When the marine architects and engineers catch up with the automobile
makers they can build a ship capable of crossing the Atlantic in
twenty-three hours; or, if we forget to make allowance for the
difference in longitude, capable of making the run from Liverpool to
New York in the same apparent time in which the Twentieth Century
Limited makes the run from New York to Chicago. That is, the vessel
leaving Liverpool at three o'clock in the afternoon would arrive at New
York at nine o'clock the following morning, which, allowing for the
five hours' difference in time, would make twenty-three hours.
When the railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power
that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if
they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York
and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be
but a day's run from the metropolis.
And when the airship enthusiasts are able to dart through the air at
the speed attained by the automobile, it will be time enough to think
of taking seriously the extravagant claims made in behalf of aviation.
For the automobile is the swiftest machine ever built by human hands.
It is so much swifter than its nearest competitor that those who read
these lines to-day are likely to be some years older before its speed
is even equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed, by any other kind
of vehicle.
So far as is known, but one human being ever traveled faster than
Robert Burman did in his racing auto on the beach at Daytona, Florida,
on April 23, 1911. This solitary exception was a Hindu carrier who
chanced to tumble off the brink of a chasm in the Himalayas. His name
has not been preserved, he never made any claim to the record, he was
not officially timed, and altogether the event has no official
standing. Still, as he is the only man who is ever alleged to have
covered so great a distance as six thousand feet in an obstructed fall,
the matter is not without interest; for, according to the accepted rule
for finding the velocity of a body falling freely from rest, he must
have been going at the rate of seven miles a second when he reached the
bottom.
About Burman's record there can be no doubt, for it was made in the
presence of many witnesses, and it was duly timed with stop-watches by
men skilled in the art. The straightaway mile over the smooth, hard
beach was covered from a running start in the almost incredibly short
time of 25.40 seconds.
The next fastest mile ever traveled by human beings who lived to tell
about it was made in an electric-car on the experimental track between
Berlin and Zossen, in 1902. As the engineers who achieved this record
for the advancement of scientific knowledge of the railroad considered
such speed dangerous, it is not at all likely to become standard
practise. The fastest time ever made by a steam locomotive of which
there is any record, was the run of five miles from Fleming to
Jacksonville, Florida, in two and a half minutes by a Plant system
locomotive in March, 1901. This was at the rate of 120 miles an hour.
As for steamships, the record of 30.53 miles per hour is held by the
_Mauretania_.
These things, if borne in mind, will serve to throw into stronger
relief the things that an automobile can do, and to supply a
substantial basis for the premise that, at least in some respects, the
automobile is the most marvelous machine the world has yet seen. It can
go anywhere at any time, floundering through two feet of snow, ford any
stream that isn't deep enough to drown out the magneto, triumph over
mud axle deep, jump fences, and cavort over plowed ground at fifteen
miles an hour. It has been used with brilliant success in various kinds
of hunting, including coyote coursing on the prairies of Colorado,
where it can run all around the bronco, formerly in favor, since it
never runs any risk of breaking a leg in a prairie-dog hole. Educated
automobiles have been trained to shell corn, saw wood, pump water,
churn, plow, and, in short, do anything required of them except figure
out where the consumer gets off under the new tariff law.
But to get back to the subject of speed, as automobile talk always
does, the supremacy of the motor-car has been established by so many
official records that any attempt to select the most striking only
results in bewilderment. The best that can be done is to recite a few
representative ones.
That was a most interesting illustration, for instance, of the capacity
for sustained high speed made by a Stearns car on the mile track at
Brighton Beach in 1910. In twenty-four hours the car covered the
amazing distance of 1,253 miles, which was at the average speed of
52-1/5 miles per hour. This record is all the more remarkable from the
fact the car was not a racer, but a stock car which had been driven for
some months by its owner before it was borrowed for the race, and did
not have any special preparation. The men who drove it were not
notified that their services were wanted until the morning of the race.
While this is about the average rate per hour of the fastest train
between New York and Chicago, it should be remembered that the trains
run on steel rails, that curves are comparatively few, and they are not
sharp, while the automobile was spinning around a mile track made of
plain dirt, and was obliged to negotiate 2,506 sharp curves. Besides,
the locomotives on the fast trains are changed every 120 to 150 miles,
while the entire run of 1,253 miles was made by one auto which had
already run 7,500 miles in ordinary service before it was entered in
the race.
Unfortunately for the automobile, it has achieved so many remarkable
speed records that its name is suggestive of swiftness. If the English
language were not the stereotyped, inelastic vehicle for the
communication of thought that it is we should now be speaking of
"automobiling" a shady bill through the city council instead of
"railroading" it. There are few places where it is permissible to
attain record speed, and fewer men who, with safety to others, may be
entrusted with the attempt. The true value of the automobile to the
average man lies in its ability to keep right on going indefinitely at
moderate speed under any and all conditions.
One of the innumerable tests in which the staying qualities of the
automobile were brought out was the trip from Pittsburg to Philadelphia
by way of Gettysburg by S.D. Waldon and four passengers in a Packard
car, September 20, 1910. This run of 303 miles over three mountain
ranges, with the usual accompaniments of steep grades, rocks, ruts, and
thank-you-ma'ms to rack the machinery and bruise the feelings of the
riders, was made in 12 hours and 51 minutes.
A little run of three or four hundred miles, though, is scarcely worth
mentioning by way of showing what an auto can do in a real endurance
contest. A much more notable trip was the non-stop run from Jackson,
Michigan, to Bangor, Maine, in November, 1909, by E.P. Blake and Dr.
Charles Percival. The distance of 1,600 miles was covered in 123 hours,
which meant traveling at an average speed of 13 miles an hour in rain
and snow and mud over country roads at their worst. In all that time
the motor never once stopped. In the Munsey historical tour of 1910 a
Brush single-cylinder car covered the 1,550 miles of a schedule
designed for big cars and came through with a perfect score. If you
know the hill roads of Pennsylvania you'll realize what that means in
the way of car performance.
Still more remarkable endurance tests are the transcontinental trips
which are undertaken so frequently nowadays that they no longer attract
attention. One such trip which shows what very little trouble an
automobile gives when handled with reasonable care was that made in
1909 by George C. Rew, W.H. Aldrich, Jr., R.A. Luckey, and H.G. Toney.
Traveling by daylight only, they made the journey of 2,800 miles from
San Francisco to Chicago in nineteen days in a Stearns car. They might
have done better if they had not loitered along the way. On one
occasion they stopped to haul water a distance of twenty-five miles for
some cowboys on a round-up. The motor gave no trouble whatever, while
the only trouble with tires was a single puncture caused by a spike
when they tried to avoid a bad stretch of road by running on a railroad
track.
The time record from ocean to ocean was held by L.L. Whitman, who left
New York in a Reo four-thirty at 12.01 A.M. on Monday, August 8, 1910,
and arrived in San Francisco on the 18th, covering the 3,557 miles in
10 days 15 hours and 13 minutes. This achievement may be more fully
appreciated by comparing it with the transcontinental relay race in
which a courier carried a message from President Taft to President
Chilberg, of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in September-October,
1909, in 10 days 5 hours, by using thirty-two cars and as many
different drivers who knew the roads over which they ran.
Those who are fortunate enough to have friends who own cars know that
automobiles can climb hills; and that the accepted way to do it is to
throw in the extra special high gear, tear the throttle out by the
roots, advance the spark twenty minutes, and push hard on the steering
wheel. The fact that the car will overlook such treatment and go ahead
is a source of never-failing wonder. Indeed, when it comes to
hill-climbing the automobile is so far ahead of the locomotive that it
seems like wanton cruelty to drag the latter into the discussion at
all.
The steepest grade on a railroad doing a miscellaneous transportation
business climbed by a locomotive relying on adhesion only is on the
Leopoldina system in Brazil between Bocca do Monte and Theodoso, where
there is a stretch of 8-1/3 per cent. grade with curves of 130 feet
radius. There are some logging roads in the United States with grades
of 16 per cent. How trifling this seems when compared with the feat of
a Thomas car which climbed Fillmore Street, San Francisco, which is
alleged to have a gradient of 34 per cent., with twenty-three persons
on board. As 25 per cent. is regarded as the maximum safe gradient for
an Abt rack railway, since the cog-wheel is liable to climb out of the
rack on any steeper grade, it will be seen that the strain upon the
credulity of the hearer of this story is almost as great as that upon
the car must have been.
Enthusiasm may be expected to run high in the presence of such
astounding triumphs, and it should, therefore, not be deemed surprising
that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in
definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with
scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent,
minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on,
are generally left to the imagination.
Among the few exceptions to this rule was the hill-climbing contest at
Port Jefferson, Long Island, in which Ralph de Palma went up an ascent
of two thousand feet with an average gradient of 10 per cent. and a
maximum of 15 per cent. in 20.48 seconds in his 190-horse-power Fiat. A
little Hupmobile, one of the lightest cars built, reached the top in 1
minute 10 seconds. De Palma climbed the "Giant's Despair" near
Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, an ascent six thousand feet long, with
grades varying from 10 to 22 per cent., in his big machine in 1 minute
28-2/5 seconds. A Marmon stock car reached the top in 1 minute 50-1/5
seconds. Pike's Peak, Mount Washington, Ensign Mountain, in Utah, and
lesser mountains elsewhere have also been climbed repeatedly by
automobiles. As the mere announcement of the fact vividly exhibits the
staying powers of the auto in a long, stiff climb, the engineering
details may be disregarded.
Next to its ability to do the exceptional things when required, the
most useful accomplishment of the automobile is its wonderful capacity
for standing up to its work day in and day out in fair weather or foul,
regardless of the condition of the roads. This is shown every year in
the spectacular Glidden tours, otherwise the National Reliability
tests, in which a number of cars of various makes cover a scheduled
route of two or three thousand miles, in which are included all the
different kinds of abominations facetiously termed "roads." Other tests
without number are constantly being evolved to demonstrate the already
established fact that an automobile can do anything required of it.
There was the New York to Paris race, for instance. Starting from New
York on February 12, 1908, when traveling was at its worst, and
arriving in Paris July 30, the winner floundered in snow, mud, sand,
and rocks, over mountain ranges and through swamps, in eighty-eight
days' running time for the 12,116 miles of land travel. That was a
demonstration of what an automobile can do that has never been
surpassed. Yet the Thomas car that did it was restored to its original
condition at a cost of only $90 after the trip was ended.
Another remarkable demonstration of endurance was that given by a
Chalmers-Detroit touring car, which was driven 208 miles every day for
a hundred consecutive days over average roads. When the 20,800 miles
were finished, just to show that it still felt its oats, the car which
had already covered 6,000 miles of roads through Western States before
the test began, ran over to Pontiac, Michigan, and hauled the Mayor 26
miles to Detroit. Then it was run into the shops and taken down for
examination. Being found to be in perfect condition except for the
valves, which required some trifling adjustment to take up the wear on
the valve stems, and for the piston rings, which needed setting out, it
was reassembled and started on another test.
But, after all, the most wonderful thing about an automobile is its
almost infinite capacity to endure cruel and inhuman treatment. No
matter whether the brutality is inflicted through ignorance or
awkwardness, or, rarest of all, through unavoidable accident, the
effect on steel and wood and rubber is the same. Yet the auto stands
it.
In brake tests it has been demonstrated that a car traveling at the
rate of eighteen miles an hour can be stopped in a distance of
twenty-five feet. The knowledge that this can be done in an emergency
is a great comfort, but it should be equally well known that it does
not improve the car to make all stops that way. Yet how often are
drivers seen tearing up to the curb at twenty miles an hour or more to
slam on the brakes at the last instant with a violence that nearly
causes the car to turn a somersault, bringing it to a standstill in
twenty feet, when there was no earthly reason why they should not have
used four times that distance. Or if occasion arises for slowing down
in a crowded street, the same kind of driver throws out his clutch and
applies the brakes with the throttle wide open so the motor can race
unhindered.
With the greenhorn the automobile is long-suffering. There was a new
owner in Boston, whose name is mercifully suppressed, who took his
family out for a first ride. In going down a hill on which the clay was
slippery from recent rain it became necessary to turn out for a car
coming up. The new driver made the turn so successfully that he turned
clear over the edge of the embankment. Having nothing but air to
support it, the auto turned completely over without spilling a
passenger and landed right side up and on an even keel in a marsh
fifteen feet below. It was necessary to get a team to pull the car out
of the mud, but once on the solid road the new owner simply cranked 'er
up and went on his way rejoicing.
Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on
the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been
shipped from the factory. Nevertheless, he started up the motor
according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel
driving. By this time the outraged motor was red hot. Whereupon the new
owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water
on it. Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he
decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car
didn't "pull" well.
Still another new owner complained that his car did not give
satisfactory service. The agent was not at all surprised that it didn't
when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five
hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to
transmission gear and rear axle.
George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt
race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at
the rate of sixty miles an hour. The car turned over twice, but finally
stopped right side up. Robertson received a cut on one arm in the
fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they
could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under
their own power. There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5,
the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson's arm at $2.
But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire
while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track. The
flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences,
one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in
diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up. E.H. Parker, the
driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise
undamaged. They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in
the race again.
What the automobile can do in the way of cheapness was shown by the
cost tests, sanctioned and confirmed by the American Automobile
Association, between a Maxwell runabout and a horse and buggy. In seven
days, in all kinds of weather and over city and country roads, the
horse and buggy traveled 197 miles at a cost per passenger mile of
2-1/2 cents. The runabout made 457 miles in the same time, and the cost
per passenger mile was 1.8 cents. This covered operation, maintenance,
and depreciation, and, incidentally, all speed laws were observed.
The Winton Company, which conducts a sort of private Automobile Humane
Society, offers prizes for chauffeurs who can show the greatest mileage
on the lowest charge for upkeep. The first prize winner in the contest
for the eight months ending June 30, 1909, drove his car 17,003 miles
with no expense whatever for up-keep. The second prize winner drove
11,000 miles at an outlay of thirty cents, while the third man drove
10,595 miles without any expense. This makes a total of 38,598 miles by
three cars at a cost of thirty cents for repairs. And all the cars were
two years old when the contest began.
The moral for those who really want to see what an automobile can do is
obvious.