Spectral lines: The insidious and cultural machine

It wasn´t planned that way. Selden, Benz, Daimler, and Olds didn´t envision it. Even Henry Ford, who, among them all, should have known, didn´t. It took time to reveal the total impact of the automobile on society. In the beginning, misguided skeptics felt the more reliable horse, requiring only cheap and readily available fuels to charge his engines, would outlast the novelty of a noisy, smoke-belching gasoline-motor-driven carriage. But the gas buggy prevailed. And on its way to a position of dominance in today´s economy, it left scarcely a facet of modern life untouched. That it all took place in so short a time span is attested to by the fact that there are those of us who remember the “tin lizzy” as it chugged from the showroom floor. Our children may never witness the sight and sound of a “flivver” laboring along a dusty country road, but our fathers surely did.