Dan thank you so much. Thank you, amanda. Really generous and sweet introduction. I thank everybody for being here, otherwise, i would be up here by myself. Especially, amanda told me the smithsonian associate people have reminded me how engaged these audiences are. I feel like i have to be up on my toes and really give you my agame to take that seriously. And to be a little intellectual, be a little heavy. Talking about the past, present, and future of the automobile. Theres a lot of material in the book. Look at that. It is right there. Everything from teaching my daughter to drive, to a freudian analysis of henry ford. I cannot capture all of that tonight. What i thought i would do is talk about the early automobile and a little bit of this theory of how one understands that. The reason i am doing that is to put us in the present moment, where, as some of you may have heard, Driverless Cars are on the horizon. But at the end of the day, i really want to talk about cars. I am both a lover and hater of cars for a variety of reasons. And i am looking to hearing from you about your experiences with the automobile. So, without further ado, lets get started with cars. [applause] [sound of a train] dan yeah, i mean, well, i had to show you this. How many people know this machine and have gone to see it . Yeah . Keep your hands up if you stayed and listened to the entire soundtrack. A couple. How many of you went to the gift shop afterwards and bought the vinyl record and brought it home and played it . [laughter] dan oh, well, yeah. These two, i know them. Yeah, pretty much me. As long as we are raising hands, i did a thing in brooklyn, going on about cars. I realized halfway through it, i said, how many of you own a car . Drive . I think three. Can i get a quick show of hands. How many of you own a toyota . Ah. How many of you own a mercedes . Ah. How many of you own an american car . Ah. How many of you dont own a car at all or rarely drive . Ok. Interesting, diverse audience. That is exciting. We are not going to talk very much about trains. We are going to talk about cars. And this is the museum of history and technology, National Museum of American History, as it was back in 1974. That is sort of me, just enthralled. We would come up all the time, any time a guest from out of town, a relative, whatever, go to the museum. To maybe the Capital Building and see the airplanes, but mostly go to history and technology. Because what else i hear there is some art museums . But i dont know about that. Yeah that is sort of me. , its not actually me. I was much fatter back then. But this is a stock photo from the smithsonian collection. And i want you to get a sense of it. Because i want to talk to you about how that exhibition has changed and talk a little bit about what that exhibition tells us about how we think about technology. The very hard part, as we face the prospect of Driverless Cars, is understanding the process by which they are coming to us, coming upon us, invoking them. When we look at this, the first thought is, well, that is like an encyclopedia, right . It is not really saying anything about how technology develops. It has got a collection of objects. Labels that typically say this guy invented it. This year, it had this performance characteristic. Very straightforward. And that is the way i experienced it as a kid. But as i studied further and further, and as i thought about different ways of understanding technology, i realized that this has actually got an implicit story behind it. And that story is a of technological evolution. Sometimes called technological determinism. Technologies are invented, machines are invented, and they kind of pingpong their way through our lives and change them. Gutenberg invents the printing press, people learn to read. Iphone is invented, i do not know what has happened to us. [laughter] dan but we dont think about the other way of doing things. That is very much our lived experience. Right . A Technology Shows up, we buy it. We do not really think about the story behind it. But that also is reinforced here. This Museum Exhibition opened in 1964, we were in the cold war, and there is just an implicit understanding that technology is important, that Technology Advances and becomes more efficient over time. Bigger cars, faster cars. I want to show you quickly, i hope you can see things. Cspan is making things bright. Now, i can see a little better. Um, you look back at the back wall and you can see there is a highwheeler just poking out back there. Oldfashioned bicycle before the bike chain is invented. Then we work our way from the right to the left. They get better, they get better, they get better. You can see in the far left corner all the way to the back, horse and wagon, horse and wagon, more advanced car, more advanced car, more advanced car. You can see gas pumps there from very early on to a little later one. And then of course, the centerpiece, the race car. Right . So, the pinnacle of automotive capability, right . That is the ultimate machine. But we dont know much about what it was like to drive it, where was it born, where did it live, how did people experience it . Did people go to races . Was it just something that happened on the side . As some of you may know, 2009, i think it is, america on the move exhibit. Right . This is the General Motors transportation hall. A couple of things that happened, the railroads the 1401 is in that hall. Because they are never moving that train again. [laughter] dan right . A gorgeous train. Do you want to go back and look at it . No, but also, there is an intention and purpose in putting trains, bicycles, and other vehicles all together, and that is to stop thinking about them and stop organizing them in terms of technical differences. Theres no point in putting a fourcylinder engine over here and a sixcylinder engine over there. Because that is not the point. The point is how we use them. I meant to get over there today. But i believe that is about a 55 someone will correct me later dont do it yet. I think that is a 55 Country Squire wagon. It really oozes domesticity. That wooden paneling. Back when station wagons had tires. Bodies, whitewall all of that is beautiful. But what else is there . Right, theres people. There is content. I wonder if they are even moving. Because the kid looks a little unhappy here. But you also have the girl with a bicycle. Right . What is the bicycle about . Learning, in a sense, to drive. By the same token, if you look at the little red car, what is that . Thats a kiddy car. That tells me two things. Kids like toy cars. There is no way its genetic. But more to the point, children rehearsing what their parents do. Right . Toy kitchen, toy car, you learn how to be an adult. That was very much part of American Society and culture. And that is the way that automobile fits into our society. Theres loads of these manikins in the exhibition. Again, oldschool, this is a 1950 buick. Again, somebody can correct me. I have not been over there, but i am pretty sure. You can tell by the grill. These grills are gorgeous. The three holes on the side. Those are classic buick symbols. You will even notice here, they do not even do anything, but youll even notice them on modern buicks. So, thats it. Thats a gorgeous car. Theres a lot of interesting things to say about it. Notice how far in the wheels are set and how far out of the vehicle body comes over those wheels. An effort to make it look heavier. This is a vehicle with very lowpressure tires, and you just float along. You undulate along. Right . Its a magic carpet in a lot of ways. The problem is, of course, you have to go to a car dealer to buy it. And i feel terrible for these poor people here. They are in for eternity, going to be negotiating with a car salesman, and i hope any car salesmen here . Um, one of the most disruptive things about tesla is they have been able to avoid car dealerships. I dont want to say it is actually an interesting history about car dealers and mechanics. And our trust of them. Leaving that aside, its actually a very inconvenient and sort of 20th century way to buy something. You have a thought, you touch your phone, that thing arrives. Why doesnt that happen with cars . Some companies are trying to do that. And for me, god forbid i see a lamborghini, i touch my phone, and next thing you know, amazon drops a box. But car dealerships, thats what where they want to get. The purchase process is really not in the system. It is a real problem for consumption of the automobile. So that is kind of the way i want to frame it. Ok . I dont look so much at the buick, although obviously, i do want to look at it a lot. I dont want to understand so much the buick, except in the context of what it meant for people and how it interacted with peoples lives. You know, how did the family use it . What was it like when you taught your daughter or your son to drive in the buick . What was their First Experience with it . What was it like to have three on the tree and a double clutch . All those things. What was it to like to buy it . What was it like to get it fixed . What was it like when it finally died . Was it sad . And all those things. And that goes to the way we think about the process of innovation and the process of invention. So again, you say about Driverless Cars, ok, they are being invented. But in fact, they have been invented many times. By the same token, i will show you, the automobile has been invented many times in history. If i asked you, off the top of your head, when would you say the automobile was invented . 1900 . 1910 . 1898 . Very specific years. You want to give me a month . [laughter] july. Dan there you go. There you go. Im going to prove you all wrong. But anyway, so, the question is not so much birth, its adoption. Ok . Because its born many times. It is often stillborn. I will show you how that happens. The real questions i have are two. One, not why was it invented, but why was it adopted . Why did the invention succeed when it did . And also, what was it, really . We kind of think, oh, automobile, it is a machine for getting places, a transportation device. And obviously, when the driverless car people think about it, thats what people are thinking of it. They are not thinking about how it sits in your driveway for your kids to learn what its like to be around an automobile. Thats kind of a strange question. But what is an automobile . Ok, by the same token, you would be surprised perhaps to learn that Driverless Cars have been invented many times. Thought about and Technology Described in the 1930s, tested in the 1950s, and proven viable by government testing in the 1990s. Two things are important about that. Again, we had them. Why didnt we pursue them . And it turns out, as you look at it a little more deeply, we can say those are Driverless Cars, but they were very different from the Driverless Cars coming next. We will look a little bit at what those Driverless Cars were like and what Driverless Cars are like today. All right, so you are all wrong. The automobile was invented in 1672. [laughter] dan right . This guy was a jesuit monk. He was a missionary. Went to china. Went there to turn the emperor into a christian. Try to bring him to christianity. He got a car to bring him to christianity. He made this car. Its kind of cool. You can see there is a ball. There is a hose. And a fire right below it. Very simple. Very straightforward. Steam driven out of it, spins a turbine. Turbine drives a couple of wooden gears. The wheels go, and off you go. The big wheel in the back here is for steering. And i dont quite see how that works from the drawing, but i am sure they had it figured out. This was actually only big enough to carry a rat, but the question is not ok. It didnt work very well, maybe, we dont really know. But so what . Why didnt somebody look at it and go, that is a good start, lets do that some more . You know, imagine if, over the last 400 and something years, the chinese decided to pursue rat cars. We would have pretty good rat cars. Right . We would have cars that carry lots of rats. We see that it was invented and we cant quite say that it didnt work, but we can say it wasnt adopted. This is a fascinating one. This is 1790. A guy named nathan read, he patented a steampowered selfpropelled road vehicle. A car. At the time, there was no u. S. Patent office. Which is hilarious. I think, actually, on the patent is George Washingtons signature. The Patent Office hasnt been invented yet. But he had this idea, he got a patent, but what did he do with it . He didnt start selling steam carriages in 1790. No capital available, no interest. Lets look at a couple of others. This is another one of my favorites. I call this the first amphibious car. Oliver evans, very accomplished engineer, he did a lot with process innovations in flour mills, in making flour, bread mills, if you will. He was building for the city of philadelphia a harbor dredge, a boat that goes out and digs up boats can get through. Once they had this light steam engine in collecting capital for carbon, so rather than getting some guys in the wagon to drag it down to the water he says im , going to put the wheels on it, and show it off. That is exactly what he did. Maybe we will call that the first amphibious car. 1805, no cars yet. This is one of my favorites. I will show it to you in the second in another version. This is 1853. Steam wagon. Two things are interesting about it. This is 1853. That car burned in a fire, but i will show you in a minute a later one. The boiler sat in the middle, people sat on either side. It was essentially like a minibike. He ran a very successful business running people out to long island from new york city. Did about 30 miles per hour. And for comparison, ford model t came out around 1909. 1908. Bit did about 40. Perfectly fast. Perfectly viable. Not picked up. His reason for developing the car has nothing to do with what you might think. It was not about transportation, per se. He said he wanted to end the fearful misery of horses. This is something that is developing in this period, the sort of aspca sensibility toward animals. Thinking of them not as machines to be abused but as creatures. Just quickly, here is another version of it. This is 1866. I show it to you because it is in the smithsonian collection. Right . It is not on display. Where are the curators . It should be on display. Its just a Great Machine to look at. And it really does tell us something about road transport. And i understand. You know, i was a curator. It is not easy. Now, here is my most interesting one. This is also in the collection. Its a little model, a patent model, so different times in history, you had to produce not just a drawing, but a physical model of your machine. 1879, this is patented a guy named george. Hes a patent attorney. Upstate new york, i think rochester. He was very smart. Its a lightweight describes everything that we think of as the early automobile. Lightweight, hydrocarbon explosion engine. Internal combustion engine, gasoline engine. Able to deal with any reasonable incline. All kinds of other basic details that you think of for a car. 1879, the vehicle is not produced, because very smart patent attorney he kept filing amendments. Theres different ways you can extend it. Any Patent Attorneys in the room . You can kind of extend that. You have patent pending. You can do various things to make sure that the patent is not issued. He waits until 1895, because in 1895, the automobile has arrived. The automobile has been born for hundreds of years and certainly was quite viable by the middle of the 19th century, by the 1870s, but its not until the 1890s that its picked up. So, here we are, about 1900. I know people want to know about electric cars. And also, oh, how many of you drive an electric car or own an electric car . 1, 2. Uhhuh. Ok. Volt . Tesla . One of the Big Questions people always ask is why do we get gasoline cars and not electric cars . You can ask the same question about steam cars. If you look up the top, there are 4000 vehicles in the country in 1900. As you can see, steam and electric outpaced the internal combustion car. The early historians look at that and they say, well, the internal combustion car is better. You really have to ask yourself a more complicated question. What do we mean by better . Is a goldfish better than a pigeon . I dont know, a pigeon cannot fly, but a goldfish wait. I got that backwards. Pigeons cant swim, goldfish cant fly. Is a goldfish better than a pigeon . Right . In fact, the electric vehicle had a very Good Business model. And it was very viable for urban transportation, which is where the early automobiles were, and was also cleaner, quieter, more sensible. They would be glassed in at a time when gasoline automobiles could not really have glass. They shook and the glass would just crack, and so forth. The other thing was that the electric car had a Business Model that was very different than the Business Model we think of over the last 100 years of, ok, we will sell cars to people, and we will make our money. We will build more cars. The electric Vehicle Companies developed, and i want you to think about uber or lyft. That is what they were. In 1899, they had a fleet of hundreds of taxicabs, most of them in new york city. And you could get basically a taxi ride, you could rent the vehicle for a week or month, or you could buy the vehicle. They were relatively expensive, but you could buy one. What they found as they had a hard time providing taxi service. People werent releasing them or holding them for a long periods of time. It was a viable business. So what killed it . There was a couple of things, culturally, i will talk about in a minute. In terms of growing concerns, in terms of a business, one of the things that killed it is an attack on monopoly. If you recall your history, theodore roosevelt, the trust buster, this is 1890s. Turn of the century, trusts are a bad thing. In particular, a guy who was a big supporter of the gasoline automobile referred to them as the lead cab trust. They were rapidly expanding. In fairness, just like uber or lyft, you do need to have a mono