Light On Dark Water

Here is a vision of how the automobile would change the world, as seen in the Illustrated World of May, 1922.

It's easy to laugh at a lot of this: "There can be no slums in the future." But really, when you take away the naive gosh-it's-wonderful tone, and the irony of the predictions of peace and quiet and uncongested cities, the article is quite accurate in its broad point, that a whole way of life would be built around the automobile, and that town and country would be brought much closer together.

Appreciating the convenience of these highways, people move out of the city to have little homes and gardens along the concrete roads. Thus begins the building of residential communities, any number of which can now be found outside the large cities of the country…. Then the small country school disappears and a consolidated school…appears.

And so, too, the farmer that lives ten miles or fifteen miles from town on the concrete is closer in time and convenience than was the farmer who lived three miles along a mud stretch. Ten miles of concrete and an automobile makes the remote farmer almost a town citizen.

It was indeed the beginning of a new world, for better or for worse.

I had stashed that piece away for comment several weeks ago, and now I can't remember how I came across it. But that's a pretty interesting web site. See, for instance, this account of portable radio, 1916 style.