The Plectocycle. A short-lived adult tricycle, introduced during the 1880s.
Interior of “Pullman Palace” train cars, 1890s. After spending an uncomfortable train trip from Buffalo to Westfield, New York, engineer George Pullman was inspired to design luxury train cars, ones which featured plush swivel chairs, beveled mirrors, brass trimmings, carpeting, draperies, card tables, libraries, and barbershops.
The “High Wheel” bicycle, also known as the “Regular” and “Penny-Farthing”, named after the British coins penny and farthing, one coin being larger than the other, was introduced to both England and the United States in the 1870s. Despite its popularity it was also dangerous, causing serious injuries and deaths. Riders would at times flip headfirst over the handlebars when going downhill or when hitting a stone. Dismounting the bicycle also caused numerous injuries. As there was no way to safely make the bicycle come to a complete stop before dismounting, the rider would have to jump off backward while still in forward motion.
In the late 1880s certain bicycle manufacturers introduced new, and supposedly safer, High Wheel models, in which the wheels were reversed, the larger being in the rear. This made riding the bicycle safer overall, though this now posed a new problem, as going uphill could cause the rider to tip backward. By the early 1900s, High Wheel model bicycles were barely in use, with a smaller and safer bicycle being preferred, the kind we know today.
In 1899, Uriah Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan, realized that travel by horse and carriage would soon be a thing of the past, as gasoline-powered vehicles were slowly being introduced to the public. He came up with this concept vehicle, which he named the “Horsey Horseless”. The vehicle had a wooden horse head to resemble a horse and carriage, as Smith felt the public was not entirely ready to give up horses altogether as a mode of transportation. The horse head, in theory, would help people slowly transition from horses to gas-powered vehicles while providing the feeling of being pulled by a horse. Smith was also concerned that horses would be spooked by seeing a self-operating vehicle and felt adding the horse head would appear familiar to them, thus potentially easing their fear. The wooden horse head was designed to be hollow to hold gasoline. The “Horsey Horseless”, once patented, was considered a flop and was never manufactured.
Intersection of Dearborn and Randolph streets in Chicago, 1909. This traffic jam was staged, with the help of the police, to show city officials the need for more traffic officers.
Riders on horseback would often shout “Woah! Woah!” to slow down or stop their horse. It was tricky for some to make the transition to automobiles, like the one pictured below from 1900. They had to remember there was now a brake pedal. At times, drivers would still shout “Woah! Woah!” out of habit to stop their vehicle rather than step on the brake, resulting in a number of accidents.
This unusual tricycle was designed in 1881 by Charles Oldreive, of Chelsea, Massachusetts. The rider was to sit inside the large wheel and move the tricycle by using hand cranks. The image below is of a prototype manufactured in 1882, which is as far as this tricycle got. For whatever reason, whether too visually bizarre, a design flaw, unsafe, or a combination of all, it was never made available to the public.
On November 3, 1900, the first modern automobile show in the United States opened to the public at Madison Square Garden in New York City (not the current Madison Square Garden. There were previous MSGs at different locations within New York City prior to the current one being built).
This was not the very first automobile show in the country, nor was it the first at MSG. It was, however, the first to consist entirely of gasoline-powered automobiles, whereas previous shows contained horse-pulled carriages as well as horses themselves.
This event, sponsored by the Automobile Club of America, lasted one week and featured 66 exhibitors displaying 31 automobiles and automobile accessories. Ten thousand people attended the show throughout the week, paying an admission cost of 50 cents. Many who attended referred to the event as the “horseless horse show”.
A demonstration track surrounded the main exhibit area, in which automobiles were periodically driven around in a parade-like fashion. As gasoline-powered vehicles were unfamiliar to many attendees, a number of people in the main exhibit area backed away from the railing in fear as the automobiles came around the track.
The show was so successful that it became an annual event, showcasing each year’s newest gas-powered vehicles. These types of shows not only continued to be held at Madison Square Garden but spread out to other venues across the country.
Below are photos from the 1900 “horseless horse show”.
On December 17, 1903, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully flew a plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first of four flights that day lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. The longest of those four flights lasted 57 seconds, traveling at 31 mph according to a telegram Orville sent his father, Bishop Milton Wright, seen below.
There is some controversy over who really flew the first plane. After much research, many historians now credit a German man who immigrated to the United States, named Gustave Whitehead, as being the first to fly a plane two years earlier.
Gustave Whitehead’s plane, named “Condor No. 21”, due to it being his 21st plane design, was first reported to have flown several times near Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1901 according to the August 18, 1901 edition of the Bridgeport Sunday Herald. The story of his flight was reprinted in the New York Herald, the Boston Transcript, and the Washington Times. Within months, the story ran in nine other newspapers throughout the country, as far away as the West Coast.
So why isn’t Gustave Whitehead currently credited with the first flight? Other than the story appearing in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald, which other publications picked up from that one source alone, Whitehead did not keep records. He did not keep a log of his flights, nor did he have any of them photographed for proof, even throughout his flights in 1902. The Wright Brothers, however, kept meticulous records and had photographers on hand to document their first flight, making it more reputable than Whitehead’s.
The color photo below of the Condor No. 21 is a replica, built to scale using Whitehead’s original blueprint.
In terms of the first physical ticket issued in the United States, that went to Harry Myers in 1904 (exact date unknown). He was traveling 12 mph in an 8 mph zone on West Third Street in Dayton, Ohio. His fine was $10.
In 1911, Milton Reeves, an early pioneer in the automotive industry, invented a car with eight wheels, which he named the Octoauto. He felt more wheels would lead to a smoother ride. The additional wheels resulted in the car measuring over twenty feet long.
Reeves didn’t get a single order for his car. After his failed 1911 Octoauto, he invented the Sextoauto the following year, a car with six wheels. That too was a failure.
Reeves is known for having invented the muffler in 1897. Out of more than 100 patents he held in the automotive industry, the muffler was his only successful invention.
Detroit refused to do away with their own local time. Detroit’s clocks ran 28 minutes ahead of the new Central Time Zone. There were a number of City Council meetings in Detroit over whether they should adopt the new time zone or remain using their own local time. At the conclusion of each meeting, half the city would vote to adopt the change while half would vote against it. The side that voted against it eventually won, and Detroit continued using its own local time. City Council meetings continued to be held through the years over this matter until a majority eventually voted to adopt the Central Time Zone, which Detroit began using in 1905. In 1942, Detroit, and most of Michigan, switched over to Eastern Time Zone.
The driver of the taxi was arrested and charged with manslaughter, but was acquitted on the grounds that striking Bliss was unintentional.
On May 30, 1893, a train carrying performers and animals, from the Walter L. Main Circus, derailed in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. The animals on board the train included horses, lions, tigers, elephants, panthers, birds, snakes, crocodiles, kangaroos, camels, zebras, and a gorilla among others. The conductor, familiar mostly with 30-foot train cars rather than the seventeen customized 70-foot-long circus cars, misjudged the speed around a curve, unaware that the handbrake needed to be applied sooner than usual to slow down the car sizes and extra weight.
You’ve likely heard the Grateful Dead song “Casey Jones”, released in 1970. The song begins:
“Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones, you better watch your speed”.
Who was Casey Jones? He wasn’t just a name in a song. He was a 19th century train conductor, killed in a train wreck in 1900 which immortalized him for saving the lives of passengers while losing his own. Despite the song lyrics, cocaine was not a factor in the wreck. Here are the facts.
Casey Jones worked for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, transporting freight throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. In 1888, he left the company for a better engineering job with the Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR), transporting freight between Tennessee and Mississippi.
Jones was known for his famous whistle. Whereas other engineers would simply blow their whistle as loud as they could, Jones would start his whistle off very softly, gradually building it up loudly before slowly returning it to a very soft whistle, fading it away at the end. Those woken up at night by train whistles knew when Jones was conducting the train by his signature whistle.
During the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the ICRR was responsible for shuttling thousands of passengers to and from the fairgrounds over a six-month span. It was an opportunity Jones greatly enjoyed.
Casey Jones had been seen as a hero before the tragic 1900 train wreck when he saved the life of a child in 1895. A little girl, playing on the tracks with her friends, became frozen with fear at the site of the oncoming train, unable to leave the tracks with the rest of her friends. With Jones’s co-engineer reducing speed, Jones climbed out of the engine, clinging to the front of the train with one hand, and with an outstretched arm as the train approached, scooped up the girl to safety.
Jones was known as a bit of a risk taker, and that served him well when an opportunity arose for a job on board a “cannonball” passenger train in February 1900, a new branch of the ICRR. “Cannonball” referred to any train, freight or passenger, involving fast transit. In fact, the cannonball train Jones now operated offered the fastest schedules in American railroading. The scheduling was aggressive to the point that other engineers quit, believing the scheduling demands placed on them were impossible to meet. Jones, being a risk taker, thrived on these scheduling demands.
On the rainy and foggy morning of April 30, 1900, Jones departed Memphis, Tennessee at 12:50 am, carrying six cars of passengers to Canton, Mississippi. His fireman, Sim Webb, was working alongside him, keeping up the steam of the train. Jones was running 75 minutes behind schedule but made up the time throughout the trip by pushing the train to a top speed of 80 mph.
Low visibility due to rain and fog while passing through the station at Vaughn, Mississippi prevented both Jones and Webb from seeing a freight train parked at the station, four of its end cars sticking out onto the main track. Webb noticed the parked train before Jones did, and shouted, “Oh my Lord, there’s something on the main line!” Jones quickly shouted back “Jump Sim, jump!” Webb jumped from the train, being knocked unconscious upon hitting the ground. The last thing he remembered was hearing Jones loudly sound the whistle to warn anyone at the station of the impact about to occur.
At 3:52 am, with just 300 feet before impact, Jones was able to apply the brake and slow the train down from 75 mph to 35 mph before slamming into the wooden caboose and continuing on through the next three cars containing hay, corn, and timber, before the engine Jones was in derailed, coming to rest on its side. The rest of the cars remained upright and more or less still on the track. There were minor injuries to some of the passengers, mostly bruises. Jones was killed instantly, the only fatality in the wreck. He was 37. Having remained on board the train and acting quickly, Jones saved many lives that morning.
Shortly after, still in 1900, Wallace Saunders, a steam engine cleaner at the Canton, Mississippi station (and a friend of Jones), wrote “The Ballad of Casey Jones”, set to the tune of another song of the time. Saunders was often heard singing the song he created, which was picked up by engineers who stopped in Canton. They in turn shared this song with other stations they stopped at. The legend of Casey Jones was beginning.
“The Ballad of Casey Jones” eventually found its way to vaudeville in 1909. It was sung with great success, resulting in sheet music for that song being sold throughout the country, though it was now re-titled “Casey Jones, The Brave Engineer”. The song, associated with vaudeville, was considered a comedic song despite its subject matter of the fateful wreck. By WWI, millions of copies of the song had been sold, securing the legend of Casey Jones.
Jones’s wife never remarried, nor had any intention to. She wore black and mourned for the rest of her life until she herself passed away in 1958 at age 92.
The fourth image below is the only photo known to exist of Casey Jones’s train wreck.
