Pylimitics

It seems like an unusual date to pick — November 28, 1895 — if only because November in Chicago isn’t known for having the most hospitable weather of the year. If you’re going to schedule an event that’s entirely outside, you might be tempted to lean toward, say, July or August. But no, that was the date chosen for the first auto race in the US. It was dreamed up by the Chicago Times-Herald as a publicity stunt to drum up interest in what many thought might become the automobile industry, and to show off the even newer idea of “moto-cycles” which had only appeared two years before. The underlying objective was probably to generate interest in the Chicago Times-Herald itself; the paper had been formed that same year in a merger of the Chicago Times and the Chicago Herald.

The newspaper put up a prize of $5,000, which would be worth over $150,000 in today’s cash. They made the announcement on July 15 of a race from Chicago to Milwaukee. But it didn’t take long for everyone involved to realize that the roads were so bad that no self-propelled carriage could be expected to make it. It was difficult even if you had a team of horses. So they switched to a shorter course from Chicago to Evanston and back. It was still 54 miles, which was a considerable distance to try in anything motorized in 1895 — not least because many of the vehicles were homemade. They scheduled the race for November second — but when only a couple of entrants showed up, the race was rescheduled for later in the month — but still not the 28th. 

Eighty-three automobile enthusiasts registered to enter the race, but most didn’t even show up for the later date. It turned out that for most of the entrants, the process was: 1: notice the big cash prize, 2: enter the race, 3: start to figure out how to build an automobile. It was the third step that most of them didn’t get past. Nevertheless, several cars were on their way to the race. But then they were stopped by the Chicago Police, who explained that they had no right to operate those durn fool contraptions on the city streets, and if they wanted to continue, they’d have to hire a horse and operate like a proper carriage. The Times-Herald postponed the race again and desperately conferred with the mayor’s office to find a solution. 

One of the entries stopped by the cops was favored to win. It was the car built by Elwood Haynes, who had, arguably, built the first car in the US. Charles Duryea’s “motorized wagon” was on the road a few months earlier, but as the name implied, it was just a wagon that Duryea had equipped with a motor. Haynes’ car was built from scratch to be an automobile — and it was entirely metal — Haynes was a metallurgist, and also the inventor of stainless steel tableware. The car he entered in the race was actually his second, improved model. It had already been seen in public driving around Indiana, where he lived. 

The Chicago city fathers passed a special ordinance allowing automobiles to use the streets, and the race was rescheduled again, for November 28 — which was Thanksgiving Day in 1895, the same as 2024.  The day before the race, Haynes was driving his car around the streets a bit, and was involved in another first — the first auto accident. He swerved to miss a trolley, hit a curb, and ended up with a flat tire and broken axle. Even a flat tire was a big problem in 1895 (spare tires had yet to be invented), and Haynes was out of the race. 

On the 28th, in spite of the extra time they had to finish their entries, most of the entrants didn’t show up. Only four cars and two motorcycles were at the starting line to race 54 miles in snowy, muddy conditions. Three of the cars had been made by Karl Benz in Germany, and the fourth was none other than Frank Duryea’s motorized wagon — which still looked like it needed a horse in front. Another car was almost able to enter — but it was electric, and it was too cold for the batteries to work, so it didn’t race. 

One of the Benz cars took the early lead, but struck a horse (probably the second accident in history) and was sidelined. One of the motorcycles dropped out when it couldn’t climb one of the hills along the route. By the time the remaining three cars and one motorcycle got to Evanston, about 4 hours later, none of them had a clear lead. The drivers, though, were definitely not having fun. One of them, Oscar Mueller, lost consciousness from exposure to the weather, so one of the race umpires, Charlie King, volunteered to drive the rest of the way. He brought the Benz across the line after about 12 hours — only to find out that the Duryea Motorized Wagon had won the race an hour and a half earlier, with an average speed of about 7mph. Nobody else finished the race. 

The results, though, were contested. It turned out that Duryea’s car had been repaired along the way by a blacksmith, Mueller’s Benz was helped by onlookers pushing it, and nobody had stuck to the proper course. In spite of the findings of the judges, though, prizes were awarded not just to Duryea and Mueller for first and second place finishes, but to all the other starters, and even to Elwood Haynes, who got $150 as a special prize “for the plan of preventing vibration by balance of driving engines.” The electric car also got an award: a gold medal for “Safety, ease of control; absence of noise, vibration, heat, or odor; cleanliness, and general excellence of design and workmanship.” I mean, sure, it didn’t actually run the race…but it was nice and quiet while it didn’t. 

The race achieved its objective of kick-starting US automobile industry; the first commercial production started just months later, and the publicity about the race — particularly that it was held in such bad weather but the cars worked anyway — did a lot to change people’s minds about how practical and desirable these gadgets were going to be. Its other objective, to generate readership for the Times-Herald, wasn’t so successful. The paper only lasted six years before another merger, when it became part of the Chicago Herald-Record. The auto industry turned out much the same; Duryea started building cars to sell, but went out of business after building just 13 vehicles. 

Elwood Haynes started a company too, along with the Apperson brothers. The Haynes-Apperson company lasted until 1905, after which Haynes started another car company, which also went bankrupt — but not until 1924. There was a parade organized in New York City in 1908 that featured 2,000 cars, and Haynes was scheduled to lead it, driving the same car he had meant to enter in the 1895 race — many people considered it the first American automobile. But Haynes was late. He was driving to the parade and, once again, was stopped by police. This time for exceeding the 15mph speed limit. Despite his many run-ins with the law, Haynes eventually got quite rich. But not from his car companies. His fortune came from his patents on stainless steel and “stellite” (a hard metal used to make cutting tools) and the company he founded to produce the metals. Probably because it wasn’t in the newspaper or car business, the Haynes International company is still around. 

Elwood Haynes and his car, around 1895