MTFCA Forum

Tom: Thanks for posting these all the others you have. Great for you to share them with us. I know it took years to collect all of them. Reminds me of the good old days at Hershey, when you could find all kinds of T related stuff.
Keep up the good work. Thanks again Dan.

More great pictures! As Dan said in his post, thank you. The driver in picture #3 reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt. We have a national park in my State named after him.

Third photo down looks like a bride and groom on their wedding day. Or, a bride and her family driving to the church.
Thanks Tom for posting all these photos. They mean a lot to myself and others. They often make my day!
John

The eighth photo down is an interesting touring car. The new style cowl with an after market hood
and radiator. Gas headlamps and a Prest-O-Lite tank. The license plate appears to be a 1917 Oregon.

Gibson Auto works were ahead of the times. There is the Ford logo in the oval, adopted when the A model was later introduced.

Allan from down under.

Drkbp wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 5:18 pm

The eighth photo down is an interesting touring car. The new style cowl with an after market hood
and radiator. Gas headlamps and a Prest-O-Lite tank. The license plate appears to be a 1917 Oregon.

It also has fancy hub caps & shock absorbers but the gas lights on a car that should have had electric lights are hard to figure.

Paul

This picture shows what looks like a '23 but it has no cowl lights AND no demountable rims. I seem to recall that the cowl lights were standard on cars with no electrical system. Demountable rims were part of the package with the starter, generator & battery. If this is correct, why does this car have no cowl lights and no demountable rims?

Paul

Allan wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 5:34 pm

Gibson Auto works were ahead of the times. There is the Ford logo in the oval, adopted when the A model was later introduced.

Allan from down under.

Interesting , Allan B, about that oval "Ford". I had read in a discussion on the forum a few years ago that Ford had used an oval Ford in some limited amount of advertising and letterheads for about a year or so, about 1912 (if I recall correctly?). It may have been used some even earlier. One of the cars near the end of the line has the curved fenders of the 1911 torpedo roadster, which were also used on the "open roadster" of the same year. The "standard roadster", "mother-in-law roadster", or "commercial roadster" models of course had the flat top fenders both front and rear. Most of the cars appear to be only slightly later, likely 1913 or 1914 at the latest. My guess from that would be that the photo was taken early in the 1913 model year (which could be as early as October or even September of 1912. The torpedo or open roadster could be a car they have had for a year, lined up with a fresh delivery for the photo opportunity.
The past discussion of that early oval included a scan of an era letterhead, and I think a photo of a sign on a dealership (but not this photo). Even being aware of this earlier usage of the Ford in an oval, and looking at literally thousands of era photographs? I have only ever notices not even a handful of era photographs showing that usage in the early model T years.
Apparently, few dealers adopted that oval Ford into their signage. And the Ford factory apparently dropped it from their letterheads after only a short while. It apparently was not adopted as an official logo until the introduction later of the new model A Ford for 1928.

Hudson29 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 6:24 pm

Drkbp wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 5:18 pm

The eighth photo down is an interesting touring car. The new style cowl with an after market hood
and radiator. Gas headlamps and a Prest-O-Lite tank. The license plate appears to be a 1917 Oregon.

It also has fancy hub caps & shock absorbers but the gas lights on a car that should have had electric lights are hard to figure.

Paul

I have made observations and comments about this numerous times in the past (not complaining!).
History needs to be considered in the context of it's time. The car is very apparently a 1915 model, with the cowl and windshield, and apparently brass trimmed oil sidelamps. It clearly has an update kit to hide the archaic radiator and original style hood (original hood now hidden in garage?).
The headlamps are another issue. Electric lighting, for much of the country at that time was still a new thing. Electric lights were unfamiliar, and not trustworthy to many thousand of people. Difficult to imagine today, but gas and oil lamps had been around for generations! Oil lamps had been used in ancient Egypt, and continuously for over two thousand years. Various gas (including acetylene) lamps had been common since before the Civil War.
Before the 1910s, electric lights were mostly in large cities. Most of the country if they had ever even seen them only saw them during a trip to far from home.
For us, the idea of using gas for lighting seems bizarre. That for us is unfamiliar and untrustworthy. In 1915, many people were not ready to use electric headlamps. Although the factory did not authorize it, many dealers would trade in the new car's electric headlamps and install replacement or traded in gas headlamps onto new cars in order to close a sale.
As silly as it sounds. The dealer could make quite a few extra dollars trading in new electric headlamps and selling old style gas headlamps while at the same time trading in used gas headlamps and selling new electric headlamps to other customers that were eager to accept the new technology onto their older cars!
People are funny things. Some drag their feet while others rush forward. A single new car sale to lead to a chain of trade in and swap small sales without the dealer having to buy any new stock.

Electric lamps for in stock gas lamps? Pocket a few dollars. Traded in electric lamps for used gas lamps? Pocket a few dollars. Take in another new set of electric lamps for traded in used gas lamps? Pocket a few dollars. Take in another set of new headlamps for another used set of gas headlamps? Pocket yet another few dollars.

Yeah, people are funny things.

Great commentary Wayne !
Thing is, acetylene lamps (and oxy-acetylene welding) were fairly new technology, only something like 20 years old in 1915. The magneto powered electric headlamps were pretty sketchy, while, if you really had to rely on them for a lot of night driving over bad roads, acetylene was dependable and very bright. I recall reading an account of a doctor who made a call to a patient needing an emergency appendectomy who performed the operation by putting his car near the patient’s window, and removing a headlamp, with the aid of additional rubber tubing (surgical I’d bet ) had more than ample light to remove the inflamed appendix and save a life !

(Try that with your 9 volt Mazda !! )

Hudson29 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 6:29 pm

This picture shows what looks like a '23 but it has no cowl lights AND no demountable rims. I seem to recall that the cowl lights were standard on cars with no electrical system. Demountable rims were part of the package with the starter, generator & battery. If this is correct, why does this car have no cowl lights and no demountable rims?

Paul

Another thing I have commented on numerous times. (Again, NOT complaining!)
The "loss leader" model Ts from 1919 onward had no demountable rim wheels, and no electric starter package which in turn meant they had the oil sidelamps as a backup for those unreliable electric system magneto lamps. So this car appears to not be a "loss leader" car.
Me, having studied literally thousands of era photos over the past few decades now, years ago I noticed that it was quite common for 1920s model Ts to have no signs (oil sidelamps) of NOT having a starter, while having clearly NO demountable rims. It was a very common combination.
I have just short of a thousand era photos of 1917 through 1925 model T photos. Estimating numbers, more than half of them are of 1920s cars, so guess about five hundred. I would guess, if I were to take the time to do so, I could find about fifty photos of model Ts with no demountable rim wheels, and no oil sidelamps indicating that the car does have a starter. That would be a significant percentage of the cars with a starter, but not demountable wheels. I would speculate (have said many times on various forums and in conversations) that for a lot of people wanting a new car, but needing to save a few dollars, that the inconvenience of having to crank start the car every time they went somewhere? Was a much bigger consideration than the occasional inconvenience of needing to fix a flat on the side of the road.
The flipside of that coin is that the opposite combination of oil sidelamps indicating no starter on a car with demountable rim wheels is much more rare in era photos. I know I have a couple like that on my computer(whether I could quickly find them or not is another issue?). I would guess that maybe I might have as many as five such photos (maybe less?). As a statistical sampling, that would indicate that roughly ten times as many cars were sold with starter but without demountable rim wheels, than were sold with demountable rim wheels but without starter.

Fun stuff!

Rich P. Bingham wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 7:41 pm

Great commentary Wayne !
Thing is, acetylene lamps (and oxy-acetylene welding) were fairly new technology, only something like 20 years old in 1915. The magneto powered electric headlamps were pretty sketchy, while, if you really had to rely on them for a lot of night driving over bad roads, acetylene was dependable and very bright. I recall reading an account of a doctor who made a call to a patient needing an emergency appendectomy who performed the operation by putting his car near the patient’s window, and removing a headlamp, with the aid of additional rubber tubing (surgical I’d bet ) had more than ample light to remove the inflamed appendix and save a life !

(Try that with your 9 volt Mazda !! )

Thank you Rich B!
Great story! I will remember that one.
Natural gas lighting of course goes much further back. And in the minds of most people at the early part of the twentieth century, gas was gas. Also, fire was fire.
Thousands of homes burned down every year, due to minor accidents with either gas or oil lamps. It was a normal risk for people throughout the 1800s. People accepted that risk. Even though electric light was so very much safer than flames, the fire was familiar. People knew the risks and mostly took precautions therefore feeling safe using it. But still, accidents happened.
Natural gas had been used to light homes and businesses for a hundred years, mostly in cities where a natural gas source was readily available. Acetylene gas was a newer technology, with some advantages, including brighter light.

Thank you also for the input.

How are our Idahoan friends doing?