268 SCIENCE OF HOME AND COMMUNITY 



The next steam carriage was made in England in 1801 

 by Richard Trevithick. The use of these carriages so 

 frightened the horses that a law was passed requiring a 

 man to walk ahead of the steam carriage with a red flag 

 to give warning of its approach. Later they were prohibited 

 from using the highways altogether, because they inter- 

 fered with the horse traffic. It was not until 1896 that the 

 " Red Flag Act " was repealed. 



During the year 1895 in the city of Chicago, when one 

 of the first automobiles was passing along Michigan Avenue, 

 the driver was stopped by a policeman and told that horse- 

 less carriages were not permitted on the streets. 



No great progress was made in the development of power- 

 propelled vehicles till after 1885, when Gottlieb Daimler 

 invented the high-speed gasoline engine. But it was not 

 until the beginning of the present century that the auto- 

 mobile began to make rapid development. No machinery 

 or invention for travel has ever made such rapid strides as 

 has the automobile during the past fifteen years. In 1895 

 the first automobile race was held in this country. The 

 winning car was driven by a four horse-power engine. It 

 traveled at the rate of 7^- miles an hour. About twenty 

 years later racing cars had reached a speed of 120 miles per 

 hour. 



In 1898 there were probably not 100 automobiles in the 

 entire United States ; by the end of 1918 there were approx- 

 imately 6,000,000 cars and trucks registered in the United 

 States, or one for every 18 persons, that is, about one for 

 every 4 families. This is an increase of 20 per cent over the 

 number registered in 1917, and nearly six times as many as 

 there were seven years previous in 1 9 1 1 . In the states of Iowa 

 and Nebraska there is one automobile for every seven per- 

 sons. The entire population of these states can be carried 

 in their cars. One third of the total number in the country 

 is registered in the five states of New York, Ohio, California, 



