I don't know anything about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world.

The only history that is worthwhile is the history we make, day by day.

Those fellows over there in Europe knew all about history, and they knew all about how wars are started,

and yet they went and plunged Europe into the biggest war that ever was,

and by the same old mistakes, too. Besides, history is being rewritten every year from a new

point of view, so how can anybody claim to know the truth about history? History is more or less

bunk. It is tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

Henry Ford. Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music history of the 20th century. Episode 57 In my Mary Oldsmobile

The development of the automobile

is a story crucial to the history of the 20th century

and we haven't tackled it head on in this

podcast yet, so let's take the first step today in this episode.

Transportation in the 19th century had been revolutionized by the railroad.

By 1900, many ordinary people were able to travel about from city to city on railroads

at speeds that would have been unimaginable to their grandparents.

But the drawbacks of trains are obvious.

You can only go where the train goes and only on the train's schedule.

To create a new train line requires laying new track, an expensive and time-consuming project.

It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to look at a locomotive and ask yourself,

why couldn't there be a self-propelled vehicle just like this, only smaller, and one that moves about on ordinary roads instead of on special tracks.

The short answer to that question is that there can be. There's no particular reason why such a vehicle would be impossible. The devil is in the details.

...