The Book of the Automobile: A Practical Volume Devoted to the History, Construction, Use and Care of Motor Cars and to the Subject of Motoring in America

The automobile is the latest achievement of that general movement throughout history which has for its object the annihilation of space by man. To conquer distance has been one of the great problems of life. From his creation man has struggled to harness the forces of nature ; but down to the last century he has been seriously fettered and his development mercilessly hampered by his limitations. Man wants physical individual transportation. The steamboat and the railroad have partially accomplished this ; they carry their hundreds of thousands of passengers daily. But while man may go in them to the ends of the world, he can not go subject to his own volition alone; he must go with others, as one of a thousand, as one of a herd. The more one thinks of these conditions, the more one is forced to the humiliating realization that in the method and control of individual transportation there has been practically little advance since the days of the Greek runner or the Roman chariot. We marvel at modem invention, and we pity the condition of our early ancestors ; yet we still plod along at the same old rate of eight miles an hour, a speed equaled from the beginning of history by runners, horses, dromedaries, and elephants.

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Table of Contents:

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER II THE GASOLINE-MOTOR

CHAPTER III THE STEAM-MOTOR

CHAPTER IV THE ELECTRIC MOTOR

CHAPTER V TRANSMISSION AND CONTROL

CHAPTER VI THE CHASSIS

CHAPTER VII TYPES OF THE GABOLINE-M:OTOB

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