In contrast to this picture of “speed maniacs” darting more swiftly than ever eagle swooped or lightning express-train ran, let us contemplate for a moment that first automobile race held in Chicago in 1894.  A twenty-four horse-power Panhard machine showed a speed of thirty miles an hour and was objected to by the newspapers as a “racing monster” likely to cause endless tragedy, menacing death to its owners and to the public.  Thus in the brief space of seventeen years did the construction of automobiles improve and the temper of the world toward them change.  The present day may almost be called the “automobile age.”  The progress by which this has come about, and the enormous development of this new industry is here traced by two men who have followed it most closely.  The narrative of the “auto’s” triumphs by Mr. C.F.  Carter appeared first in the Outing Magazine.  The account of the industry’s growth by Mr. Isaac Marcosson appeared in Munsey’s Magazine, of which he was the editor.  Both are given here by the permission of the magazines.

C.F.  CARTER

When the marine architects and engineers catch up with the automobile makers they can build a ship capable of crossing the Atlantic in twenty-three hours; or, if we forget to make allowance for the difference in longitude, capable of making the run from Liverpool to New York in the same apparent time in which the Twentieth Century Limited makes the run from New York to Chicago.  That is, the vessel leaving Liverpool at three o’clock in the afternoon would arrive at New York at nine o’clock the following morning, which, allowing for the five hours’ difference in time, would make twenty-three hours.

When the railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be but a day’s run from the metropolis.

And when the airship enthusiasts are able to dart through the air at the speed attained by the automobile, it will be time enough to think of taking seriously the extravagant claims made in behalf of aviation.

For the automobile is the swiftest machine ever built by human hands.  It is so much swifter than its nearest competitor that those who read these lines to-day are likely to be some years older before its speed is even equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed, by any other kind of vehicle.

So far as is known, but one human being ever traveled faster than Robert Burman did in his racing auto on the beach at Daytona, Florida, on April 23, 1911.  This solitary exception was a Hindu carrier who chanced to tumble off the brink of a chasm in the Himalayas.  His name has not been preserved, he never made any claim to the record, he was not officially timed, and altogether the event has no official standing.  Still, as he is the only man who is ever alleged to have covered so great a distance as six thousand feet in an obstructed fall, the matter is not without interest; for, according to the accepted rule for finding the velocity of a body falling freely from rest, he must have been going at the rate of seven miles a second when he reached the bottom.