1913 - Transportation

Transportation

Russian aeronautical engineer Igor (Ivan) Sikorsky, 24, builds and flies the world's first multimotored aircraft. He built a prototype helicopter 4 years ago but it would not fly, and Michael E. Gluhareff, 20, has helped him to design a more successful machine (see 1939; Cornu, 1907; autogyro, 1923; helicopter, 1936).

Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail offers a £10,000 prize for the first nonstop transatlantic crossing by aeroplane. No pilot has topped the distance record of 628.15 miles set last year, and many regard the offer as an empty publicity stunt (see 1919).

Aeronaut-inventor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe dies at Pasadena, Calif., January 16 at age 80.

New York's Grand Central Terminal opens February 1 at 42nd Street and Park Avenue, replacing a 41-year-old New York Central and New Haven train shed with the world's largest railway station. Trains under Park Avenue have been electrified since December 1906. Far bigger than Penn Station, Grand Central has 31 tracks on its upper level, 17 on its lower (which opened for commuter service in October 1912). Separate men's and women's waiting rooms and lavatories are at either end of the main waiting room off 42nd Street; the women's waiting room, at the east end, has amenities that include a hair-dressing salon.

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New York's Grand Central Terminal dwarfed Penn Station, giving midtown Manhattan a landmark that would survive.

Florida East Coast Railway builder Henry Morrison Flagler dies at West Palm Beach May 20 at age 83.

The first diesel-electric locomotives go into service in Sweden. Diesel-electrics will generally replace steam locomotives, but inventor Rudolf Diesel jumps or falls overboard from the Antwerp-Harwich mail steamer Dresden the night of September 30 and is lost at age 55 (see 1896; first U.S. diesels, 1924).

The White Star Line's S.S. Olympic resumes transatlantic service April 2, having been refitted at her Belfast shipyard (see 1911; Titanic, 1912). Given a double bottom up her sides to the waterline, full-height bulkheads, and additional lifeboats, she will remain in service until April 1935 (but see 1914).

The Hamburg-Amerika Line passenger ship S.S. Imperator that will later become the S.S. Berengaria leaves Cuxhaven for New York on her maiden voyage June 20. Built at Hamburg's Vulcan Werft Shipyard for Hamburg-Amerika's Albert Ballin, the 52,022-ton vessel is 919 feet in length overall, has four screws, and can reach a maximum speed of 24 knots (but see 1914).

New York Evening Sun reporter John Henry Mears, 35, circles the world in a record 35 days, 21 hours, 31 seconds (see Nellie Bly, 1890). He leaves New York on R.M.S. Mauretania July 2, arrives at Fishguard, Wales, proceeds by rail to London, crosses the Channel by ship, proceeds by rail to Paris and on to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and thence to Manchuria via the Trans-Siberian Railway, crosses by ship to Japan, proceeds by ship to Vancouver, flies to Seattle, and completes the 21,066-mile journey by rail via Chicago, arriving back at New York August 6 (see Wiley Post, 1931).

Elmer Sperry receives a patent for his stabilizer gyroscope (see 1910; rail defect detection, 1923).

A storm on the Great Lakes from November 7 to 10 is the fiercest ever known to strike the region. Some 20 vessels are sunk, about 20 damaged, and more than 270 crewmen and officers are lost as winds gusting up to 100 miles per hours create waves up to 35 feet high on upper Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior, continuing for 16 hours with blinding snow.

Sales of U.S. luxury motorcars priced from $2,500 to $7,500 reach 18,500; Packard leads the field (2,300 cars), followed by Pierce Arrow (2,000), while White, Franklin, Locomobile, and Peerless provide healthy competition. Cadillac is the leading make in the $1,500 to $2,500 range and will enter the luxury market next year with a V8 model—the first eight-cylinder car.

Duesenberg Motor Co. is founded at St. Paul, Minnesota, by Fred S. and August S. Duesenberg, 36 and 34, respectively. The German-born bicycle makers (and bike racers) opened a garage at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1903, produced their first motorcar in 1904 under the name Mason, and have sold their Iowa company to Maytag Washing Machine Co., which is selling their original car as a Maytag (see 1919; everyday life [Maytag], 1907).

The new Ford Model T sells for as little as $550; the price will soon drop to $490 (see 1925). The Dodge brothers John and Horace break with Henry Ford and become independent while continuing to own stock in Ford Motor Co., which builds a big new plant at Highland Park, Mich. (see 1914; 1919).

The assembly line introduced at Ford Motor Company October 7 reduces the time required to assemble a motorcar from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours. Devised by Danish-born engineer Charles E. Sorensen, 31, with help from engineer Clarence W. Avery, it is an improvement on a primitive line used by Ransome E. Olds in 1901. Employees remain in place while conveyor belts carry parts to their work stations, where each employee installs just one part; Ford's line reverses the disassembling line used by Chicago and Cincinnati meat packers, factories producing a wide variety of products will convert to assembly line production, but although the line will revolutionize much of industry it will also increase worker boredom and permit the industry to hire unskilled and semiskilled workers at wages lower than those of skilled workers.