Americas' 1st Reliable
AUTOMOBILE
By: Lily Waterhouse
by Richard Dudgeon in 1866 which was steam
powered until Henry Ford came along and created the first Model T. The first original sale price for the Model T was $860 and dropped dramatically to about $300 about eight years later. Because the Model T was easy to operate, it was cheap to keep running, and the repair was simple, they sold like hotcakes. About 10 years ago in 1919, more than half of the cars were Model T’s but about 5 years ago; these sales began to decline due to fierce competition with other car dealerships. During this last decade, the automobile has greatly affected people in positive and negative ways. For larger families with kids or even elderly persons, it was simpler to travel and be more mobile. People that lived in the rural areas could drive around and view the world around them and these people would be known as “Sunday Drivers”. A negative effect of the automobile would be that it would break up families by giving individual family members more freedom to what they wanted and act upon their own wishes. Children could ‘escape’ their home life and do foolish things. Now that women also had the right to vote, they could leave the house and the tasks that women were supposed to do, and go experience the cultural scene. The average dating couple had also found that the automobile was a portable place to be alone and it helped the young couples express sexual attitudes towards each other by being alone. While wages increased and the prices of the vehicles