ABSTRACT
The automobile was the product of the Second Industrialization that most transformed everyday life. It revolutionized transportation, eventually freeing most Americans from reliance on foot and hoof, and from the bother of consulting timetables and sharing space with others on trains and trams. The car put the individual in charge of when and where to go, doing so at amazing speeds. But the automobile became far more: It became a machine of great complexity where thousands of regulated explosions of gasoline and air drove pistons, crankshaft, transmission, differential, and wheels. To this were added a vast array of essential and optional gadgets: Brakes, radiators, alternators, carburetors, fuel and water pumps, and later heaters, radios, power windows and seats, and today even safety radar and sensors. The automobile might have remained a hand-crafted toy of the rich; instead, it was made available to the masses by advanced manufacturing techniques, especially the assembly line. With its thousands of parts to be put together, many of which had to move in tight-fitting spaces, specialized machinery and new organizations of work were required. The car stood at the top of a list of new consumer goods that entered the market around the beginning of the twentieth century. The automobile not only became an article of status and ever-changing fashion as well as utility, but it transformed the way that people shopped, housed themselves, and vacationed. It even became a marker of coming of age for millions of youth. The automobile became a necessity, but it also burdened its users with great expense, subjected them to new dangers and even death by collision, and contributed to the depletion of resources and the environment by vastly accelerating a trend that began with steam-the rapid consumption of fossil fuels, built by millions of years of life on earth.
