Menu
Idea

automobiles

129
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 91–120 of 128 results. Go to first page
A fast food worker working a drive thru hands a bag to a customer in a car.

A History of the Drive-Thru, From California to Coronavirus

COVID-19 has recast the often-maligned restaurant drive-thru window as both a critical amenity and a basic comfort.
by Adam Chandler via Serious Eats on April 1, 2023
Google's word occurences tool shows the word "teenager" appear around 1940, with an exponential increase in occurences up through the 2000s.

Teenagers Didn't Always Exist

So where were those angsty kids?
by Chris Dalla Riva via Can't Get Much Higher on March 16, 2023
Frederick Douglass Patterson, behind the wheel, with an unidentified passenger in a 1910 or 1911 Maxwell automobile in for repairs at the C.R. Patterson & Sons car repair shop, before the Pattersons began making cars themselves.

How America’s First — and Only — Black Automakers Defied the Odds

C.R. Patterson & Sons of Greenfield became the first Black-owned automobile manufacturer in 1915. More than a century later, it remains the only known one.
by Kevin Williams via Retropolis on February 18, 2023
A pair of horses are unable to pull an overcrowded streetcar in New York City, shown in Harper's Weekly on Sept. 21, 1872.

A Virus Crippled U.S. Cities 150 Years Ago. It Didn’t Infect Humans.

The Great Epizootic, an equine flu in 1872-1873, infected most U.S. horses. Streetcars and mail delivery stopped across the country while fires raged.
by Jodie Tillman via Retropolis on February 12, 2023
Grid Lock in New York City.
Exhibit

Traffic Jam

Car culture is so pervasive that many people take it for granted. This exhibit shows how history can serve as our “blind spot detection,” enabling us to see new possibilities for the future.
The image of the forlorn girl on the outskirts of the Highway to Nowhere was shot by John Van Horn in the fall of 1968

Road to Ruin

In the late 1960s, Baltimore began demolishing Black neighborhoods to make room for an ill-fated expressway. Will the harm from the Highway to Nowhere ever be repaired?
by Ron Cassie via Baltimore Magazine on February 10, 2023
Buckminster Fuller looking at a model of a geodesic dome.

Buckminster Fuller’s Hall of Mirrors

Alec Nevala-Lee’s new biography assesses the complicated legacy of an architect better known for his image than his work.
by Daniel Luis Martinez via The Nation on February 1, 2023
Drawing depicting Buckminster Fuller in front of a dome

Buckminster Fuller’s Greatest Invention

His vision of a tech-optimized future inspired a generation. But his true talent was for burnishing his own image.
by Rebecca Onion via The New Republic on August 19, 2022
A painting of an old gas station with modern police units in the forefront.

Organized Plunder

In the absence of tax dollars, American cities like Baltimore are now funding themselves by fining the poor instead of taxing the rich.
by Elias Rodriques, Clinton Williamson via The New Inquiry on July 27, 2022
Flooding in Livingston, Montana, with Yellowstone National Park mountains in the background.

What Extreme Flooding in Yellowstone Means for the National Park's Gateway Towns

These communities rely almost entirely on tourism for their existence—yet too much tourism, not to mention climate change, can destroy them.
by Megan Kate Nelson via Smithsonian on June 16, 2022
Monuments to the victims of traffic deaths

When Cities Made Monuments to Traffic Deaths

A century ago, cars killed pedestrians and cyclists in record numbers. As traffic deaths rise again, it’s time to remember how US cities once responded to this safety crisis.
by Peter Norton via CityLab on June 10, 2022
Debt written on a blackboard

How We All Got in Debt

Consumer debt shapes American lives so thoroughly that it seems eternal and immortal, but it’s actually relatively new to the financial world.
by Louis Hyman, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on June 2, 2022
Illustration of people on different types of bicycles

Bicycles Have Evolved. Have We?

Biking innovations brought riders freedom. But in a world built for cars, life behind handlebars is both charmed and dangerous.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on May 19, 2022
Watercolor painting of a person and a dog on a hilltop overlooking a packed campground full of tents and people.

The Confounding Politics of Camping in America

For centuries, sleeping outside has been embraced or condemned, depending on who’s doing it.
by Dan Piepenbring via The New Yorker on April 27, 2022
Henry Ford on an early tractor.

American Power Pull

The farm tractor wasn’t born overnight. Perfecting it led to a three-way battle between Ford, John Deere and International Harvester.
by Michael Taube via The Wall Street Journal on December 29, 2021
Ralph Nader

The Myth of the “Pinto Memo” is Not a Hopeful Story for Our Time

Drawing analogies between industries can be instructive. But only if we do it right.
by Lee Vinsel via Medium on October 21, 2021

Before Interstates, America Got Around on Interurbans

The fate of electrified “rural trolleys” at the beginning of 20th century could offer lessons for today’s train boosters.
by Vince Guerrieri via CityLab on October 6, 2021
Collage of FSA and OWI photographs
partner

Photogrammar

A web-based visualization platform for exploring the 170,000 photos taken by U.S. government agencies during the Great Depression.
by Lauren Tilton, Taylor Arnold via American Panorama on February 10, 2021

Officer Friendly and the Invention of the “Good Cop”

If your childhood vision of police is all pet rescues and tinfoil badges, Friendly’s “copaganda” did its job.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on August 27, 2020
Militarized police and an armored car.

The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing

Modern policing is linked to overseas colonial projects of conquest, occupation, and rule. Demilitarization requires uprooting that worldview.
by Julian Go via Foreign Affairs on July 16, 2020
Fishing boats an debris deposited in an Alaska village by the earthquake.

At the Very Beginning of the Great Alaska Earthquake

People’s stories described a sluggish process of discovery: you had to discover the earthquake, even though it had already been shaking you for what felt like a very long time.
by Jon Mooallem via Literary Hub on March 24, 2020

When Robert Moses Wiped Out New York’s ‘Little Syria’

What happened to the former Main Street of Syrian America.
by Mattt Kapp via Literary Hub on February 28, 2020

When the American Dream Came With a Drive-Thru

The fast-food age began with scrappy entrepreneurship, but corporate concentration has made the chains dull and uninspiring.
by Addison Del Mastro via The American Conservative on January 3, 2020
McDonald's parking lot.

A Crispy, Salty, American History of Fast Food

Adam Chandler’s new book explores the intersection between fast food and U.S. history.
by Adam Chandler, Anna Diamond via Smithsonian on June 24, 2019
Formal portrait photo of Harland Bartholomew in suit and tie

One Man Zoned Huge Swaths of Our Region for Sprawl, Cars, and Exclusion

Bartholomew’s legacy demonstrates with particular clarity that planning is never truly neutral; value judgments are always embedded in engineers' objectives.
by Ben Ross via Greater Greater Washington on January 8, 2019
Cover of the 1940 Negro Motorist Green Book.
partner

Traveling While Black

In 1936, Victor Green published a guide of restaurants, gas stations and lodgings that would accommodate African Americans travelling across the country.
via BackStory on June 1, 2018

Why New York City Stopped Building Subways

Nearly 80 years ago, a construction standstill derailed the subway into its present crisis.
by Jonathan English via CityLab on April 16, 2018

Old New York, Seen Through a Cab Driver’s Windshield

The people Joseph Rodriguez saw through the windshield in the 1970s and 80s.
by Joseph Rodriguez via Intelligencer on October 27, 2017

In 1919 Eisenhower Road Tripped Across the Country. It Didn't Go Well.

300 men and 3,000 miles of bad road.
by Alex Q. Arbuckle via Mashable on October 2, 2017
Collage by pop artist Tom Wesselmann depicting a kitchen table with food

Pop Art in the US

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Virginia B. Spivey via Digital Public Library of America on September 29, 2017
partner

How the Fight Over Civil Forfeiture Lays Bare the Contradictions in Modern Conservatism

The brewing conflict between originalism and law-and-order politics.
by Sarah A. Seo via Made By History on July 24, 2017
View More
30 of
129

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History