First on the Button

1913 Cadillac Roadster

By 1913, automotive advancements solidified the automobile’s place in the future. Gone were the barbershop debates about the automobile being a flash-in-the-pan and how the horse would eventually win the day. It would be hard to imagine that only a year earlier, electric lights and electric self-starters weren’t available on most new cars. Advancements in technology were only one of the elements that came together to make the automobile as common as death and taxes (1913 was also the first year an income tax was levied at a rate of 1%…those were the days). In 1913, Henry Ford implemented the moving assembly line for his Model T and the Lincoln Highway allowed people to cross the United States on the first fully paved road. A decade earlier it took Horatio Jackson 63 days to cross the country; with this new highway, an intrepid motorist could cross the country in less than a fortnight, to use the common vernacular of the day. In short, the automobile was no longer a noisy, smelly, complicated mechanical contraption; it was becoming civilized and there was no turning back.