Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

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Pat Holscher
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Given as I've been reading Horses In Society, and as it has a really interesting set of discussions on the views of farmers when vehicles first came out, and given as I've been doing a lot of driving and therefore buying a lot of diesel fuel, I have this question.

How expensive, in real terms, were early vehicles? Say, 1900 to 1920. And how expensive where they to use?

I know we see figures about gas being $.19/gallon, but in 1920 dollars, that might be a pretty steep price. And the vehicles did not seem to last long. Were they expensive, in practical terms?

Vehicles seem to have really gained big acceptance early on, but transport vehicles and internal combustion engine farm implements, let alone military vehicles, took much longer to fully replace the horse. In part that was no doubt due to utility, maybe it was mostly due to utility (I wouldn't want to try a 600 mile trip in a day with a Model A) but I wonder to what extent that was due to some sort of cost benefit factor?
selewis
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Pat Holscher wrote:Given as I've been reading Horses In Society, and as it has a really interesting set of discussions on the views of farmers when vehicles first came out, and given as I've been doing a lot of driving and therefore buying a lot of diesel fuel, I have this question.

How expensive, in real terms, were early vehicles? Say, 1900 to 1920. And how expensive where they to use?

I know we see figures about gas being $.19/gallon, but in 1920 dollars, that might be a pretty steep price. And the vehicles did not seem to last long. Were they expensive, in practical terms?

Vehicles seem to have really gained big acceptance early on, but transport vehicles and internal combustion engine farm implements, let alone military vehicles, took much longer to fully replace the horse. In part that was no doubt due to utility, maybe it was mostly due to utility (I wouldn't want to try a 600 mile trip in a day with a Model A) but I wonder to what extent that was due to some sort of cost benefit factor?

This is sort of a bonehead solution: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Her is a another that's a little more involved and explains some of the problems with trying to draw parallels: http://eh.net/hmit/
JV Puleo
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Pat,
I think the question could be better examined in smaller increments... the technological leap that took place in the 20 years you mention, 1900 to 1920, was so huge that it probably exceeds the speed with which computers have developed.

I'll suggest...
1900-1905 The horse was more economical by far.
1906-1910 Automobiles gaining ground but mostly in the area of personal transport
1911-1915 Vehicles starting to make inroads into heavier transport. WWI has a lot to do with this.
1915-1920 Although horses were far from gone, nearly everyone who thought about the subject could see that the handwriting was on the wall.

Its the kind of subject that doctoral dissertations are written on, in fact I have one or two but I'd add to the demise of horse transport the influence of WWI which did two things...it killed off huge number of horses while exposing millions of men to an at least partially mechanized army while training thousands to maintain motor vehicles. We forget that many of the problems with early automobiles center on the fact that those who could afford them were unlikely to be able to fix them and there was practically no way to learn how to work on them unless you had access to them, which the average mechanic didn't. The war changed that on a huge scale.

There is also what I think of as the "techi" quality. If its new it MUST be better. This train of thought drives me crazy but we are surrounded by it now and I've no reason to believe it was any different at the turn of the century.

Thats just a few thoughts...I'm off to pick up a prescription for my mom before heading out to work.

Joe P
Last edited by JV Puleo on Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
selewis
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It hardly needs mention but merits repeating that Mr Ford's model T was instrumental in that shift. Cheap to buy and run, easy to maintain, it democratized the auto (there's a lot to that word 'auto'). Though stories of horse teams pulling automobiles out of the muck are legion and factual, it's also true that the Tin Lizzie with it's high ground clearance and skinny tires was really good in the mud of unpaved roads. The stock Jeep is only marginally better, in mud that is.

Sandy
selewis
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Speaking of gas prices, I was bemused just now to see on the morning news that people are lining up in Philadelphia to buy gas at 76 cents a gallon. A pretty good deal on the face of it but the station won't even be open for another hour or so and the line is at least a mile long. I can understand queuing up to buy necessities that are in short supply but am puzzled by the economics of waiting half a day to save $20.00 or so on a tankful of gas.

It puts me in mind of the popular game show 'Deal or No Deal'. Where I often find myself thinking, 'No wonder the poor guys broke if that gamble he just made is reflective of his real life acumen.'

Sandy

PS: Now if diesel were that price...
selewis
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The development of that machinery is an interesting story too. There was a walk behind gasoline tractor produced in Utah for a short time that was operated by means of reins. I saw one at a collectors gathering a few years ago. You pulled on both reins to come to a halt and plow reined it turn the beast. The more rein you gave it the faster it went and of course if you dropped the reins altogether it took off on you at full speed.. I'm sure that more than one old beet farmer could be heard 'Whoaing' out of habit.

Sandy

PS: Is anyone familiar with the Thurber piece in which he tells of his grandfather running their old Reo into a ditch because he jerked on the steering wheel a few times, 'Just to teach it a lesson'. IIRC it 'rared' on him.I think it's from 'The Car We Had to Push.'
Couvi
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Sandy,
selewis wrote:The development of that machinery is an interesting story too. There was a walk behind gasoline tractor produced in Utah for a short time that was operated by means of reins. I saw one at a collectors gathering a few years ago. You pulled on both reins to come to a halt and plow reined it turn the beast. The more rein you gave it the faster it went and of course if you dropped the reins altogether it took off on you at full speed.. I'm sure that more than one old beet farmer could be heard 'Whoaing' out of habit.

Sandy

PS: Is anyone familiar with the Thurber piece in which he tells of his grandfather running their old Reo into a ditch because he jerked on the steering wheel a few times, 'Just to teach it a lesson'. IIRC it 'rared' on him.I think it's from 'The Car We Had to Push.'
Check out the Samson Iron Horse:

http://www.tractorshed.com/cgi-bin/shed.cgi?br98_4

This has little to do with this topic, but is interesting, none the less:

http://www.bdlilies.com/iron.html
selewis
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Couvi wrote:Sandy,
selewis wrote:The development of that machinery is an interesting story too. There was a walk behind gasoline tractor produced in Utah for a short time that was operated by means of reins. I saw one at a collectors gathering a few years ago. You pulled on both reins to come to a halt and plow reined it turn the beast. The more rein you gave it the faster it went and of course if you dropped the reins altogether it took off on you at full speed.. I'm sure that more than one old beet farmer could be heard 'Whoaing' out of habit.

Sandy

PS: Is anyone familiar with the Thurber piece in which he tells of his grandfather running their old Reo into a ditch because he jerked on the steering wheel a few times, 'Just to teach it a lesson'. IIRC it 'rared' on him.I think it's from 'The Car We Had to Push.'
Check out the Samson Iron Horse:

http://www.tractorshed.com/cgi-bin/shed.cgi?br98_4

This has little to do with this topic, but is interesting, none the less:

http://www.bdlilies.com/iron.html

Thanks Couvi. Not sure if it's the exact same model but it sure looks a lot like it from this distance, and the name seems familiar. I forgot to mention that it also had a reverse gear which was engaged with a predictable 'cue'. What a field day the lawyers would have with that machine now.

Sandy
Pat Holscher
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selewis wrote:
Pat Holscher wrote:Given as I've been reading Horses In Society, and as it has a really interesting set of discussions on the views of farmers when vehicles first came out, and given as I've been doing a lot of driving and therefore buying a lot of diesel fuel, I have this question.

How expensive, in real terms, were early vehicles? Say, 1900 to 1920. And how expensive where they to use?

I know we see figures about gas being $.19/gallon, but in 1920 dollars, that might be a pretty steep price. And the vehicles did not seem to last long. Were they expensive, in practical terms?

Vehicles seem to have really gained big acceptance early on, but transport vehicles and internal combustion engine farm implements, let alone military vehicles, took much longer to fully replace the horse. In part that was no doubt due to utility, maybe it was mostly due to utility (I wouldn't want to try a 600 mile trip in a day with a Model A) but I wonder to what extent that was due to some sort of cost benefit factor?

This is sort of a bonehead solution: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Now that's just depressing.
Pat Holscher
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JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
I think the question could be better examined in smaller increments... the technological leap that took place in the 20 years you mention, 1900 to 1920, was so huge that it probably exceeds the speed with which computers have developed.

I'll suggest...
1900-1905 The horse was more economical by far.
1906-1910 Automobiles gaining ground but mostly in the area of personal transport
1911-1915 Vehicles starting to make inroads into heavier transport. WWI has a lot to do with this.
1915-1920 Although horses were far from gone, nearly everyone who thought about the subject could see that the handwriting was on the wall.

Its the kind of subject that doctoral dissertations are written on, in fact I have one or two but I'd add to the demise of horse transport the influence of WWI which did two things...it killed off huge number of horses while exposing millions of men to an at least partially mechanized army while training thousands to maintain motor vehicles. We forget that many of the problems with early automobiles center on the fact that those who could afford them were unlikely to be able to fix them and there was practically no way to learn how to work on them unless you had access to them, which the average mechanic didn't. The war changed that on a huge scale.

There is also what I think of as the "techi" quality. If its new it MUST be better. This train of thought drives me crazy but we are surrounded by it now and I've no reason to believe it was any different at the turn of the century.

Thats just a few thoughts...I'm off to pick up a prescription for my mom before heading out to work.

Joe P
Lou, Excellent analysis, thanks! Your point about the technological leap is absolutely correct, and greatly underappreciated.

Back in January 2000, I was at a dinner in which the topic of conversation turned to "what's the greatest technological change of the 20th Century". Everyone in the group said "the personal computer", except for me. I said "the automobile". I was alone in my opinion. After all, all of us at the table, whether we were in our 30s or our 70s (the age range was that large) had grown up with vehicles. But, in my view, the automobiles impact on the 20th Century was far greater. So large, in fact, it's difficult for most of us in the Western world to imagine a world before cars.
Pat Holscher
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JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
I think the question could be better examined in smaller increments... the technological leap that took place in the 20 years you mention, 1900 to 1920, was so huge that it probably exceeds the speed with which computers have developed.

I'll suggest...
1900-1905 The horse was more economical by far.
1906-1910 Automobiles gaining ground but mostly in the area of personal transport

Joe P
About these eras, it's interesting to note that Derry, in her book, quotes a series of items from farmers of this period complaining about vehicles, which they were vocal in their opposition to. The complaining basically stopped at the point at which cars became commonly owned by farmers too.

Also of interest, there were quite a few complaints about bicycles, or at least some negative comments about them in relation to the horse. We wouldn't think of the bicycle as being a threat to horses as transportation now, but apparently many did, and were none to keen on bicycles as a result.
Pat Holscher
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Pat Holscher wrote:
JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
I think the question could be better examined in smaller increments... the technological leap that took place in the 20 years you mention, 1900 to 1920, was so huge that it probably exceeds the speed with which computers have developed.

I'll suggest...
1900-1905 The horse was more economical by far.
1906-1910 Automobiles gaining ground but mostly in the area of personal transport
1911-1915 Vehicles starting to make inroads into heavier transport. WWI has a lot to do with this.
1915-1920 Although horses were far from gone, nearly everyone who thought about the subject could see that the handwriting was on the wall.

Its the kind of subject that doctoral dissertations are written on, in fact I have one or two but I'd add to the demise of horse transport the influence of WWI which did two things...it killed off huge number of horses while exposing millions of men to an at least partially mechanized army while training thousands to maintain motor vehicles. We forget that many of the problems with early automobiles center on the fact that those who could afford them were unlikely to be able to fix them and there was practically no way to learn how to work on them unless you had access to them, which the average mechanic didn't. The war changed that on a huge scale.

There is also what I think of as the "techi" quality. If its new it MUST be better. This train of thought drives me crazy but we are surrounded by it now and I've no reason to believe it was any different at the turn of the century.

Thats just a few thoughts...I'm off to pick up a prescription for my mom before heading out to work.

Joe P
Lou, Excellent analysis, thanks! Your point about the technological leap is absolutely correct, and greatly underappreciated.

Back in January 2000, I was at a dinner in which the topic of conversation turned to "what's the greatest technological change of the 20th Century". Everyone in the group said "the personal computer", except for me. I said "the automobile". I was alone in my opinion. After all, all of us at the table, whether we were in our 30s or our 70s (the age range was that large) had grown up with vehicles. But, in my view, the automobiles impact on the 20th Century was far greater. So large, in fact, it's difficult for most of us in the Western world to imagine a world before cars.
Also on this, imagine what this change would have been like to live through. We all have lived through the computer revolution, and are all familiar with the changes it brought. But imagining this change is another matter entirely.

As an exercise, if a person arbitrarily assigned themselves some birth date in the first decade of the 20th Century, and then plotted the changes against it, you can see what I mean. Everyone here would have lived in a walking, or perhaps riding, world early in their life, where travel any great distance was likely by train. By the time they were in their 60s, they would likely have had several cars (older cars didn't' seem to last long if used), and would have seen them go all the way from the Model T up to the big V8s. Air travel would have become not only common, but you'd see jet air travel coming in. Quite a change.
Couvi
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The technology that brought us the automobile also brought about changes in manufacture of other items, such as stoves and refrigerators. No longer was Mom cooking on a cast-iron stove fired by split wood, but on an enameled, sheet metal range with heat that could be turned on instantly and turned off at will. Even a kerosene stove was an improvement over previous cast iron models. Food preservation became a matter of putting it in the fridge, rather than salting or drying the food, or consuming it before it went bad.

I feel that the development of steel was one of the most important agents of change in the late 19th Century. Steel is four times stronger than iron, which has the strength of aluminum, think baling or tie wire. Consequently items built out of steel were one fourth the weight of an iron model. Imagine a car made of cast or wrought iron. Its weight would have precluded use on most of the roads today, much less those of the early 20th Century.
selewis
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Pat Holscher wrote:
JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
I think the question could be better examined in smaller increments... the technological leap that took place in the 20 years you mention, 1900 to 1920, was so huge that it probably exceeds the speed with which computers have developed.

I'll suggest...
1900-1905 The horse was more economical by far.
1906-1910 Automobiles gaining ground but mostly in the area of personal transport
1911-1915 Vehicles starting to make inroads into heavier transport. WWI has a lot to do with this.
1915-1920 Although horses were far from gone, nearly everyone who thought about the subject could see that the handwriting was on the wall.

Its the kind of subject that doctoral dissertations are written on, in fact I have one or two but I'd add to the demise of horse transport the influence of WWI which did two things...it killed off huge number of horses while exposing millions of men to an at least partially mechanized army while training thousands to maintain motor vehicles. We forget that many of the problems with early automobiles center on the fact that those who could afford them were unlikely to be able to fix them and there was practically no way to learn how to work on them unless you had access to them, which the average mechanic didn't. The war changed that on a huge scale.

There is also what I think of as the "techi" quality. If its new it MUST be better. This train of thought drives me crazy but we are surrounded by it now and I've no reason to believe it was any different at the turn of the century.

Thats just a few thoughts...I'm off to pick up a prescription for my mom before heading out to work.

Joe P
Lou, Excellent analysis, thanks! Your point about the technological leap is absolutely correct, and greatly underappreciated.

Back in January 2000, I was at a dinner in which the topic of conversation turned to "what's the greatest technological change of the 20th Century". Everyone in the group said "the personal computer", except for me. I said "the automobile". I was alone in my opinion. After all, all of us at the table, whether we were in our 30s or our 70s (the age range was that large) had grown up with vehicles. But, in my view, the automobiles impact on the 20th Century was far greater. So large, in fact, it's difficult for most of us in the Western world to imagine a world before cars.
I might have said the automobile too, but I can't give an impromptu response after listening to a similar conversation among members of my fathers generation. The automobile was mentioned but they quickly agreed that it was electricity as soon as someone mentioned it. A moments reflection convinced me of it. As I recall someone said that members of an even older generation, to a man, would have hit on electricity right off the bat. Interesting that something so monumental in it's effect is almost completely taken for granted now.

Sandy
selewis
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I recall musing one day on the life of a particular Irish playwright and drama critic who was born in the 1850's and died in 1950. What an amazing 100 years to have lived through, from before the kerosine lamp-whale oil and bees wax- to the nuclear age.

Sandy
JV Puleo
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I don't think I would agree with the electricity comment, not that it hasn't had an unmeasurable impact, but the largest part of the Industrial Revolution, which to me falls in the period from about 1840 to 1900 took place before electricity was universally available, in fact in large part before it was available at all.
Much the same can be said for the computer, which despite its huge impact I wonder what part of the impact will be seen as beneficial to those looking back one hundred years from now. Certainly not everything concerned with it is net gain. Here's a "for instance:"
My family business used to manufacture simple, manual accounting systems for small businesses. The advent of the computer effectively put us out of business, but I know from my own experience that it hasn't saved any time and is subject to mistakes and outright disasters that never would have occurred using the old manual systems. I have a 1966 copy of a trade magazine here called "Business Forms Reporter" that has a picture of my late father on the cover. He was interviewed for an article titled "The Check Printers" as at the time we were one of the largest in the country. The author of the article also interviewed someone from IBM who predicted that by 1980 all financial transactions would be electronic and no one would still be using checks. He also predicted what IBM called the "Paperless Office", the wave of the future where everything would be stored electronically and no one would have paper records. Now, I wonder how many of us work in a "Paperless" environment today. To my mind, we are drowning in paper since the computer has made it so easy to print out tons of it. Who in their right mind would dump their paper records and completely rely on electronic ones? No one predicted that computers would be essentially unreliable, which I think they are to a much greater extent than most other things in life, or that electronic records are so easily manipulated that their veracity is constantly challenged.
So, yes things have changed but not entirely for the better. I can produce a better quality book today than I could 20 years ago but I can't do it any faster or for less money.

Joe P
Pat Holscher
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JV Puleo wrote:I don't think I would agree with the electricity comment, not that it hasn't had an unmeasurable impact, but the largest part of the Industrial Revolution, which to me falls in the period from about 1840 to 1900 took place before electricity was universally available, in fact in large part before it was available at all.
Much the same can be said for the computer, which despite its huge impact I wonder what part of the impact will be seen as beneficial to those looking back one hundred years from now. Certainly not everything concerned with it is net gain. Here's a "for instance:"
My family business used to manufacture simple, manual accounting systems for small businesses. The advent of the computer effectively put us out of business, but I know from my own experience that it hasn't saved any time and is subject to mistakes and outright disasters that never would have occurred using the old manual systems. I have a 1966 copy of a trade magazine here called "Business Forms Reporter" that has a picture of my late father on the cover. He was interviewed for an article titled "The Check Printers" as at the time we were one of the largest in the country. The author of the article also interviewed someone from IBM who predicted that by 1980 all financial transactions would be electronic and no one would still be using checks. He also predicted what IBM called the "Paperless Office", the wave of the future where everything would be stored electronically and no one would have paper records. Now, I wonder how many of us work in a "Paperless" environment today. To my mind, we are drowning in paper since the computer has made it so easy to print out tons of it. Who in their right mind would dump their paper records and completely rely on electronic ones? No one predicted that computers would be essentially unreliable, which I think they are to a much greater extent than most other things in life, or that electronic records are so easily manipulated that their veracity is constantly challenged.
So, yes things have changed but not entirely for the better. I can produce a better quality book today than I could 20 years ago but I can't do it any faster or for less money.

Joe P
Very astute observations. Particularly as I spent the morning down at my office, and while there used the opportunity to straighten up a bit. Part of that entailed going through version after version of a draft document that had printed out with only minor revisions. A common practice, but a huge waste of paper, all made possible by the computer.

I've been able to see the impact of the computer and the vehicle on two separate professions, and it's interesting to see their impact. In both instances, some of the impact can be regarded as legitimately (that is not superficially, or "cool", but real) positive, and in others it can be regarded as legitimately negative.

When I started practicing law, computer had only just come in to our office. We were not connected to the internet. We still used Dictaphones. I didn't use the computer I had very much. When I did legal research, I went down to the County Law Library, if our own library did not have what I needed. Within a couple of years, our firm was hooked up to West Law, and we could do legal research on the computer from our own library, but we were careful about doing it as it was pricey.

Now of course, we all have computers hooked to high speed internet. The first time I tried a case after I had that, the change was really apparent to me. I was in the trial all day, and doing legal research and writing briefs in the evening. The produce that one lawyer was able to accurately turn out that way surpassed what we used to assign a separate lawyer to research during the day. That was a plus. On the negative side, it meant that we now routinely could do work that we previously had to do during the day, meaning that we were working more hours, not less.

Now, the county law library is a thing of the past and doesn't even exist. That's a shame in a way, as it was a useful public facility. On the plus side, solo practitioners have resources unlike they ever did before.

On one final item, I've noted that there's now so many technical gadgets available for trials, that they're a true negative. I've continued to use old fashioned blown up exhibits, and people like them. Generally, juries go to sleep with electronic exhibits unless they're really novel, or really unique. But lots of lawyers use them, and become fascinated to the deer in the headlight extent, which is interesting to watch in and of itself. So the quality of work isn't really getting any better, but we're sure packing a whole lot more electronic stuff than we used to.

While I said the above was the "final" item, before I turn to transportation, I will note that email allows those who use it (and I do), to really stay in contact with their clients to the extent that probably actually works a return to a much earlier era. When we simply relied on written correspondence and the telephone, we kept in contact much less. Now, if anything happens in a case, I tell my clients by email. I probably send them much more email than they want, but they know what the heck is going on. I've noted that this still takes lawyers who are a decade or more than I offguard, as an old Plaintiffs lawyer trick, apparently, is to say to certain types of clients in certain settings (settlement conferences mostly), "I don't know how much your lawyer has told you". Well, if the lawyer is electronically savvy, you almost always here back "he told me that, there's nothing he does without telling me, and he send me all of your letters, including that one where you said. . . ". That's a good thing for everyone. But I suspect it's actually a return to what occurred prior to modern transportation and the telephone, when the lawyer knew the client was only three doors down and was going to the same cafe for lunch.

In livestock the computer has made next to no difference in Western cattle raising. A person could get by without one entirely. Only very recently has it begun to make an impact, and in a mildly positive way, as people have begun to market cattle electronically. Videotape has started to have a real role in that also, and I see where a major stockyard in the Mid West recently shut down attributing its decline to videotape sales.

Turning to vehicles, however, it occurs to me that easy transportation has impacted legal work in the West just as much as the computer. As sort of an amateur historian (like everyone here), it's something I've been interested in, but have had a hard time finding information on.

In my present line of work here, I travel by car (or truck actually), a lot. Thursday I drove to Rapid City and back, through two snowstorms. The Friday before that I drove to Golden Colorado and back. Both of these trips are about 300 miles one way. I was supposed to go to Evanston Wyoming earlier this week, over 300 miles, but it canceled. I've driven from Casper to Billings and back, and then to Worland and back, in two consecutive days. Driving 500 or more miles one way to do something is very common here, as our air travel connections are absurdly expensive and not terribly reliable. I like driving, so that's okay.

Still, it came to a surprise to me that this was the case when I started doing it, but I've learned that this has been the rule at least back to the 1950s.

Prior to that, however, it wasn't. Most legal practice was local. People did travel, but not all that often. And in the 19th Century and early 20th Century, I know they traveled, but not nearly as much. It was much more of an ordeal, and normally by train, sometimes by horse. In the 18th Century and early 19th Century, riding the circuit was common for lawyers. Of course, cases were more local too. It would be unlikely that a person in Rapid City would drive to Wyoming for something and get into an accident, for example.

So what impacted more, computer or vehicle?

In agriculture, the impact of the internal combustion engine has been huge. I've discussed the impact on ranching before, so I won't bore people by repeating it. Suffice it to say, it's been an enormous change.
selewis
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All interesting points well taken. I was thinking of electricity in the way that it has changed lives and habits in peoples everyday lives at home from labor saving devices to what time one goes to bed at night. I won't argue the point because the points raised by both of you are not only good ones but also because they are all tied in together and electricity is just a part of the bigger picture, maybe as seems to be suggested only the icing on the cake of this easy life we live.

The computer certainly is a mixed blessing for all the reasons stated and more. When mine was down for a week recently I found myself twiddling my thumbs the first day and joking with a friend about withdrawal symptoms. But the feeling quickly passed and I realized that it had become a habit in some ways. Not a bad habit, it's not all consuming for me, but in the way that it's something you always do and leaves a hole when its gone. But beyond that I realized that there were many things I'd gotten used to having at my disposal, mostly information, that weren't available to me without a long drive into town.

It's interesting how the law of unintended consequences in this regard has played out. Not at all as expected. Pat mentions the paper explosion and Joe cites numerous examples all of which were unforeseen and often contrary to the predictions of experts. Perhaps its appropriate to note the optimism of an earlier generation of experts who predicted that radio and then television would bring Shakespeare and Beethoven into the lives of millions. It has put them at their disposal but that's not quite the same thing. In the same way the computer has had a major impact as a toy and idle recreation that wasn't even dreamed of.

Initially I was against the proposal to turn the ballot box over to computers. Then, on assurances from my brother who worked on the software now in use in Ireland for that purpose, I became half convinced that it might be ok. I have since returned to my former skepticism.

If the computer were to disappear tomorrow the thing I would miss the most is having easy contact and daily communication with friends at this forum. Of that I'm certain.

Sandy
JV Puleo
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Back when my office was in downtown Providence a friend of mine pointed out that in 1860 you could walk down to the waterfront from the city after work, get on a Fall River line Steamer, have dinner in the restaurant on board, retire to a small cabin for the evening and be in Manhattan for a meeting at 8 in the morning. You could do the same thing in reverse, the steamers crossed Long Island Sound every day. The last time I went to mid-town Manhattan, I was up a 5 in the morning, drove about 4, not counting trying to find a place to park in mid-town, spent two hours at the meeting and spent another 5 hours driving home. Today, even if you took the train, which is probably more expensive than it was when everyone used the train, you still have ten hours of travel time in the day. I'm pretty sure I like the old way better.

Afterthought... except when there was an accident. In the winter of 1898, in a blizzard, a Fall River Line Steamer blew up off Stonington, Connecticut on its way to Providence. My great-grandfather and great uncles were among the Stonington men who set out in open boats to see if anyone could be saved. Very few survived the wreck and icy water and my grandmother always remembered that all the rest of that winter blocks of ice containing bodies would wash up on the shore around town.

Joe P
Pat Holscher
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JV Puleo wrote:
Afterthought... except when there was an accident. In the winter of 1898, in a blizzard, a Fall River Line Steamer blew up off Stonington, Connecticut on its way to Providence. My great-grandfather and great uncles were among the Stonington men who set out in open boats to see if anyone could be saved. Very few survived the wreck and icy water and my grandmother always remembered that all the rest of that winter blocks of ice containing bodies would wash up on the shore around town.

Joe P
Pre 1900 disaster, or perhaps even pre 1940 disasters, were sometimes not only truly horrific, but seemingly much more local than today. That is, some really bad accidents occurred in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and early 20th Century, as well as some truly nasty natural disasters, but they have to practically have been off the map for them to receive the sort of attention that much smaller disasters receive today. I guess that's another way our perception of things has changed.

Your point is a very interesting one. In early eras, ships sank, trains collided, fires occurred, and storms hit, but unless they were deadly on an epic scale, they were local events that are almost forgotten today. On average, daily life is a lot safer now than in prior eras.
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