Kategoria BISAC: Transportation >> Automotive - History

Contrary to popular belief, the automobile is not a twentieth-century invention. A steam-powered version of this vehicle was in use in Great Britain as early as the 1830s, and both steam- and petroleum-powered automobiles were operating in France and Germany by 1880. This volume traces the world political and economic forces that brought about the suppression of the first steam-powered carriage and the ultimate triumph of the gas-fueled automobile, which has played a crucial role in shaping the modern capitalist economy.

Of all motor vehicles the farm tractor has proved to be among the most beneficial. It has freed hundreds of thousands of laborers and horses from backbreaking toil on the land in all weathers and it has stabilized the cost of food.

Starting with steam power in the middle of the nineteenth century, the agricultural tractor became motorized in the early years of the twentieth century. From vast prairie types, lighter, one-man machines arrived in time to avert famine in the First World War. Mass production followed, which brought the price of tractors within reach of the average farmer....

The history of automobiles is not just the story of invention, manufacturing, and marketing; it is also a story of repair. Auto Mechanics opens the repair shop to historical study--for the first time--by tracing the emergence of a dirty, difficult, and important profession.

Kevin L. Borg's study spans a century of automotive technology--from the horseless carriage of the late nineteenth century to the -check engine- light of the late twentieth. Drawing from a diverse body of source material, Borg explores how the mechanic's occupation formed and evolved within the context of...

Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S....