Although modern society has undoubtedly become too car dependent, there is no question that the invention of the internal combustion engine, and the idea to strap it to four wheels, has completely transformed personal transportation... mostly for the better.
Yes, fossil fuels and carbon emissions are a big problem, and city planning has to stop putting the automobile before public transportation and affordable housing, but we don't have to go back far to reach a time when traveling anywhere meant days of rough riding on the road. Just take a look at these 20 old vehicles from before the time of modern cars. I for one wouldn't want to use them to go from New York to Boston, but they're the best anyone could come up with.
Here are 20 old vehicles to make you appreciate just how far cars have come.
1
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife ride a tandem tricycle, 1895.
2
A man and his goat mobile, early 1900s.
3
Mobile booking cage, 1920.
4
Los Angeles around 1930 - An ostrich carriage being stopped by the police for crossing the speed limit.
5
Purves Monowheel. This crazy looking vehicle was built based on a drawing made by Leonardo da Vinci. Known as a monowheel, the design for this wheel was patented in 1930 by a British inventor Dr. J. A. Purves.
6
A man and his bicycle, ca. 1920.
7
J. A. Purves drives a Dynasphere spherical car, an automobile shaped like a giant radial tire. Mr. Purves was the vehicle’s inventor. 1932.
8
A mobile church based on Ford T with a priest-driver, USA, 1922.
9
A family bikes down the street in a four-person bicycle invention, 1939.
10
Designer Benjamin Bowden with the prototype of his Spacelander Bicycle London, UK 1946.
11
Riding a bicycle down the steps of the United States Capitol. 1884.
12
Kendall Green bicycle club, 1884.
13
A couple seated on an 1886-model bicycle for two.
14
A man on a penny-farthing bicycle alongside Walter Nilsson aboard the Nilsson monowheel. 1935.
15
Crimean War, 1855: Photographer Roger Fenton took this picture of his mobile darkroom in the war zone.
16
Frederick Simms with his "Motor Scout," the first armed, petrol engine powered vehicle ever built, at it's first public demonstration in 1899. A Maxim machine gun is mounted on the front wheel bar of a De Dion-Bouton quadricycle.
17
Estonian Soldiers laughing on a fake vehicle sometime during the Estonian Independence War (1918-1920).
18
German troops inspect an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, Galicia, Eastern Front, probably 1917.
19
Krieger Electric Carriage from 1906.
20
A Camel Carriage, Thar Desert Rajasthan India.
21
1870s fun in a Goat Carriage in Central Park, New York.
