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Key insights from
A Brief History of Motion: From the
Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
By
Tom Standage
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What you’ll learn
The wonder of how we get
from one place to another isn’t always a topic of profound thought, let
alone an object of historical inquiry. In a century in which access to some
form of automated transportation is something much of the world takes for
granted, it’s often difficult to place the innovation into its broader
historical context. The prolific writer Tom Standage helps readers do just
that, detailing the nearly 6,000-year trajectory of ancient, medieval, and
modern vehicles to reveal the prolonged trends, similarities, and pitfalls
of each.
Read
on for key insights from A Brief History of Motion.
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1. The ancient
wagon is the predecessor to your Volkswagen.
Starting in the 1980s, most
archeologists believed the ancient wheel came to be in the Fertile Crescent
of Mesopotamia, but the latest archeological discoveries prove that it most
likely arose in the Eastern European country of Ukraine instead. According
to recent archeological research, the wheel is much older than most
academics originally thought, too. By employing carbon-dating to determine
the ages of various items recovered from the Carpathian Mountains,
archeologists discovered that the same sorts of wheels their own cars spin
upon are the products of an idea that arose sometime between 3950 and 3650
BC. The use of these prehistoric wheels predicts a longstanding phenomenon:
Whether one rides in a battle-worn chariot or a freshly painted Corvette, a
decent set of wheels buys its owners a moment in the spotlight.
Before ancient and modern
roads were respectively crowded by chariots and Teslas, though, the simple,
copper-carrying wagon put wooden wheels to the test. According to historian
Richard Bulliet, these “Carpathian mine carts” are the earliest forebears
of contemporary cars. During the Copper Age, people used these carts to
carry copper from the Carpathian mountainside in order to fashion it into
useful tools later. Soon, people from various regions, including Europe,
Mesopotamia, and even the Pontic Steppe, which is located in Eastern
European countries and Russia, could be found with these newly fashioned
“wagons.” They put their new wheels to work while harvesting, traveling,
and even warring.
After a thousand-year lapse
in innovation, the year 2000 BC witnessed the wheel take on yet another new
role and at last, hit its stride. Similar to the wagons that Mesopotamian
monarchs paraded on during periods of war, chariots arose as new tools of
power and confidence. With horses at the lead, the most advanced early
chariots allowed their riders to travel up to 25 mph, destroying foes and
rival forces with efficiency. Despite the benefits these chariots created
for armies like the Hittites and the Egyptians, just like the wagon, they
slowly declined in use. Over time, chariots grew too cumbersome for
effective battle. Thankfully for their owners, though, the shining image
that arrived with their chariots still remained. In fact, the famous
chariot racer Gaius Appuleius Diocles profited immensely from his skilled
charioteering, banking the equivalent of $100 million from his appearances
and proving that wheels are often worth far more than they seem.
The world of wooden wheels,
wagons, and even chariots may seem unthinkably distant, but understanding
how each creation came to exist provides a revealing glimpse into a
contemporary world that isn’t entirely different.
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2. The “great
horse manure crisis” is the most fascinating history you may not like to
know.
During the first century,
citizens of the Roman Empire watched the influence of the horse trample
that of their previously beloved chariot. At the time, unless one was a
wealthy, gown-laden woman, using anything besides a horse to get from one
place to another was a social faux pas. Years later, the medieval poet
Chrétien de Troyes took note of this trend, writing in his work The Knight of the Cart,
that “any knight is disgraced throughout the land after being in a cart.”
For centuries, this stigma stuck. Finally, in the 1500s, as men glimpsed a
shining new vehicle called the “kocsi,” one you may recognize as a
horse-pulled “coach,” they looked at their long-forsaken wheels anew.
Society’s most prominent members and eventually their less wealthy
counterparts began using these part-horse, part-wheeled contraptions,
inevitably making way for an indecorous dilemma: what Tom Standage calls
“the great horse manure crisis.”
Put simply, coach travelers
of the 19th-century definitely didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. Instead
of a noisy barrage of horns and frustrating stop-and-go speed, passengers
were met with a different kind of annoyance: smell. In 1890, frazzled city
goers in London and New York traveled through roads filled with 300,000 and
150,000 horses respectively, and their presence definitely didn’t go
unnoticed. Multiply those numbers by the daily 22-pounds of waste every
horse generates, and it’s little wonder cities found themselves in a rough
situation. To make matters worse, this problem was more than simply an
eyesore or an assault on passengers’ noses. It came with the threat and
eventual reality of various ailments, both for riders and their dutiful
horses.
Despite the death of many
of these animals, instances of disease, and the all-around undesirable
situation of the late 1800s, life without these horse-powered vehicles
seemed impossible. In 1872, following a brief though revelatory period in
which many horses were lost to equine influenza, The Nation and various
other news outlets and periodicals said what everyone else was already
thinking: Horses were indispensable to travelers at the time, and losing
them would prove detrimental to everyone. And yet, the dilemma was clear:
The landscape was growing worse with every hoof-trodden step. Amid an
evolving environment of new transportation innovations, such as the train
and even the bicycle, the late 19th century saw its silver lining in one
idea in particular.
Many people called this
sputtering newcomer the “horseless carriage,” and newspapers like the Horseless Age and the Los Angeles Times
remarked upon its seemingly countless benefits. Though the smell of their
roadways thankfully improved, these writers and the horseless carriage
riders of the late 19th century were a bit too optimistic about their
newborn “car.” Unfortunately, despite the ease and efficiency it created
for many of its drivers, over the coming century, the car would prove just
as troublesome as the horse.
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3. Henry Ford
created a new breed of drivers, but GM snatched them from his grasp.
In the United States and
Europe during the 20th century, the car had a difficult beginning. Rash new
drivers enraged the likes of Woodrow Wilson and compelled the writer
Kenneth Grahame to create the character of Mr. Toad as an illustration of
their foolishness. But with the implementation of strict protocols and
lowered costs, the appeal of these gleaming new inventions eventually
trumped onlookers’ frustrations. When the bright young businessman Henry
Ford graced the market, buyers became even more starry-eyed at those
wondrous new cars.
In America in 1908, a basic
car cost drivers a total of $2,834, which amounts to a price tag of $80,000
today. Like the chariots and early coaches that came before them, these
were often marketed as shortcuts to better reputations in polite society.
Those with the biggest bank accounts laid claim on their new rides, leaving
others to stare longingly in their midst. But then, the Ford Motor Company
arrived. In October of 1908, the car market witnessed a new option pop up
on ads and posters, and this one wasn’t simply another bankruptcy waiting
to happen. The now-mythologized “Model T” was a countercultural phenomenon.
In an age in which companies exploited the car’s allure, Ford shot straight
with potential buyers. Ford’s newly named “universal car” went for $850 in
its first days, blending the benefits of the two most popular vehicles on
the scene at the time. By 1923, over half the cars traveling throughout the
country were the indomitable, black, Model T. By then, it cost only
$298.
Ford’s secret was due in
part to a little trick he picked up while watching workers in a Chicago
meatpacking company. In 1914, Ford established what everyone now knows as a
“moving assembly line” in his company’s procedures, granting them the
ability to create enough cars (one every three minutes) to populate the
entire nation, not just the driveways of the socialites. Nearly as quickly
as it was made on that assembly line, Ford’s Model T fell out of fashion.
Ironically, the cost, image, and availability that became Ford’s signature
made the vehicle appear too easy to acquire. If everyone has one then maybe
they aren’t so special, after all.
In the meantime, General
Motors drove in the blind spot of the Ford Motor Company. Though both
companies shared the same birth year (1908), for the first portion of the
20th century, Ford feared no competition from GM. But when Ford started to
crumble, GM soon swooped in to attract Ford’s disillusioned drivers.
Originally composed of a handful of companies, including Buick, Oakland,
Oldsmobile, Scripps-Booth, Sheridan, Cadillac, and Chevrolet, which were
sold at an array of costs and in a variety of styles, GM threw Ford’s
previously successful business practices to the wind. As Bandage notes, GM
exploited the “vehicle-as-status-symbol” trend, gaining a still unrivaled
10-percent share in the American economy and driving circles around Ford’s
Model T.
Cadillacs and Model Ts
aside, both GM and Ford influenced market operations a century later. In
the face of even the plainest of cars, buyers developed an itch for the
steering wheel. Piling up like waves of rush hour traffic, these early
drivers grew entranced. And it wouldn’t be long before culture collided
with their shortsighted whims.
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4. Throughout the
mid-20th century, cars created new lifestyles for people and became icons
in the meantime.
Cities filled with
pollution, reservoirs emptied of oil, land cleared for parking lots—many
people envision gloomy images when considering the effects of contemporary
cars. But, there’s a completely different side to the car’s tale than
people typically take into account. You’ve probably seen the beloved 1978
film Grease,
for instance. Almost as sparkling as Danny Zuko’s hair, the movie’s
mid-20th-century rides are pivotal to the events that befall its
characters. Though it’s often fantastic, ridiculous, and wildly
unrealistic, Grease
provides a small window into a few ways that automobiles altered daily
life. In the wake of an expanding quantity of vehicles produced by
companies like Ford and GM, the 1940s witnessed the rise of a group of
people for whom cars were a necessary part of life—driving to the movies,
grabbing a milkshake, or taking a trip to the local Piggly Wiggly were the
norm now. Not only did cars make this new reality possible, but they
ensured that it prevailed into the 21st century, too.
For the group of young
adults that a 1944 edition of Life
magazine dubbed “teen-agers,” automobiles proved especially impactful.
Prior to the 1920s, encounters between young lovers were typically limited.
Unable to travel to romantic destinations or even a decent movie theater,
teens were confined to “calling” on one another, opting to meet beneath the
roof of a young lady’s parents instead. The concept of “dating” was a
long-awaited innovation for these young adults, and it was made possible by
the car. Instead of making anxious small talk with their parents, now the
young and in-love could travel anywhere they liked. Beginning in the 1930s,
one of their favorite hotspots was the drive-in movie theater, a venue that
provided them with a perfect blend of mediocre entertainment and romantic
seclusion.
And, if teens got tired of
watching those typically lackluster movies, cars also granted them the
ability to grab some food with ease. Jesse Kirby’s 1921 Pig Stand is the
earliest form of what Standage calls a “drive-up restaurant.” In a rather
telling and still relevant statement, Kirby declared, “People with cars are
so lazy, they don’t want to get out of them.” And so, he made sure they
didn’t have to. In Kirby’s model, employees hustled outside to deliver
drivers’ food to them with unprecedented speed. Later, in 1948, the
restaurant In-N-Out Burger conceived of what would become the hallmark of
the newborn fast-food industry: the “drive-through.” With this innovation,
there was hardly any waiting at all. Drivers then (and now) simply drive
up, roll down their windows, and receive their food.
Throughout the mid-20th
century, the sway of the car seemed inexhaustible. Prompting the creation
of interesting venues and places to journey to, automobiles enabled a
lifestyle that’s still present (though perhaps steadily stalling) today.
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5. Cars are on the
outs, and new vehicles are taking their place.
Recent years have witnessed
contemporary culture shun the car and many of its formerly popular stops.
In fact, the percentage of licensed drivers has gradually tumbled over the
years, proving that automobiles are running out of fuel. According to
experts like Volkmar Denner of the manufacturing company Robert Bosch, the
year 2017 was perhaps the automobile’s last time in culture’s good graces.
A study released by the European Union that same year reveals that though
many people have lost esteem for their cars, one group is especially to
blame for the vehicle’s decline. Young adults once were obsessed with cars.
Now, they are dissatisfied. The so-called “peak car” period is over, and
like the civilizations that came before, society is beginning to engineer
some adjustments. Along with the addition of automated vehicles, electric
cars, Uber, and improved public transportation, the world of driving is
undergoing a massive refurbishment. And, it’s one that may upend the entire
market.
If you live in or travel to
places like Helsinki, Antwerp, Birmingham, Singapore, or Berlin, for
instance, you never have to even own a car. Instead, you can use any number
of apps running on a program called “mobility as a service,” or MaaS. With
the power of the smartphone, these apps group together various
transportation options, including bikes, cabs, trains, scooters, and cars,
to create a kind of virtual bus stop for users. On apps like Finland’s
Whim, people can log onto their accounts and schedule a personalized trip,
or participate in a range of subscription offerings tailored to their specific
needs. Other outlets like Jelbi, Citymapper, and Transit create the same
opportunities for travelers with or without traditional transportation
options, each with the purpose of reducing automobile usage. Interestingly,
companies like Ford and BMW haven’t given up and are instead staking their
claim in the lucrative $10 trillion dollar space by introducing their own
versions of these apps.
Programs that use MaaS
offer various benefits to participating cities and culture as a whole,
including fewer environmental strains, more affordable means of
transportation, and even the opportunity to adjust services according to
place and time. Programs localized in college towns, for instance, benefit
their populations by offering more bikes, scooters, and other easy means of
transport for students to make it across campus quickly. The app Whim has
one such offering for student users already, providing easy access to
services like bikes and buses. Additionally, city initiatives that seek to
transform the landscape and create more opportunities for walkers, runners,
and other non-drivers to enjoy the space can also benefit from these
programs. With them, they can shift their services toward a more active
populace and maintain dependable transportation in the meantime.
Whether city-goers want to
improve their personal health, or simply avoid the bills and
responsibilities that come with car ownership, a reliable handheld
catalogue of services helps users widen their transportation experience.
With this, as some people opt to bike to work, take a bus to the store, or
share a cab with another traveler, the reality of transportation will grow
much more diverse and far healthier for people and their communities, too.
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Endnotes
This is just the beginning. If you liked these bite-size insights from A Brief History
of Motion, you'll love the whole book. Pick up a copy here. And since we get a
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