Dear
Mr. Bottorff:
My five-year-old son is an automobile fanatic (he could recognize most varieties
of cars at the age of two), so today when he asked me about the earliest
automobiles, I ended up at your website and found a wonderfully detailed history
that included many things I'd never heard before. He loved it.
However, one thing particularly attracted my interest and caused me to postpone
my regular work (I teach world history, among other things). It was the mention
of "Wisconsin State University" in regard to the early history of automobiles --
the first in America -- at
http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/carhist.htm. I'm a graduate of the
University of Wisconsin (Madison) -- B.A. 1965 -- and rather doubted the school
involved was called "Wisconsin State University" -- although schools do change
their names.
As I tell my students, perfectly accurate history is rare (as Henry Ford
commented, "History is, more or less, bunk"), and secondary sources (not from
the horse's mouth) have to be checked against other sources, if at all possible.
Although my initial check found many sources, all seem to have come from your
history. So you were the only source, really.
Then, by good fortune, I went to the Wisconsin State Historical Society. They
have a photocopy of a newspaper article from 1921 --
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/articleView.asp?pg=1&id=3778 -- that
includes a very, very long quoted letter from J. W. Carhart -- the inventor of
the first American automobile. There are several other articles on this site
about those early days:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-042.
Carhart was not a professor, he was a minister. His brother was later a
professor.
As far as I can tell, J. W. Carhart was a Doctor of Divinity and a minister of
the Methodist Episcopal church in Racine. In later years, he became a medical
doctor. An article written by Reverend J. W. Carhart may be found on page 257 of
the Ladies' Repository (a publication of the Methodist Episcopal Church
General Conference) for May 1867 --
http://tinyurl.com/Carhart-article
According to the inventor's letter published posthumously in 1921, he was
assisted with the drawings of his invention by his brother, who was visiting. My
further research (I really should get back to my own work, but this was
interesting) found that his brother, who later became the author of several
physics textbooks and a noted expert in electrical engineering, was at the time
about 27 (born in 1844 in New York). He was working on an M.A. (A.M.),
completed in 1873 at Wesleyan University. In 1872 he became professor of physics
at Northwestern University -- located in Evanston, IL, not far from Racine, WI.
In 1886 he was made a professor at the University of Michigan where he stayed
until retirement.
But it was the minister, not the brother, who invented the car -- and ran it on
the streets of Racine, to the consternation of many (it was extremely noisy, he
says). He thinks it might have been the first light automobile. You
probably can judge that better than I. As for the year, he says he began work in
1871, but in one of the articles on the site (written in Racine in 1929), it
says the work was being done in a shop financed by a rich man in the lumber
business in 1873.
I found it particularly interesting that (1) I guessed right (no Wisconsin State
University involved here), (2) that this is a late evidence for something I am
teaching this week to students in Seoul, Korea (that the Christian church was
the repository of virtually all knowledge and science for many centuries -- once
called the "Dark Ages" in Europe), and (3) the State of Wisconsin offered a
prize of $10,000 (in today's money, perhaps equal to a million dollars according
to data from
www.measuringworth.com).
This rich reward is claimed as the first prize ever offered by a government for
R&D, but who can be sure -- maybe it is the first for a practical automobile.
The prize was to be awarded to the winner of a 200-mile race in which only two
cars finally competed (eleven registered) -- one built by investors from
Oshkosh, the other by investors from Green Bay. The Oshkosh car finished the
race successfully (average speed of 6 mph) and seems (to me at least) to have
met the requirements of the prize. The commission created to judge the contest
couldn't agree to award the prize, so referred it to the legislature which gave
only HALF of the money to the winners (to defer their costs, it is said).
Another example of Government not living up to its promises -- even more than a
century ago -- that's another lesson from history. On the other hand $500,000 in
today's currency isn't bad.
One more point. The "J. I. Case Company" did not have a direct part in building
the car (according to the inventor) -- it supplied parts made to the order of
the inventor. I'd remove mention of it, since it didn't directly work on the car
and was just a supplier. At the time, it was called J. I. Case and Company. It
was dissolved in 1880, and the inventor in his letter gives it a later name --
"J. I. Case Threshing Machine" -- an anachronism, since this company was formed
after the partnership dissolved.
You have a great site. Thanks again for your hard work. I hope this long letter
makes a tiny improvement in one paragraph of your history.
Dennis
--
Fredric Dennis Williams
http://fredricwilliams.freeservers.com