I think I must live on a mail route that doesn’t get serviced well, because I only just today got my July 4, 1908 issue of Automobile Topics Illustrated, my usual go-to source for plagiarizing top-quality car content. I’m used to them being a bit late, but I’m going to have to talk to the genetically-engineered mule-human hybrid that delivers my mail, because 114 years late is just a little too much, even for me. Oh, but I can’t stay mad at that big long face, wearing that mailman hat with the cut-out ear holes! It’s fine. Besides, I saw some ads in this issue that confused the hell out of me, so let’s just talk about those.
There’s the cover for the issue I was looking through, in case you feel like grabbing your copy and following along. Here’s the first ad that confused me:
Okay, Reliance spark plugs SPARK IN WATER. Got it. I know the ad boldly claims THIS IS A FAIR TEST, but a fair test of what? If you have water in your spark plug holes or the cylinders, you have way bigger problems than a misfire. I mean, I guess that a plug that sparks while submerged in water is a good test of a plug that can, um, spark in water?
I’m not sure it’s “proof of infallibility,” and, besides, this process sounds kinda dangerous. I don’t really want to be messing with water and high-voltage electrical components, but maybe I’m kind of a candy-ass that way.
How are other spark plug makers advertising their shocky wares?
I like this ad because it says essentially nothing useful about the plugs themselves, and is just a desperate, frustrated-sounding reminder that the A.R. Mosler company is really sick of bootlegs and copycat spark plugs, none of which actually SPIT FIRE like a Mosler does, and according to those little pointing fingers, the “imitation has not THIS, the indispensable side-cleaning holes.” I guess this one doesn’t so much elicit confusion in me as it does sympathy for poor A.R. Mosler, just sick to death of all those terrible inferior imitators.
This one, however, does confuse me:
The fuck does “ready-flated” mean? Continental is certainly a well-known tire brand, but they seem to have pretty comprehensively distanced themselves from the “ready-flated” marketing approach. The closest I came to finding some sort of reference to this was in a 1908 issue of The Automobile, which had an article that mentioned “Continental ready-inflated replacements” in an article about a road race in Lowell, Massachusetts. So maybe “ready-flated” was just Continental’s kicky marketing term for an already-inflated tire? I guess in the days of tires with inner tubes, you could have your spare tires filled with delicious, creamery air, right from the factory?
Maybe. Okay, but here’s the one that really made my brain hurt:
This is an ad for the little-remembered Garford Motor Car Company of Elyria, Ohio. They may be best known for their joint operations with Studebaker between 1904 and 1911. Garford made the chassis for Studebaker, which finished the cars and sold them under their own name, but Garford sold cars under their own brand as well.
This ad is for one of those, and it’s the ad’s copy I find so confusing. In case you can’t read it on the image up there, here’s the text:
THOUSANDS of skilled engineers and brilliant inventors have contributed to the ideas required to produce the present “TYPE” of autos.
We have contributed our share of these ideas.
We do not claim credit for the “TYPE,” but we do claim to be the first to recognise its existence and the desirability of adhering to it.
The Garford is intended to be, and we believe is a well executed realization of the generally accepted “TYPE” of automobile representing the best judgment of those qualified to judge.
What the fuck are they talking about here? What do they mean by “TYPE?” Is this ad just saying, cars are generally like this now, in style and technical specification, and we make cars that are generally like what you expect cars to be, and we think we make good versions of that?
Is that what they’re getting at? If so, is it possible to have a more generic, unspecific ad? I guess those Toyota Yaris ads that just crowed It’s A Car! may be the closest? You know, these:
Garford didn’t make it past 1914 or so, but this ad did send me down a bit of a Garford rabbit hole, where I learned about one of their last-ditch cars, popularly known as the One-Eye Garford for obvious reasons:
This cyclopean Garford from 1913 has been reported to be “built in batches of ten thousand, a first for the automobile industry” but this is suspected of being just, you know, lies, at least in part because there’s (seemingly) absolutely none of these left and it’s suspected they hardly sold at all.
That headlight inset into the radiator could also be one of the very first examples of lighting integrated into the body of a production (well, if it was produced) car. It must have been separated from the path of water that would have filled that radiator, somehow.
Anyway, if anyone has insight about any of these ads, please tell me in the comments, because my brain aches.
Bet the ready inflated tyres were a popular cargo a few years later after the Titanic went down…
A few years ago (1990s) I actually interviewed a Titanic survivor, she was three when it happened, lost her father not her mother. Makes you realise it was not that long ago…
I actually have a car from 1917 that has demountable rims. So when I tell my homies that I’m getting some new 24″ rims, it is accurate.
I love that the headline article for “Automobile Topics Illustrated” is: “Contests Season Nearing Its Height.” I have so many questions. Which contests? Was there nothing else “At Its Height” when this was published? 1908 was the year of the New York to Paris Race. This magazine was published in New York! 1908 was the year that Model T debuted! Why is the only photo of a car way off in the distance? This is Folly, good sir! After four hundred issues, I shall be cancelling my Subfcription to this Publication forthwith! And, Furthermore, I kindly request the return of my Ten Cents, proffered in Good Faith, yet rewarded with none other than this Miserable Rag not worthy of the name Automobile Topics Illus. Yours, Karen T. Archimus III, esq.
Wait, wait, wait…these are legit our universe and timeline ads? I read the lead in and was transported to Jasonia.
Fully prepared to not be in on the joke here, it is early after all
All I could think of from the Garford ad is a 70’s low budget movie with the stereotypical redneck country sheriff saying “We don’t like your TYPE around here”
I would think that a spark plug that could “fire” in water could fire when drenched in gasoline. AKA, when you flood your babbit bearing engine with the 12 octane fuel available at the time because no one knows how to build a carburetor that actually flows properly the plug will still fire and ignite whatever unholy concoction is in the cylinder.
My thoughts on it, at least.
I ache across the years for the poor Garford copywriter, torn between ethics and the client’s demands. The conflict oozes from every syllable.
Also, that kid staring into the Garford’s single eye is going to have nightmares.
Whether it could actually work or not, could the Reliance ad relate to the amount of water often found in gasoline at the time or weak/impure gas? Obviously, that’s not how it works at all, but if I were someone concerned about low performance because my gas was part bog water and part raw petroleum, and somebody claimed that their plugs would make a spark even in plain water? Well, my pseudo-scientific monkey brain would leap right to viewing that as a way to make my auto more reliable.
I think that it is meant to show that the plugs can fire in a medium that is the least likely to support combustion – water. If they can fire in water, nothing else is going to prevent them from igniting the air/fuel mixture in the cylinders.
Perhaps the fine folks at Garford were fans of Living Colour?
https://youtu.be/1HbF3EAt3ck
I’m going to have to talk to the genetically-engineered mule-human hybrid that delivers my mail.”
“Genetic engineering”
Riiiiggghhhtttt….
Your mail carrier wouldn’t happen to be from Columbia by chance?
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/421330-donkey-love
Not confused, but amazed at how little the basic design of spark plugs has changed in more than 100 years; I guess they are like bicycle frames, perfected early and so right that there has never been a need to change.
Useless trivia: Alessandro Volta basically invented the spark plug. He wanted to demonstrate flammable gasses, so had a little glass ‘gun’ blown which he would fill with methane or whatever, then ignited it with two pieces of metal protruding into the ‘gun’ (gapped, I presume) and connected to the outputs of a Leyden Jar.
In 1776!
My dad says he used to use some that had a centre electrode and no side electrode but multiple protrusions like a star shape on the inside diameter of the base. Sort of like https://patents.google.com/patent/US20050194877 but not exactly. Idea was multiple spark paths basically on the surface of the plug so if one got fouled or worn, the next would become active. Long pre-internet so I’ve never been able to find information on exactly what they were.
The Mosler one is just a variant of the classic “Often Imitated, Never Duplicated” sales pitch. The implication is that copycats keep ripping them off because their spark plugs are just so damn good that everybody wants to buy them. Everybody knows how great Mosler plugs are, except ignorant dum-dums. You’re not a dum-dum, are you?
The Reliance ad is just pure bullshit. No spark plugs, including their own, will spark in water. The spark from a spark plug is ionized air—nitrogen atoms that have been electrically heated to the point that they become a conductive, glowing plasma. Water doesn’t work like that. It’s not a matter of spark plug design, it’s a matter of physics.
Maybe you’re just not up to date on the latest spark plug technology. In this modern world of 1908, even children can convert water to ionized plasma. Get with the times!
I love the way Mosler’s solution to copycats was to specifically and in graphic detail call out the details that are missing on the imitations. It’s almost as if they’re providing instructions on how to improve the quality of your rip-off moslers.
Beware the TYPE who offers you a ride on their One-Eye Garford. It won’t end well.
I’ve never turned down a ride in a One-Eye Garford and I turned out just fine.
I wonder if the “Type” thing had something to do with the Selden Patents
You are correct! I have seen just a rim/tire for a spare on some of those oldie cars and it took me a while to realize that’s what they were doing. Yet I also wonder, given that many of the wheels were wooden spoke and the roads were well, not really roads, why didn’t they have complete replacement wheels?
I bet more of us with modern cars have had tire issues due to bent rims than tire punctures. Just my guess, but true in my case.
Originally, at least on the T, you’d have to replace the tire or tube. Removing the whole wheel is a giant pain (which makes sense as you don’t want your wheel to go off on its own). Replacing the tube and tire is also a giant pain, so they developed the demountable rim so you could have a spare ready to go that was less of a pain. I have no idea who first developed the demountable rim but I don’t think it was Ford.
I’ve had dozens of punctures from screws and such, but never bent a rim on roads.
In the very early years, automobiles were only for the rich, but as they came down in price, I wouldn’t think replacing a rim would be an affordable or practical solution vs just carrying a patch kit and/or tubes or an entire wheel assembly (a mounted rim alone effectively takes up the same amount of space, but is less convenient to mount and to change out) as was standard a little later on and on board air compressors weren’t uncommon. I could be wrong, but I would be inclined to think the removable parts were for servicing at a shop, not a roadside.
Confused?
Simply write a letter to Garford Motor Car Companies Eastern Inquiries Division or he’ll even their Western Inquiries Division.
Hand it to your Muleman and you should have your answers within the next 114 years or so.
Duh.
I bet you’re getting pretty exited about when the swimsuit edition finally shows up. There’s gonna be plenty of ankle!
Is this the same Continental as today? I thought they were a European company. Did they have US operations even back then?
Wow. Thank you for the research! And I was just curious…
I’m thinking there must be some sort of PBS show in this story. Or at least a gig for you as a Special Master to go over those classified docs.
Caoutchouc has too many vowels to be a real word.
Without googling, I believe it is a bastardization of the original word from a South American tribe for the sap/rubber you could make from rubber trees. It got dragged into Spanish because they were raping the continent at the time, then got further drug into French because reasons.
Basically its unvulcanized rubber. Tires back then lasted a couple thousand miles before wearing out.
It’s definitely the generic word for rubber in French.
No Caoutchouc is a Yugoslavian kicker used to play for the Giants in the early years of the NFL. LOL
The address in that old ad for Continental in Philadelphia is pretty much right next to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the place with the crashed airplane statue. I think 154 N Broad is a parking garage now
Made in batches of ten thousand, maybe that was their intent so it wasn’t a lie, they just didn’t finish. In 1913 they were purchased by John North Willys and merged into Willy’s Overland, so David Tracy can be proud of owning his vehicles with heritage such as the Garford.
I remember my Uncle had ads like that framed in the “powder room” in his house. I would sit there, dropping a deuce, maybe 6 or 7 years old, wondering what the happy hell they were talking about. Apparently random words in quotes, or bold face, or italicized. One was for an umbrella. Somehow it was the greatest umbrella ever.
My Uncle had a really strange sense of humor.
And hyphens, they loved adding hyphens to words in those days
$81,447.03 is about today’s value for the Garfield. Didn’t sell many, I suppose.
The Continental ad states ask us about…
Have your post office saddle up the time traveler mule and go back and ask.
If those imitation spit fires spit imitation fire in water, imagine what the genuine fire spitting would do in genuine gasoline.
MOSLER GENUINE is in the Budweiser font.
that’s all I got.
Caption for the picture on the cover notes that it shows the Philadelphia Pike. That made me chuckle even before I even got to the ads. I, too, question what sparking a plug in water is a test OF. And what prompted the ad. You could never get away with suggesting that now: lawyers would shut you down-and rightfully so. I wonder how many people actually tried it, and if anyone got hurt.
Well, if you were routing the radiator water through the cyclopean Garford headlight all you’d need is a Mosler “Spit Fire” spark plug firing in the water to provide the light!
You’re confusing your Moslers with your Reliances. Moslers spat fire, Reliances sparked in water. Maybe one of each for optimal results?
Googling “definition of type”, here is the second definition listed:
*** a person or thing symbolizing or exemplifying the ideal or defining characteristics of something.
“she characterized his witty sayings as the type of modern wisdom” ***
Similar words listed are “epitome” and “quintessence”.
I don’t know why they insist on putting it in quotes and all-caps, but if you substitute the word “standard” I think it makes sense. Perhaps today’s common usage of “type” was not well-established back then–and perhaps the word was actually somewhat exotic or unusual.
Makes sense to me. There was also a lot of odd-to-us usage of quotation marks back when that seems to be an attempt to convey a conversational aspect to things.
Like how you’ll occasionally see (usually in old movies) signs that feature quotes around the words, as if the sign was the written version of someone saying something. Which of course it literally is, but we usually implicitly get that…”Don’t Pee in our the Pool” doesn’t need the quotation marks, and isn’t really even all that conversational.
But maybe there’s a teacher among us here (who of course drives a Raptor or something similarly cool) who knows the full history and can explain this better??
I’m not inclined to see an oblique-to-us usage here, but Google’s ngram viewer will show you that ‘type’ is a classic 20th-century word. It becomes seen in bulk at the end of the 19th, and its frequency among English words increases until the 90s, when it drops again.
If you drill down to the examples, you’ll see that a lot of usage surrounds the typewriter.
Now think about how the type industrially generated by the typewriter can influence the normal, Greek sense of ‘type’: you have a kind of thing, like a car, and now a type, where the differences are merely incidental.
Ok, you say, but why is that a selling point?
In 1908, the steering wheel is only ten years old. Most cars sold in the US aren’t left-hand-drive. Automotive propulsion systems are all over the place, and have you seen what they try to do with horns?
You’ve got a decade of early adopters each dealing with a hand-made contraption, each of which seems to be a unique prototype. And the readers of this weekly are well aware of the weird limitations of their cars.
The Garland folks say: “hey, all these builders have been working towards a TYPE. Their ideas have converged on something that we can mass produced, and here it is!”
They were right, except for the last part.
Henry Ford produced his first Model T in 1908, and this magazine is probably witness to automobile culture before that little revolution.
To translate that into modern marketing speak:
Everything that came before is a prototype. This is the TYPE.