Charles Brady KING
1896 - March 6 - Charles King test drives gasoline-powered automobile

March 6 - Charles King of Detroit is the first person to test drive a gasoline-powered automobile in Michigan.

The auto age

There is a great to-do in Detroit today. The city that the auto built, is celebrating the Golden Jubilee of the beginning of the Auto Age. For it was early in 1896 that Charles King put-putted a small gasoline-engined buggy along Detroit streets. And it was only a few weeks later that the incomparable motorman, Henry Ford, brought out his "horseless carriage."

In 1896 there were the skeptics and the believers. But probably none of them dreamed that this new "contraption" would virtully re-mold American civilization. For the automobile has largely done that - affecting in scores the ways of our economic, policitcal and social habits.

Fifty years ago there were only 16 cars in the United States. Since then, one of the world's biggest industries has been built on the automobile, an industry that in the United States, supreme in the automotive field, has produced 90,000,000 cars valued at $640 billion dollars in half a century. It is now strange to read that in 1904 when 22,000 cars were turned out, some of the unbelievers warned the auto industry of over-expansion. Yet in 1929 alone 5,360,000 cars were sold and in 1939, 4,800,000. Today the industry is valued at four billions of dollars.

Among the many men who shared development of the auto age, one man stands above all others. He did not invent the auto. He was an adapter. Had it not been for Henry Ford, who applied the principle of mass production, with its accompanying cheap prices, the auto might still have been an expensive luxury. But Ford's contribution of mass production literally changed the habits of millions...

The Leader-Post
Regina, Saskatechewan, Canada
June 1, 1946

March 6, 1896

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