1903 was a Year of Innovation and also the beginning of the end for travel as it was known
In an earlier post I made the claim that the automobile changed the very nature of travel changing it from an exercise in communal discovery with implications for the world at large to, well, a meaningless trip and I stand by that statement.
In the 1924 Automotive Trade Journal recapping the previous 25 years of motoring achievements, the first person to drive across the continent, H. Nelson Jackson in 1903, was only mentioned as one of three groups to cross the continent that year. So even less than 25 years after the fact no one cared about a couple of guys who were the first to travel solo across the continent.
Make no mistake, the trip was difficult. In many places they had to create their own roads or use railroad bridges to cross valleys and that second point underlines what I mean by travel had become commodity; the infrastructure to drive an automobile across the United States already existed. So much so that the idea of someone doing it was not news. Thousands of people had already done that, just in horse drawn wagons all these guys did was just do it faster.
A bigger deal in automotive history than these first cross continent trips was the adoption of the modern style radiator and the process for stamping steel that made it possible to create better and more uniform frames and ultimately more complex designs for body components.
In this time innovations came fast and furious. In addition to the previously mentioned innovations like steel sleeved cylinder walls, longer wheelbases, shock absorbers, 4-wheel drive, and a harbinger to larger Americans to come - the adjustable steering wheel was introduced in 1903. Let’s not forget racing. Interest in racing grew and the first celebrity racers made their debuts. People like Barney Oldfield, Carl G. Fisher, Chas. Schmidt, and Walter C. Baker to name just a few.
In the early decades of the 20th century the automotive industry was at the lower end of its sigmoid curve. Basically, this means that industries (and societies for that matter) go through three phases; the first being one of rapid innovation, the second being steady progression, which is followed by a period of stagnation. You might say that in the last 25 years the automotive industry has stagnated. Cars are cars. There is a lot of “sameness” when you go to the dealership. When you get right down to it, there just isn’t a lot of variation in the cars and trucks available today. It’s possible that the automotive industry is starting on a new curve with the transition to electrification. It is also just as likely that the change to electrification will further cement the commodification of the automobile and that innovators will set their eyes on new things.
That ties back to what this site is all about - chronicling the heady days of the automotive industry when it was in its first innovation phase in the hopes that folks will see that this country has never been about wanting to live in the past. Has never wanted things to be like they were Back In The Day. This country has always been about innovation. It has always been about The Next Big Thing. The Old World was about the past. The Old World was about only seeing the world right outside their front door. The New World is about moving beyond the old beyond what is only right in front of you. The New World would never want things to be like they used to be. That’s why the automobile and the men and women of the New World took something sacred, Travel, and made it meaningless. The automobile took something that was reserved for pilgrims on a religious quest or elites looking to conquer the unknown and said “you know what? It’s all been seen, so let’s make it meaningless and focus on The Next Big Thing.”
