and menaced the solvency of the city of Flint, Michigan, before [...]

The Cadillac

The importance of technical experience and ability is well illustrated by the history of the Cadillac Motor Company. This was the successor to the Detroit Automobile Company, which a group of Detroiters, headed by William H. Murphy, had organized in 1898. Chief engineer and general manager of the Detroit Automobile Company was Henry Ford. In [...]

Beginnings in Detroit

In 1900, there were 76,000,000 people in the United States, of whom less than 4,000 owned automobiles. Here was the greatest potential market that any manufacturer could desire. For three hundred years the population of the United States had been increasing. Now, at the beginning of the fourth century of North American civilization, the automobile [...]

The Oldsmobile

The first man to put his money – or a portion of it – into the automobile business and come out with considerably more than his shirt was S. L. Smith, who had made his fortune in Michigan lumber and copper, and who in 1899 was living in retirement in Detroit. Automobile historians do not [...]

The Automobile Progresses

In the last two years of the nineteenth century and the first year of the twentieth century, there was a great increase in the number of automobiles manufactured, and a tremendous awakening of public interest in the automobile. James Rood Doolittle says that more than three hundred companies making automobiles and automobile parts were organized [...]

Gasoline vs. Steam and Electricity

Yet it was not surprising that the early gasoline automobile was undependable. The gasoline engine itself was an extremely recent development, and even more recent was the attempt to apply the gasoline engine to transportation purposes. Furthermore, as the gasoline engine will not start under load, it was necessary for the driver of the gasoline-engined [...]

The First Automobile Race

The unreliability of the gasoline automobile was well illustrated by the results of the first American automobile race. This race, held in Chicago in 1895, was sponsored by H. H. Kohlsaat, who was the publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald and was also one of the prominent Republican politicians of the day. The race was run [...]

The Horseless Carriage

In 1892, Hiram Percy Maxim was superintendent of the American Projectile Company’s plant at Lynn, Massachusetts. His father, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was the inventor of the Maxim gun; Hiram Percy was later to invent the Maxim silencer. In 1892, however, Hiram Percy was thinking about inventing an automobile. Not that he did his thinking [...]

Standardisation And The Assembly Of Standardised Components

The subject of standardisation is inextricably mixed up with that of quantity production, and also with such questions as the possibility of co-operation among manufacturers and the relative merits of complete manufacture in one factory as against assembly of a number of standardised components. Any divisions that we may make in this branch of our [...]

Pages: Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next

Featured Content

Nicholas Joseph Cugnot

Hot Cars

The Ford Motor Company

The Buick

The Cadillac

Beginnings in Detroit

The Oldsmobile

The Automobile Progresses

Gasoline vs. Steam and Electricity

The First Automobile Race

The Horseless Carriage

Standardisation And The Assembly Of Standardised Components

Categories

Archives

Translator

Most popular

Recent

Tags

Related Posts