|
|
Today, the horse may appear at special events but is seen rarely in everyday life. The horse may be bred for sports and entertainment—polo matches, horse racing and betting, rodeos, riding schools—but is not commonly used for everyday work and errands. Most people today do not even know how to ride a horse. Just as we today have trouble envisioning the modern world running on muscle power, people a hundred years ago could not envision a world of horseless carriages: what could possibly substitute for a form of transport that comes home on its own?
At the turn of the twentieth century, the introduction of the motorcar1 to public roads frequented by horse-drawn carriages caused great public alarm, not only in rural2 but also in urban areas. This new contraption—a horseless carriage, no less—looked deviant and dangerous.3 The sight caused such public disturbance that one motorcar owner was arrested for driving to the entrance of Central Park.4 One study explains that people often do not know what to do with a new technological artifact.5 De-spite price reductions and performance improvements, the motorcar remained suspect to the early-twentieth-century mind.
Why did people reject for so long, at times passionately, what is now considered a sensible option, a panacea for filthy streets and myriad diseases, and a form of transport that ceased to consume when not in motion? A U.S. Army colonel emphatically declared in 1940, “A machine has no life; horses have—that is the radical difference.”6 Indeed, years before the arrival of the Ford Model T, many motorcars were already being advertised to be cheaper than horses; yet this economical alternative failed to spur immediate demand.
Charles E. Duryea, the automotive pioneer who built the first American car in 1893, observed that people “decry rather than ask for”7 innovations. Yet the standard explanation for automotive ubiquity considers only rational behavior: cars replaced horses because they were much more affordable, more efficient, and cleaner. Is it then simply common sense, albeit following on the heels of initial shock and hysteria, that ultimately accounts for motorization?
This study examines the conversion of users. To understand the motivating factors in mass adoption, I focus on perceptions and practices associated with horses and motorcars in three different settings during three different periods.