Showing posts with label unusual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unusual. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
1913 Wagenhals electric
Steve (most astounding researcher I've ever had the delightful priveledge to meet) was writing up about a call for bids for a contract to supply the Post Office with delivery vehicles, http://www.shorpy.com/node/12927#comment-136306 and one of the companies that respoonded was Wagenhals of Detroit, which made this electric, and a gas powered version.
The Post Office also ordered 21 Wagenhals Motor Car Company three-wheeled vehicles that had 800 pounds capacity. Powered by a 20 hp water-cooled four-cylinder engine, they cost $625 each (visually similar to the less expensive electric version below). Located in Detroit, the Wagenhals Motor Car Company would reorganize just a month later as simply the Wagenhals Motor Company. Both the Whites and the Wagenhals had to be delivered to Cleveland, Ohio within sixty days.
A year later the Post Office was advertising for bids for spare parts for these vehicles, which included: "Transmission and cup grease, horn bulbs, cylinder and heavy oil, blow out and tube patches, pressure gauges, cushion and pneumatic tires, inner tubes, tire tape, valve parts and tools, vulcanizing rubber, etc."
The winner of the bid had to supply each individual post office named in the contract, and the parts just couldn't be dumped in front—the bid proposal stipulated that "All the supplies must be delivered at and within the doors of the post offices."
The bid proposal noted that the Wagenhals had been dispersed as follows:
Columbia, S. C, 1 Wagenhals; Columbus, O., 2 Wagenhals; Detroit, 2 Wagenhals; Memphis, 3 Wagenhals; Nashville, 3 Wagenhals; Norfolk, Va., 2 Wagenhals; Richmond, Va., 2 Wagenhals.
More examples of Steve's incredible detective work are on his blog http://serviside.blogspot.com/
Saturday, August 31, 2013
1953 Bosley GT Mk1
from this photo it looks really spherical
for a full gallery see http://flaviendachet.blogspot.ru/2012/08/53-bosley-gt-mark-i.html
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
the truth is often stranger than fiction, and forgotten in months after its out of the news.. here is something I've never learned of or heard of, the airmail transcontinental route markers
A couple months ago I learned about the elevated bicycling wood road from Pasadena to Los Angeles, http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/07/forgotten-history-of-what-might-have.html and today Randy sent me an email about these large concrete markers that the airmail pilots used to stay on course from New York to San Fransisco, before electronic stuff like radar and radio direction finding, when all a pilot had was a compass and a map... and those weren't so great to use while airborne.
So these concrete arrows were made, painted yellow for daylight visibility, and lit with enormous light towers at night
the two maps below indicate the airfields used for refueling and food stops, not the arrows.
sources of these images and more info: http://introductiontoflying.blogspot.com/2011/08/transcontinental-air-mail-route.html
and Conde Nast Traveler http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-traveler/2013/06/transcontinental-air-mail-route-maphead-ken-jennings
Labels:
airplane,
historical,
history,
informative,
unusual,
vintage
Saturday, August 24, 2013
RetroHound went to the HAMB drags and filled a Flikr photo ablum, here are a couple that caught my eye
4 door, Nash? Kaiser? Hudson?
I dig the Batmobile-like red panel striping
bread delivery truck I think... cool!
All from http://www.flickr.com/photos/retrohound/sets/72157635112175581
by Robert who has several websites, including http://www.retrohound.com/
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