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All three cases begin with the motorcar in the periphery: all three end with it achieving ubiquity. This multiple-case design is used for the purpose of theoretical replication.8 Results in all three cases show that a contrived likeness to its competitor—the horse—contributed to the motorcar’s success. The motorcar absorbed the technical, material, structural, and conceptual resources of the technology it displaced.
Organization of the Book
In chapter one, I review the dominant literature in technology studies and the history of technology related to automobiling. I identify some gaps in the current use of artifacts, social groups, gender, and price as explanatory devices for technological diffusion. I suggest practices—routines used to carry out work and social obligations—as a potential unit of analysis to bridge some of these gaps.
Chapter two covers the first case of this three-part study. I closely examine the marginal use of the motorcar in the United States during the first decade of the twentieth century and discuss strategies used to transfer practices from muscle to motor power. For primary sources, I use physical artifacts and print media, which include commentaries, editorial cartoons, and advertisements. Advertising of this time arguably serves as a mouthpiece for automotive manufacturers9 and hence provides evidence of the persuasive measures used to generate demand and respond to consumer concerns. Manufacturers’ manuals and printed publications are included to show the physical translations of these persuasive measures.
Chapter three, the second case study, focuses on how automobiling was achieved in a highly resistant environment—the U.S. Cavalry after World War I. Here again the motorcar was peripheral, but unlike in the first case, superficial likeness with the horse was insufficient to effect change in the cavalry world. The demise of the horse tradition constituted a fatal blow to the cavalry’s identity and core principles as expressed in the 1914 Cavalry Service Regulations10 and the 1916 Cavalry Drill Regulations.11 The Cavalry Journal, an internal military publication, provides evidence of the various coping mechanisms employed to keep the horse, which, ironically, led to the conceptualization of its replacement—the jeep.