America's passion for the automobile developed rather quickly in the beginning of the twentieth century. At the turn of that century, there were few automobiles, or horseless carriages, as they were called at the time, and those that existed were considered frivolous playthings of the rich. They were rather fragile machines that sputtered and smoked and broke down often; they were expensive toys that could not be counted on to get one where one needed to go; they could only be afforded by the wealthy class, who could afford both the expensive upkeep and the inherent delays that resulted from the use of a machine that tended to break down time and again. These early automobiles required repairs so frequently both because their engineering was at an immature stage and because roads were unpaved and often in poor condition. These horrendous road conditions forced drivers to use their automobiles on grooved, rutted, and bumpy roads. Then, when breakdowns occurred, there were no services such as roadside gas stations or tow trucks to assist drivers needing help in their predicament. Drivers of horse-drawn carriages considered the horseless mode of transportation foolhardy, preferring instead to rely on their foul-legged "engines," which they considered a tremendously more dependable and cost-effective means of getting around. Xe ô tô vào đầu thế kỷ 20 đã khá không giống như ngày hôm nay của các mô hình. Nhiều người trong số họ đã là điện xe ô tô nhất, mặc dù các mô hình điện đã khá hạn chế và cần phải được nạp lại thường xuyên tại các trạm sạc điện; nhiều người khác đã được cung cấp bởi hơi nước, mặc dù nó thường cần thiết trình điều khiển của hơi quan tâm là chứng nhận hơi kỹ sư do những nguy hiểm vốn có trong điều hành một máy hơi nước. Xe ô tô đầu cũng thiếu nhiều nhấn mạnh vào thiết kế cơ thể; trong thực tế, họ đã thường ít hơn so với băng ghế trên bánh xe, mặc dù vào cuối thập niên đầu của thế kỷ, họ đã tiến triển da bọc ghế hoặc ghế sofa trên bánh xe mỏng hấp thụ rất ít không ngừng đập liên quan đến sự chuyển động của các máy này. In spite of the rather rough and undeveloped nature of these early horseless carriages, something about them grabbed people's imagination, and their use increased rapidly, though not always smoothly. In the first decade of the last century, roads were shared by the horse-drawn and horseless variety of carriages, a situation that was rife with problems and required strict measures to control the incidents and accidents that resulted when two such different modes of transportation were used in close proximity. New York City, for example, banned horseless vehicles from Central Park early in the century because they had been involved in so many accidents, often causing injury or death; then, in 1904, New York state felt that it was necessary to control automobile traffic by placing speed limits of 20 miles per hour in open areas, 15 miles per hour in villages, and 10 miles per hour in cities or areas of congestion. However, the measures taken were less a means of limiting use of the automobile and more a way of controlling the effects of an invention whose use increased dramatically in a relatively short period of time. Under 5,000 automobiles were sold in the United States for a total cost of approximately $5 million in 1900, while considerably more cars, 181,000, were sold for $215 million in 1910, and by the middle of the 1920s, automobile manufacturing had become the top industry in the United States and accounted for 6 percent of the manufacturing in the country.
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