HPS282S - HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING
Spring 1998
Oil and the Internal Combustion Engine
3 March 1998
I. American Car Culture
A. Private automobility
B. The lynchpin of consumerism
C. The thirst for energy
II. The Three Stages of American Car Culture
A. The Beginnings to the opening of the Ford Highland Park plant in 1910.
1. The institutional and attitudinal groundwork for the ultimate success of the automobile laid.
B. 1910 to late 1950s: Idolization and transformation of America in the image of the motor car.
1. By 1927 replacement demand accounts for more new car sales than initial and multiple car purchases.
2. De facto oligopoly situation.
3. More aggressive marketing and the growth of GM under Alfred P. Sloan.
4. Auto industry assumes a preponderant role in the economy
C. 1950s to the present: Disenchantment and Reappraisal.
1. A period of increasingly more aggressive marketing and technological stagnation with huge profits. Oil Crisis, Environmentalism, and the search for new solutions to automobility
III. The Technical Development of the Automobile
A. The Constraints of Fuel
1. Coal Gas as an Axis of Technological Development
B. The Legacy of the Steam Engine
1. The problems with early steam power and external combustion engines
2. The grafting of the piston and cylinder power unit onto the development of coal gas
3. The Great Hope of a Network of Small Units
4. Belgian Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900) patents 2-cycle i.c. gas/air mixture fuel (95/5) in 1860.
5. Nicolaus August Otto (1832-1891) and the 4-cycle i.c. engine
C. The Creation of the Automobile
- "If the automobile is European by birth, it is American by adoption"
1. Four stroke "Silent Otto" (1876). First really successful 4-stroke i.c. engine.
2. The Automobile is Born
3. Early European Technical Excellence only translates into mass use of automobile after WW2
4. Alternative power plants for the automobile
a) Electrical
b) Steam
c) Gasoline
IV. Oil
A. Discovery
B. The Taming of a Savage Market
1. Problems of Boom and Bust
2. Enter John D. Rockefeller
3. The Rise and Transformation of Standard Oil
V. The Rise of the Model T
A. Ford's Early Productions
B. The Model T
1. Cheap, no frills, sturdy car
2. Simple (no windshield wipers, gas guage, speedometer, battery, rear view mirror, any colour you want as long as it's black)
3. Could be personalized (5000 accessories in Sears-Roebuck 1920 catalogue)
4. Production
a) 1908 6000 cars @ $850
b) 1913 Moving Assembly line at Highland Park
c) 1916 600,000 @ $360
d) 1923 2,000,000 (peak year)
e) 1927 Final no. produced 15,000,000 Touring model costs $290
C. The Apotheosis of "Mass Production" (Ford's speechwriter's term)
1. The two senses of the word: massive production and production for the masses.
2. Aldous Huxley and Brave New World A.F. 632
3. The Birth of Flexible Mass Production
VI. Ford's Rivals and Competitors
A. Alfred P. Sloan and GM
1. Management Style
2. Advertising and Annual Model Changes
3. Customer Credit
