754 Ch. 19 • Rapid Industrialization and Its Challenges

An early automobile assembly line.

line reduced the time it took to produce each car from twelve hours to one

and a half hours.

The automobile transformed travel. Elegant horses and fancy carriages

owned by people of means no longer monopolized travel. However, until it

was repealed in 1896, the British “Red Flag Act” restricted the speed of

motor vehicles to two miles per hour and required three people carrying

red warning flags to accompany each vehicle, a decided inconvenience. In

1896, the speed limit was raised to fourteen miles per hour.

Car travel necessitated better roads. Early drivers required not only thick

goggles to protect themselves against dust but also whips to keep away star­

tled dogs. Gradually, government authorities ordered the paving of roads,

and gas stations began to dot the landscape. In 1900, the Michelin Com­

pany in France, one of the first to shift from producing bicycle to automo­

bile tires, published its first guide for travelers, listing garages, hotels, and

restaurants. Michelin successfully lobbied for signs along roads indicating

distances. The number of cars in Paris tripled between 1906 and 1912.

Traffic jams became a way of urban life. Motorized taxis and then motor­

ized fire engines raced by their horse-drawn predecessors.

The cult of speed next took to the air, after centuries of dreams had

brought only balloon ascents and short glider flights. In 1900, a retired

German general, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917), built the

lumbering dirigible airship that still bears his name. After years of experi­

mentation with propellers and small engines, Orville and Wilbur Wright,

two American bicycle manufacturers, launched the first successful flight

in 1903. They then took their air show to England, France, and Germany,

where the crown prince of Prussia began to consider the military uses of

the airplane.