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KF5JRV > TODAY 28.11.18 13:42l 66 Lines 3264 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 25923_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History
Path: IZ3LSV<IW8PGT<CX2SA<N3HYM<NS2B<KF5JRV
Sent: 181128/1239Z 25923@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.17
On November 28, 1895, Frank Duryea wins the first motor-car race in the
United States, a 54-mile loop along the lakeshore from Chicago to
Waukegan and back again. The race was a harrowing one – it was held
during one of Chicago’s great snowstorms, and the contestants’ cars got
stuck in snowdrifts, slid into other vehicles and stalled repeatedly.
Duryea, who completed the race in 10 hours and 23 minutes, traveled at
an average speed of 5 1/4 miles per hour.
The world’s first “moto-cycleö race, an 80-mile jaunt from Paris to
Rouen in July 1894, had clearly demonstrated the merits of the Daimler
gasoline motor–though 12 of the 46 cars that started the race were
steam-powered, none of the finishers were–and had generated a great deal
of publicity for the horseless carriage. Herman H. Kohlstaat, the
publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald and a tireless booster of the
newfangled automotive technology, decided to drum up interest in the
motor wagon by sponsoring a similar race. More than 80 people entered,
most of whom were building their own cars at home; as a result, the
event had to be postponed twice because the vast majority of the racers
weren’t yet ready. Only two people made it to an exhibition race at the
beginning of November: Frank Duryea of Massachusetts, driving a
“buggyautö that his brother Charles had designed, and Oscar Mueller of
Chicago, driving his father’s imported Benz. (Mueller won the race;
Duryea had swerved to avoid a farmer’s wagon and had fallen into a
ditch.)
On the morning of November 28, six inches of snow covered the
race-course. A horse-drawn snowplow inched along ineffectually. Because
of the bad weather, only six of 89 racers had made it to the starting
line: Duryea; Mueller; a Benz sponsored by Macy’s that, the store hoped,
would help it to advertise the cars it had begun to sell; a Benz
sponsored by the De La Vergne Refrigeration Company of New York; and two
electric cars whose batteries died almost immediately.
Ten hours and 23 minutes after the race began, the Duryea wagon
sputtered across the finish line. Meanwhile, according to news accounts,
the Mueller moto-cycle “puffed its way slowly and laboriously along, its
pneumatic tires wrapped with twine to keep them from slipping, and one
of its operators sanding the belt on the motor for the same reason.ö It
crossed the finish line an hour and a half after Duryea had–though
Mueller himself, who had fainted from all the excitement, was no longer
at the wheel. The Macy’s Benz was perhaps the most hapless racer of all:
It collided with a streetcar on the way to Evanston and with a sleigh
and then a hack on the way back, and never did finish. Neither did the
De La Vergne Benz.
But the race had accomplished what Kohlstaadt had hoped it would: It
introduced Americans to the motor-wagon and proved once and for all that
the days of the horse and buggy were numbered. For his part, Frank
Duryea returned to his shop in Massachusetts and got to work. In 1896,
the Duryeas built 13 cars by hand–and thus they became the largest
automobile factory in the United States.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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