Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
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It's generally agreed that the first automobile, powered by an internal combustion engine,
was invented by French inventor Francois Isaac de Rivaz in 1808. But it wasn't until the end
of the 19th century that automobiles started to go into regular production.
Around the turn of the century automobiles were still finalizing their general design,
and important technologies like electronic ignition, and four-wheel braking had been
invented. It was during this early period of the automobile, which in the United States was called,
The Brass Age, because of the amount of brass that was used in fittings, like on the lamps,
and on the radiator panels, that cars were still called horseless carriages and we're
generally considered to be just a plaything of the rich. Far less reliable than a horse.
Even in the modern world, very few places had roads that were suitable for these horseless
carriages. And that makes the 1908, New York to Paris automobile race, co-sponsored by
the New York Times, and the French newspaper Le Matin, all that much more extraordinary.
If your first thought is that there's mostly water between New York and Paris,
you're going the wrong direction. The race intended for the automobiles to go west, across
the United States, up to Alaska, take a brief 150 mile ship passage from Alaska to Siberia,
cross the vast expanse of Russia down to Berlin, and on to Paris; a distance of nearly 20,000
miles. The race was not wholly without precedent. In January of 1907, Le Matin had challenged,
“What needs to be proved today, is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go
anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer, from Peking to Paris,
by automobile?” Five entrants had undertaken the journey from the French Embassy in Peking,
now Beijing, in 1907, across territory that had never been crossed by motor vehicles. Four of the
five finished the race, which was won by Italian Prince Scipione Borghese. Completing the race in
exactly two months, from June 10th, to August 10th, for the prize of a magnum of champagne.
The race in 1908 would be the longest automobile
race in history. The granddaddy of distance driving! Truly…the great race!
Six cars, one each from the United States, Germany, and Italy, and three from France,
entered the race, which started on February 12. The mayor of New York, George B McClellan jr.
was supposed to start the race at 11 but was running late. The race started without him,
with the starting gun firing at 11:15 a.m. as nearly a quarter million spectators cheered.
Realize that at this point in history, only nine people total had managed to drive
across the United States in a horseless carriage, and none of those in winter.
The head of the Thomas Motor Company, which built the American entrant, a 1907 Model 35
Thomas Flyer, a 60 horsepower roadster, predicted that none of the cars would make it past Chicago.
One of the three French cars only made it 96 miles of the 20,000 mile trip before dropping
out with a broken differential. As a car struggled across bad roads and bad weather,
and having to be pulled through the mud by teams of horses. The European entrants complained,
the Midwesterners it seems, were eager to help the Americans, but charged exorbitant
rates to help the European drivers. All the cars needed help with direction and supplies,
and getting pulled out of the mud, but European teams are getting charged as much
as five dollars a night, just to sleep on the ground. A member of the Italian
team complained of the Americans, “There is still too much of the herdsman about them.”
The members of the French and Italian team sent a telegram to the Chicago Automobile
Club asking them if they could get help changing public opinion. They received little sympathy,
their appeal was published in the Chicago Tribune under the headline, “Foreigners pathetic appeal.”
The Thomas Flyer made it to San Francisco 41 days after the race began, they were by that
time already eight days ahead of the Italian car, their nearest competition. Another of the
French cars had broken down in Iowa, and quit the race. The race plan was to have the cars
shipped from San Francisco to Valdez, Alaska, where they were supposed to make their way to
the Bering Strait. But the American car, upon reaching Alaska, found the terrain impassable
due to heavy snow and swollen rivers. The American mechanic, George Shuster, claimed that the only
way to move the cars across Alaska would be to dismantle them, and move them by dogsled.
The organizers changed the route, shipping the cars across the Pacific, from Seattle to Japan.
But the Americans were given a 15-day allowance in exchange for them having to go up to Alaska,
which the other racers didn't have to do. Meanwhile, the German car,
a Protos, which had been custom designed for the Kaiser of Germany, had broken down,
and the driver had shipped the car by rail from Utah to San Francisco. In exchange,
race organisers penalized the Germans an additional 15 days.
Russia was a new challenge, with few roads, unreliable maps, and endless mud. Russian
officials advised that the trip was impossible; the third French car dropped out. At one point the
Americans sportingly helped to rescue the German Protos from a mud hole. Without a translator or a
reliable map, the Thomas Flyer, crossing Siberia with neither a heater, nor a windshield, kept
getting lost. At one point losing 15 hours going the wrong way. The car got stuck in a mud hole,
and they did the days worth of repairs, and the Protos slipped ahead. The German car arrived
in Paris on July 26, having travelled more than 21,000 miles. The Americans were still in Berlin.
The Italians, still in Russia. The Americans arrived in Paris four days later on July 30th,
but faced a new obstacle. A French police officer wanted to arrest them,
since Paris law required that all horseless carriages have a headlight. The problem was
solved when a bystander with a bicycle that had a lamp, volunteered to let them carry the bike.
The Germans made it to Paris four days ahead of the Americans, however, since the Germans had
been given a 15 day penalty for shipping their car by rail, and skipping some of the route, and the
Americans had been given a 15-day advantage for having had to make the trip to Alaska, the Thomas
Flyer was determined to have won the race, and the fourteen hundred pound trophy, by 26 days.
The only other car to finish the race, the Italian car, arrived in Paris in September, officially 48
days behind the winners. If you're ever in Reno, Nevada, that Thomas Flyer has been restored and
is on display at the National Automobile Museum, along with the 1400 pound Great Race trophy. The
victory of the Thomas Flyer helped to establish the reputation of american-made automobiles,
which prior to the Great Race, were thought to be inferior to European models. But it
did not save the E.L. Thomas Motor Company, which went out of business in 1919. In 2011,
a reenactment of the Great Race was held, and cars drove the entire length of the route of the race.
Four cars finished the whole length, including a Ford Model A, and a Volkswagen Beetle. The
real hero of the 1908 race was George Shuster, who was the chief mechanic for the Thomas Motor
Company. Not only did he drive the Thomas Flyer most of the route, but he was the only member
of the winning team who was present for the entire length of the race. Schuster passed
away in 1972 at the age of 99. And in 2010, he was inducted into the automobile Hall of Fame.
Schuster worked tirelessly to keep the Thomas Flyer running, but he had an advantage
over the custom-designed German Protos. Because the Thomas Flyer was a stock car,
a production model with standardized parts, making it that much easier to keep and repair. In a race
that was designed to prove the viability of the automobile, it was the technology that made the
automobile available to the masses that won out over the custom design Protos. The quintessential
example of a plaything of the rich. And that difference would become even more apparent
later in the year, because it was in October of 1908 that the car that changed everything,
the Model T, first started rolling off at Henry Ford's production lines. The age of
the horseless carriage was over, and the age of the automobile had begun.
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