What it was like to drive a car in the 1890s
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- čas přidán 28. 03. 2023
- Let's take a closer look at what it was like to drive a car in the 1890s
Cars were just a couple of years old and there were many difficulties to overcome.
Which car designs existed back then?
Which common technical issues did cars have?
Why was a car so unpopular?
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Book: August Horch - Ich baute autos
To think my great grandma was born in 1900 and got to live to 2001 she really got to see cars change drastically in her lifetime
It's wild to talk to people that lived through those times. Met one lady in WA who left the east coast when she was young and travelled there by covered wagon. When she was much older she returned to her old home town on the east coast by jet airliner.
My great grandma lived 1905-2005, it's wild how different life was at the start of their lives compared to the end. Especially considering technological advances, including cars, space flight, computers, mobile phones, the internet, new fabrics and manufacturing techniques, not to mention all of the societal changes during that time.
@@hannahk1306 In a way it’s frightening what a baby born today will experience over the next hundred years. What will life be like in a hundred years time, how about a thousand years from now? From horses and carts to landing on Mars, postage US to Australia taking a week - mobile phone contact in a millisecond (or two!).
@@hannahk1306 wow, she lived through WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the war in Iraq. She was around to witness Anna Jarvis push for Mother’s Day to be an official Holiday, she saw the evolution of sanitary products for women, the Titanic sinking in 1912, the March on Washington, the assassination of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, etc. she’s a BEAST
@Lurch Cars now days are better and safer but the car speeds now is much faster and drivers are worse so a horse a piece.
In 1908 my great grandparents were married and after their honeymoon, my great, great uncle gave them their first car ride ever when he went to pick them up at the train station. The trip back to their farm was so bumpy and uncomfortable that my great grandma thought, "Oh these things are terrible! They'll never catch on." Then my grandma was born a few years later and she prided herself on being of the first generation to grow up without ever knowing what it was like to live without cars.
@@Mullikia Faster?
@@MullikiaAh, well we probably didn't have smooth paved roads then. Horses step over bumps and holes although carriages probably still bumped but would have had some suspension. I imagine early cars were not using the advanced suspensions of today and being cars went faster than trotting horses, the bumps would have been more frequent. Just a guess. I was born in the 60s!
@@GudieveNing yea
@@GudieveNing Beautiful comment. Suspension saved some kidneys (Bike rider).
@@Mullikia Faster and heavier I imagine. Heavier than just the carriage of course. And they didn't work like modern cars. You couldn't just slow down when you get to a rough patch. I'm not sure how these old ones work but with the Model T, they called it the Model T dance. Your throttle and a spark control was at your hands, near the steering wheel. Kind of like where the modern turn signal and wiper control is. At your feet was 3 pedals. Break, reverse and clutch. So once you're going, that's pretty much the speed you're going at. Lol. You can, of course, throttle down but it wasn't as simple as it is today.
In the early 1920s my grandmother wanted a car but my grandfather said a horse and buggy was good enough for him. She went out and bought a car, a 1921 Dodge. My mother said her earliest memories were of her sitting in the backseat while the car salesman was in the front seat teaching my grandmother how to drive.
Nice, thanks for sharing!
Wow how old are ya? My granny wasn't born until '21...
In 1915 my great grandfather drove his family from So. Dakota to San Diego. He had 3 flats on the first day but none after that. Driving across the California desert was scary. In some places the road disappeared. He had 4 children with him and wife too!
Wonder if he took Cajon pass
Darn, if only he had gotten some footage on his iPhone!
Source: trust me bruh
What about gasoline?
We freak out when we leave our cell phones at home. Our ancestors were bad ass.
"I miss the 90s cars".
😂😂😂😂😂
"Up to 40kph the streets were OK but with higher speeds the bumpy streets became increasingly dangerous" - I can attest to this with my bike.
Me going down the Niagara Escarpment on Centennial Parkway hitting 80 km/hr +. Shake. rattle and roll!
5 years ago Paris introduced a 30 km/h limit for cars for a reason. You are not meant to drive so fast in the city.
1980 soeed liñíted 155 mph
The muffler didn't come about 'till 1899. These machines were also despised for their great clatter and noise. Their best advantage was they didn't leave poop on the road, but that didn't mitigate how often they were poop on the road.
Funny I despise Harley motorcycles for their clatter....
Cars replaced the use of the horse as a form of a personal transportation but during this time walking + electric mass transit was the dominant form of transportation
" Those darned new fangled contraptions will never catch on !!!."😂
Talking about her early life, my mother who was born in 1914 in Liverpool, England, told me how her father would rush outside with a shovel to collect the treasured horse manure for his garden.
When I grew up in the 50's in The Hague, Holland, only a handfull of people on our street of 126 flats had a car. Horses were still coming through the streets daily carrying their merchants wares but by then the poop was caught by bags behind the horses' backsides. It was the dog poop you had to watch out for as almost everyone had a dog.
Maybe not poop but some engines had "flow through" designs. No oil pump to recirculate. You filled up a reservoir with oil and it was gravity fed, dripped out the bottom.
It's mind-blowing that besides inventing the car, Benz in the forms of the person and the company were responsible for a large chunk of automobile innovations
Sadly the German people are on the road to extinction since losing WWII.
👋👋👋
Really enjoyable. My grandfather, who I knew in his old age, was born in 1871 well before the motor car. My father in 1908 a year before Bleriot flew the Channel. Me in 1943. My only son in 1998 so he has only known the computer age. My grandfather saw the beginning of motoring and my son, now 24, may see the end of the carefree travel that I knew. Four generations come and gone.
1870 wasn't before the motor car it was a few thousand years after the motor car. We are the repopulation, they had better cars during cowboy days than we do now
@@togowack you should get some help
@@togowack ok:D
Times flies but the change past century or so has been exponential. I am 46 and have no desire to think how it'd be 200 years from now. It's messy already. My father was born in 1934 and mom in 1935. I am single, no kids or siblings and I don't think I would like a kid brought into this world. Love and regards from NW India currently ❤
my grandfather was also born in 1871 (lived to be 95) and i have read stories he wrote about using horse and buggies up until around 1918 when he finally got wheels. when his license was revoked at age 89 he told grandma (20 yrs younger than he), "okay mabel, it's time you learn to drive." and she said , 'not on your life dowe". he was a character.
I once had a neighbor who built an 1890's replica (4 wheel). It was quite authentic. I rode in it, once. It was pretty scary, just going around the block at 5 mph.
That was awesome
👋👋👋
@@danrhone9756 👋👋👋
@@EdgeBaborPhilippines 👋 Hi
As someone born and raised in Detroit and a third generation auto worker I love these videos on automotive history. Great job!
You're absolutely right...... you doing over there hope you're having a wonderful day it's a lovely day that the lord has made
RedBull should replace their so called "extreme sports" events and create a "let's go on the highway in a 19th century car" extravaganza
They could with the Model T Ford. The start of the race could be them assembling them. Just like the Jeep and the Bug, anyone can do it with little training.
@@commodoresixfour7478 You people talk about the Model T like it was the first vehicle in America.
@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar No not really. Because the model "T" was the most mass produced vehicle in THE WORLD until the VW Beetle. It was the first when it came to mass production. That's why it's so well known.
@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar Also if you want to argue that The model "T" was more of a tractor than a car, that's an argument I can get behind. Except many cars were like that back then.
@@commodoresixfour7478 Please leave the information to people who study the era and from where I sit, that basically means just me...I find it hard to find even car people who care about the early 20th century, let alone study it, let alone study anything about vehicles during it. So you have 4 dilemmas there.
Now, the Model T was an awful looking vehicle and basically everything around it looked better; Chandler, Winton, Cadillac, Buick, Thomas flyer, Essex, even Baker.
Doesn't help that the Model T is based on early 1900s design, Sears company was based on a carriage exactly. Other companies didn't look like Carriages at all but they did look a bit like a tractor but only because the tractor was invented around the same time and by the same design.
Great topic. I love the way everything is so strange yet relatable to any gear head. These very early cars were ridiculously expensive and crude. I can't even imagine what it must have felt like having to leave a "pride and joy" on the side of the road until they could find a horse to tow it home. Given the rural animosity toward such evil playthings it wouldn't surprise me if said car needed even more work before returning home.
And it wasn't that long ago. One of the fastest changes human kind as experienced. Seems like the idea was pretty good. Like half a century later, nobody uses horses for much anymore other than sport and recreation.
@@Greg3070 I'd argue the fastest change in technology was in naval designs. We went from wooden hulled ships to ironclads to dreadnoughts in less than 20 years.
I think it was airplanes. From bicycle parts at Kittyhawk to murdering machines in WW1, all in a span of 15 years.
@@Greg3070 Too Much Horse Sheet On The City Streets To Clean Up And Try To Avoid Stepping In It. And The SMELL Would Be Horrific, With Even Dead Horses Left On The Street To Rot After Collapsing From Over Working Or Old Age. Something BETTER HAD TO BE DONE...
"Given the rural animosity"
Citation need.
my country was way behind on cars, my great grandfather had one in the 1920s (maybe in 1918) and still the whole village would run out to see it.
These early cars were already nicely designed and some looked exclusive and luxurious.
you are excellent at creating incredible videos, because it is a long video we do not even notice the number of minutes, but the quality that is your work.
Thanks!
@@BSport320 Yeah, it was an excellent video. Great pictures!
A great documentary. As for me this shares many struggles with my lawn tractor with belts for just about any drive...
Wow ! Attaching a rocking horse head bust exactly like shown on my tricycle was first thing I had my dad do for me when I was 4 !
Looks like having a mustache was mandatory to own and drive a car.😄
As well, " The more things change the more they stay the same " Cars were a pain in the butt 130 years ago, and in one way or another, they still are.
Great vid. Love the old photos. Great history lesson.👍
God bless the tenacity n endurance of the creators n users of the first cars....it is because of their efforts that we are mobile today.
Horses were, of course, at least as dirty and dangerous. Their hooves threw up mud and muck at the carriage and occupants, especially at speed, so if one were to 'dash' one needed a 'dashboard' for protection. Nice video. Thanks.
Typically you were completely safe in an ornamented passenger room, also horses were large, and so were the tires, the vehicle, and how far away you were from the ground.
But yes upperclass and nobility had plenty of handmade carriages compartmentalized, enclosed, with curtains inside and hats large enough to hide their identity.
I was recommended this channel from a commenter on The Intercooler, I have to say I am very glad! Also really liked your videos on the current F1 floors.
Welcome aboard!
Ty for ur time and efforts! Well done
To think that it was forbidden to park your car in public spaces and today more 50% of parking public space is taken up by cars. Imagine how a city without cars would look like today
I wish they were forbidden to park on suburban streets, these days you get cars parking on both sides of the street leaving only a narrow lane in between them.
It would actually be nice
It would be all trolleys and trolley tracks.
❤
We need to go back to that. And the Netherlands have made quite some progress on this already.
it’s amazing that something so hated has become such a big part of our life and we could never live without them now.
Lots of people still live without them, even in countries where the majority of adults can drive.
Western cities used to have extensive rail networks but those got removed to help fuel car sales. Very short sighted way to get rich.
Back east as well New York City for one.
I remember when I was in my teens thinking apps on phones was the dumbest thing I ever heard of along with the concept of texting, so I really feel this transition xD
@@ObsessedwithZelda2 In your teens? Apps on phones? When I was un my teens everyone was using rotary phones. Mobile phones were not even thought of.
Another fantastic video, I have notifications turned on so I watch them the moment I notice a new one. Thank you!
Awesome! Thank you!
So they used steel reinforcement in the car tyres already in the 1890s!
Have enjoyed every video from the last few years, cheers !
Glad you like them!
This is fascinating . Well done!
It seems like a miracle that drivers in the early days persisted at all. I was also surprised to see radial spoking on the bicycle style driven wheels of the early cars. There must have been frequent breakage of these spokes.
Rarely, compared to thin wood spoke.
It seems to work on motorcycles.
Imagine being able to ride a bike faster and safer than a car but really insisting on taking a moving sofa with you everywhere. So brave, those trailblazers.
@@ImpreccablePony just imagine their thrill back then. Heavenly!
@@stevek8829 Bikes Today Have ADJUSTABLE Metal Spokes At The Rim. Wooden Spokes Had None...
Very informative and interesting. And I see you have much other interesting content on your channel.
Suggestion: Video on early 1900's *electric* vehicles.
Great video, I love your subtle sense of humor too.
I love how about 3/4 of the way thru this video he pointed out Old School road rage 11:30
Absolutely subscribed! Great content!
Great! Welcome onboard!
This is great, thanks! It's amazing to think both of the amazing brands that still exist today that were founded during those times (Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot, Renault, Fiat (or should I say F.I.A.T.), Skoda, Opel, Maybach), and some of the amazing ones that unfortunately disappeared after leaving a big impact (De Dion, Wolesley, Oldsmobile, the UK Daimler). At the time, everything was still possible... Today, the companies that survived are still some of the biggest, most important brands in the market (and they're all in Stellantis apparently).
@Lurch I get what you say, though it's true for the British Daimler too in some ways. I was only highlighting that it's a shame that pieces of history like that disappeared, either quickly or not.
yoo i love this, more history stuff pls it's great
Great and very informational video!
Excellent content thanks!
"If they don't have a bucket full of water, then the men had to..." and I thought, is he gonna say it? But no, it was their hats...
But the thing that is at least ironic is that the "respectable citizen" are the same still today at some parts of the world. Not necessarily the Mayor, but the priest, the cop and the teacher are still there making society better.
Thank you for another great video with very good pictures of the era, I hope you'll have the time to make some more car history stuff.
Thank you for this video! Finally a video without loud shouts "Hello guys" at the beginning. What a relief!
It's a wonder those newfangled horseless carriages ever caught on! :)
Very informative thanks for such video.
Give mad props to the designers and builders of the machines that made the parts possible
Very informative. Thanks
History is beautiful in any dommain.
Tnx for sharing !
I can't imagine driving Vis-a-Vis at a high speed. - To me, it's like a social party with a tiller in between.
Great video!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING 🇺🇸
Vielen Dank für die tierische Mühe die Du Dir mit Deinen Videos gibst. GENIAL!!!
Gerne!
At 5:11 you mention that means : in old fashioned dancing, there is a move called a dosie-doe which involves passing back to back. I wonder if they are related.
The French word "dos" means "back", so the term "dos si dos" or "dos à dos" means "back to back". . .
This was very interesting learning about cars from their beginning ☺️
Yeah, that was fantastic !! So many things I have never considered when the car was starting out. Mainly, the owner had to be mechanic & engineer also, no one to come help you out, they knew less than you did.
Very enjoyable and informative
What about steam cars though? I used to work in a brass era car restoration shop and 90% of our work was old Stanleys. The customers took them on "tours" a few times a year, by which I mean some rich guys ship their cars to interesting places and drive around a little (one guy I knew drove an old White across Europe and Asia, much due respect there), but Stanleys especially had some peculiarities though they were still a lot better than early gas cars.
Locomobiles were the earliest steam cars we had with a tiller steer and very similar design to those Benz four and three wheelers with little more than a frame to sit on, but they were much more useful than these gas cars seem! There's a reason steam power was much more popular early on, and while Stanleys were a bit primitive, they would easily do 60mph down a modern freeway, while Whites with front mounted engines and radiator/condensers were arguably still viable vehicles and I've heard stories of some still in use today.
The one brass era gasoline car I dealt with was a 1900ish CGV (a french car), and though it had been updated with a starter, it was still a vast improvement on these buggies. There was a full enclosed driver and passenger compartment, prop shaft, conical clutch, and the engine itself wasn't too dissimilar from a modern lawnmower engine, albeit water-cooled and four cylinder. By far the biggest difference between it and something from the modern era was the body and frame construction-- they still were built like wagons with wooden bodies and frame posts with very little rigidity.
Without going on too much longer, the cars in this video are leaps and bounds behind that which came about less than a decade later. IIRC the land speed record for a steam powered vehicle was only broken in the mid 2000s after around 100 years when a wooden chassied Stanley first set it at 160mph or so, and only by a few MPH! I always appreciate homage to the early innovations in mechanised transportation and semiseriously long for the day that steam cars make a comeback for the efficient, simplistic means of transportation that they are.
Simple Reason WHY The Steam Cars Never Caught on. It Took TOO LONG To Get The Water Heated UP For The Vehicle To Move. Even Locomotive Shops Had To Have Firemen Stoking The Fireboxes Of Steam locomotives A Half Hour BEFORE The Engineer Could Move The Engine To Use It...
Excellent video mate 👍🏾
Thanks a lot!
The first cars with driveshafts were in Hotchkiss cars, and the term at the time was "Hotchkiss Drive".
Beautiful works of art.
Great review!
Thanks!
In my western trilogy, my main character and his adopted daughter return to the USA after 14 years across the Atlantic moving around in Europe and they show up in a steam-engine car at a friends house. The year was 1890.
My great grandmother's ride in my grandfathers model T was new to her. while underway she would hold her hand out and declare the wind was blowing terribly. When grandad stopped she would say the wind had stopped suddenly.
Awww
I'm new to your channel and I enjoyed this video so much. The witty narration made me chuckle throughout the video and it made the information very lively and relatable.
I'm amazed geese stayed at the side of the road instead of tearing cars and occupants apart. They must have been much better behaved back then :-)
Looking forward to watching more of your content.
5:07 This is a contemporary word in Romanian, meaning close. Pretty cool to see its origin
Briscoe Darlin patented the "hat in the horse trough" water system. His truck was always good for 11 hat fulls.
👋👋
@@EdgeBaborPhilippines
Are you hitting on me ??
I think it was interesting watching this and finding out that they had cars with fake horses in the front. I never knew that. It probably looked silly but then, as the narrator described, it seemed that it was helpful for the driver in a way.
Wikipedia says it is unclear whether the Horsey Horseless was actually ever built.
@@dbadagna oh. I thought they showed a photo of one built in the video.
Beautiful account of an innovation and the problem it created and they were solved! Self belief and perseverance were key to this. Food for thought for present day innovators!
Great video, thanks, subscribed.
Thanks! Welcome on board!
Thanks for this great video.
Glad you liked it!
I worked at the Tampa Yacht Club got to see a collection of the oldest Rolls-Royce’s in the world. Very rich people gathered annually at the club. We employees got to see them up close. Many like these.
Fascinating and wonderful
Great video!!
Thanks!
My grandfather was born in 1883 so he saw some of the very first cars ever made. He lived to be 70 years old. I'm too young to remember him. My grandmother told me stories about him and their life together.
It is amazing on how far we have come.
Great Episode 🤠🇨🇦
At least here in the UK a very common source of petrol was (of all things) hat maker’s shops. Milliners use petrol in hat making to stiffen the fabric, so before the first petrol stations & as cars became more common many milliners made a little extra money selling petrol as they could just order extra to sell on. @B Sport
Thanks for sharing!
Bravo and respect for the early pioneers of car drivers and passengers. Thanx so much for this interesting and humor presentation. It must have take a time and a half to collect all these historical info.
It did! Glad you like it!
Great video! And unusual one!
Glad you liked it!
In Brussels we have a very nice musée (Autoworld at the Cinquantenaire) where you can see some of those beautifull machines !
Oh my gosh! Very Interesting!❤
Exce;;ent video, thank you. Just the right balance of facts and humor 😁😁👍👍
Great video
I bought my first car in 1921 and it was the biggest pain in the a$$ to maintain.
Love the video's, keep them coming. Just a small grammar mistake to point out: tyre puncture or flat is not a flat spot. A flat spot is either a temporary effect of a tyre standing still or a permanent one of skidding the rubber in one spot.
Thanks for the tip!
Fascinating bit of history
Yep my grandpa that passed years ago told me one time that if you was to drive 40-50 miles back in the day prepare to have about 2 maybe even 3 flats. After seeing this vid I guess he wasn’t joking😂
He wasn't!
Lpve history, love cars, liked and subbed. Cheers.
Thanks a lot!
Excellent, B Sport. Thanks to Karl Benz for my Merc.
My maternal great-grand-dad had a liveried coach pulled by 4 strong, white stallions. My maternal grand-dad was quite the car buff, though. He switched between a number of brands: Talbot, Lagonda, Sunbeam, Samson, and ending with the Nash 600.
That was very interesting. Thnx
Glad you enjoyed it
this will never catch...
I’m sure the fake horse will solve most of these problems 🐴
You just wait! I'm hearing they will be available 10 years from now. I've been hearing that about flying cars since the 1950's
@@Oldgoldminer Where's my Jetpack???
@@brianwilson6403 5 years or less.
@@Oldgoldminer We were supposed to have them in 2010.
Fascinating!
Very nice presentation.
Thanks a lot
A “friend” of my father’s gave me a ride in a Model T when I was a child. It was something else! To think that it was advanced at one point in time!
nice video :)
10:53 early picture of the tram in my town:D
This was enlightening
Oldsmobile tried electrics at that time.
Didn't work then either.
All these problems and how everyone seemed to hate it just shows you how disruptive the revolution automobile was at the time
What I'd like to know is why there were not steam cars everywhere from the early 19th Century until the internal combustion engine took off. Plenty of steamships, big and small, and trains were all steam powered. And we had macademised roads from the 1820s. Plus, solid rubber tyres were around from the mid 19th Century, and paraffin was in good supply. Sure, internal combustion engines were far more convenient, and a better idea all round, but steam would have been very useful in cars until then. One of life's mysteries.
I heard the early railroad investors suppressed the steam car - didn't need the competition.
Also, if you scale a Locomotive down to car-size you still have a lot of cast iron to move around which overwhelm wagon wheels. Steel wheels and an iron frame.
Trains run on smooth rails with only a slight incline. Ships glide thru the water. The car will sink into soft dirt. But there were steam tractors.
Going from cold to steam takes an hour and you can't "throttle" a coal fire. You need to blow off the un-needed pressure which is loud.
The Stanley Steamer solved all these technical problems but this tech wasn't available in 1820. See Cugnot steam cart.
There were steam buses in 1830s england that did not use a track, but they were made illegal.
There were more steam and electric cars at first. The steam powered took a long time to get up steam and could blow up or catch fire. Electric cars had limited endurance and less power and would get stuck in mud. .
Good video. Farmers also complained about the "new fangled contraptions making noise" that stopped their milking cows from giving milk and the chickens would stop laying eggs.
Very interesting video! I enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot.
Excellent.