Not much change on the floor in 100 years.

[Dollisdad]

[Dollisdad]

[Dollisdad]

[Dollisdad]

[Cruby]

Looks like Grandpa is closing the hood in the last picture.

Alway look forward the new batch of pictures, Thanks!

[varmint]

Read that two hundred homes were damaged by the tornado in Watertown, SD and one child killed, twenty injured. Photos were taken of the tornado and aftermath.

Thanks for the photos.

[Wayne Sheldon]

The eleventh photo is very interesting to me. In part just because I have restored (one basically finished and driven for a few years before being sold, the other sadly still waiting to be finished) two 1915/'16 model Ts. That and I am just more attracted to earlier cars.
Maybe a few people are tired of my interest in a minor detail in the production timeline? But the 1915/'16 Ts were the transition from the more heavily carriage influenced earlier brass era cars into the more sleek modern automotive era. The changes were minor, but the steps large.
The transition from the 1914 model/style to the 1915 model/style was tricky. For the open cars, a relatively minor change in adding the cowl resulted in problems stamping the sheet steel panels for the open cars. The "enclosed" bodies cowls were different, and the low production made them more suited to being mostly hand made. So the enclosed body Ts for 1915 were ready for the usual model year change in late calendar 1914.
The open body new style, however, were delayed for a few months, and transitioned slowly as production issues were worked out. Between December 1914 and April 1915, both the 1914 style and 1915 style open cars were being produced by the factory (not literally) side by side. The number of new (1915) style cars started small (if I recall correctly, the December 1914 production of 1915 style open cars was less than fifty per Royce P's research?). Ford continued producing the 1914 style open cars to meet sale's demands. Month by month, the numbers went up for the 1915 style, as the numbers were reduced for the 1914 style cars. The last of the transition 1914 style cars were produced during April of 1915.
Those late production 1914 style open cars were of course sold simply as "new" cars, and in states where licensing and/or registration was required, would likely have been originally registered as 1915 models. That detail was mostly forgotten, and in the early days of our hobby, way too many of the transition 1914 style cars have been "corrected" by replacing their original 1915 engines with earlier engines to make them "more correct" (I personally heard lots of those stories when I was just getting started in this hobby). Other late transition 1914 style cars had their original 1915 engines replace by later engines for some sort of convenience, and because "the original engine had been replaced years earlier anyway" (I heard that one several times also (so, why not?).

All that to frame my interest in this one photo.

The car in the eleventh photo appears to be a few years old at the point when the photo was taken. A wire is helping to support a slightly broken front fender, all the paint is faded, and much of the paint is missing on the aluminum hood. But that one little detail caught my eye. So I zoomed in close.
Although they appear to be heavily tarnished, the lamps appear to be brass trimmed, although the tarnished brass doesn't stand out in a black and white era photograph. That oil sidelamp, almost definitely, is one of the fairly rare transition lamps with the broader font bowl. Assuming anything is risky? So, "assuming" that the lamp is original to that car? That car would likely have been manufactured in either January or February of 1915. The production of the new style touring cars lagged well behind the runabouts during that time. Such that that touring car was likely one of the first thousand "new style" touring cars manufactured in 1915. Considering the number of touring cars made and sold for 1915 and 1916 model years? That makes that one a rare open T.

[varmint]

Maybe a few people are tired of my interest in a minor detail in the production timeline?

Actually, whatever is posted here may be the only place where people will find this information. My feelings are that our knowledge of history, our mistakes, and solutions are all part of what we hand down to the next generation. In years to come, those "few" won't be around to use what we post here. Thank you Wayne.

[TXGOAT2]

I find these "minor" facts to be very interesting. I think it's worthwhile to record and share them. If I had a car in that model range, I'd be very interested indeed, and if I had a "correct" or mostly correct car, I'd want to keep it that way.