1932 - Transportation

Transportation

U.S. motorcar sales fall to just over 1 million, down from more than 5 million in 1929.

Sales of Ford passenger cars to farmers fall to 55,000, down from 650,000 in 1929. Ford halts production of its Model A, introduced in 1927, as it tools up to introduce the first low-priced V-8. Ford loses millions of dollars and lays off workers to reduce payroll costs from $145 million (1929) to $32 million (1933).

Soviet Russia's Gorky Automobile Factory (GAZ) is completed at Nizhny Novgorod, 260 miles east of Moscow, where it will produce the Volga sedan and other motorcars. Ford Motor Company engineers have helped build the plant.

Fiat introduces the Tipo 508, or Balilla, at the Milan auto show. The three-speed sedan has a 995 cubic-centimeter engine that gets 30 to 34 miles per gallon (100 kilometers per eight liters); its top speed is 55 miles per hour. About 113,000 will be produced, and it will be the Italian counterpart of Henry Ford's Model T (see "Topolino," 1936).

Motorcar pioneer Henry M. Leland dies at Detroit March 26 at age 89; automaker Alexander Winton at Cleveland June 21 at age 72. He stopped making motorcars in 1924 to concentrate on producing diesel engines.

Some 25 percent of U.S. auto glass is safety glass. Many states enact legislation requiring it in windshields (see Sloan, 1929).

General Motors forms a subsidiary to acquire electric streetcar companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and resell them to local entrepreneurs who will agree to buy only GM buses as replacement vehicles (see New York, 1936; conspiracy conviction, 1949).

Sydney's Harbour Bridge opens March 18, connecting the city with its suburban areas in New South Wales. Designed by London civil engineer Ralph Freeman, 51, it has a main arch span of 1,650 feet and is the world's longest arch bridge.

London's Lambeth Bridge of 1862 is replaced by a new bridge across the Thames.

Washington's Arlington Bridge across the Potomac is completed to designs by McKim, Mead, and White of New York.

Cologne's mayor Konrad Adenauer, 56, dedicates the first segment of the Autobahn's Cologne-Bonn highway August 6 (see 1921). Construction began in 1929, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party has condemned it as elitist, but Hitler will change his mind next year (see 1933).

Bridgestone Tire Co. is founded by 43-year-old Japanese entrepreneur Shojiro Ishibashi (the name means "stone bridge"), who began by making rubber work shoes (see Firestone acquisition, 1988).

Italian tire and electric wire maker Giovanni Battista Pirelli dies at Milan October 20 at age 81. His son Piero, 51, succeeds as chairman.

Oklahoma City News editor Carl C. Magee, 60, files the first patent application for a parking meter in December. No mechanic, he engages university engineers to develop his idea and will receive his patent in 1936 (see 1935).

Europe's Simplon-Orient Express becomes the Arlberg-Orient Express as it inaugurates a new route closer to the original route of 1883. The six-mile Arlberg Tunnel avoids the long detour into Italy, taking the luxury train from Switzerland eastward to Austria and thence to Istanbul (see 1919; 1952).

New York's Independent subway system opens September 10, extending service into areas not served by the BMT or IRT (see 1933).

The fourth Welland Sea Canal opens with 27 locks, bypassing Niagara Falls to connect Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Originally built in 1829, the 28-mile waterway can now accommodate a vessel up to 600 feet in length with a 22-foot draft.

The Grace Line passenger ship Santa Rosa goes into service with a midships dining room whose roof opens in fair weather (see 1918). Designed by William F. Gibbs and built at Kearny, N.J., she has a large swimming pool and gym, and her first-class cabins are all outside twins with private baths. She will soon be joined by the Santa Paula, Santa Lucia, and Santa Elena, and along with the Santa Paula will be replaced in 1958 by larger vessels of the same names.

Shipowner Robert Dollar dies of bronchial pneumonia at San Rafael, Calif., May 16 at age 88, having been helped by his three sons to build a fleet of about 40 vessels, including 18 passenger ships.

The Matson-Oceanic Line passenger ship Monterey arrives at San Francisco via the Panama Canal May 29, having left New York May 12 on her maiden voyage. She begins scheduled service June 3 to Honolulu and the Antipodes and is soon joined by a new Lurline and Matsonia.

Pilot and aircraft manufacturer Edward Stinson dies in an air crash January 26 at age 38 while on a sales trip for Stinson Aircraft Corp. (see 1929). He has had 16,000 hours of flight time (more than any other aviator to date), and the company he started 12 years ago is prospering with new models powered by Wright or Lycoming radial engines. The Reliant model introduced next year will be the company's most famous, and by 1941 Stinson will have delivered 1,327 of them.

Amelia Earhart (Putnam) lands in Northern Ireland May 21 after making the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman (see 1928) (Earhart married New York publisher George Putnam in February of last year). Lockheed Aircraft gave her a single-wing Vega powered by a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine in 1929, it is the same model flown by Beryl Markham and Amy Johnson, and she has left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, the previous evening. She ran into a violent electrical storm over the ocean, her altimeter failed, iced up wings sent her plane into a 3,000-foot tailspin, her exhaust manifold caught fire, and she opted to land in a pasture outside Londonderry rather than continue on to Paris; the crossing has taken her 14 hours, 56 minutes.

Kansas-born aircraft designer Lloyd C. (Carl) Stearman, 33, becomes president of a revived Lockheed Co. after it is acquired in bankruptcy for $40,000 (see 1929). Stearman worked in partnership with Clyde Cessna and Walter H. Beech in 1924 to produce the Travel Air, a pioneer civilian production plane, and after being nearly wiped out in 1929 merged his company at Wichita with United Aircraft, which produces his training planes (see politics [Lockheed], 1938).

Beech Aircraft is founded at Wichita, Kan., by Pulaski, Tenn.-born entrepreneur Walter H. (Herschel) Beech, 41, and his wife, Olive Ann, 28, who will head the light-plane manufacturing company after her husband's death in 1950.

Aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont commits suicide on his estate at Guarujá, São Paulo, July 23 at age 59. He quit aviation in 1910, having come down with multiple sclerosis and returned to his native Brazil in 1928; his physical and mental condition has declined ever since, and he has become depressed at the prospect of aircraft being used for military purposes.

The Russian national airline Aeroflot is created through a reorganization of Dobroflot (see 1923). Within 3 years it will have a network of routes extending across the country to the Black Sea, the Caucusus, and central Asia as it grows to become the world's largest airline, making parts of the Soviet Union accessible within hours where it once took days and even weeks to reach them overland (see 1956).

EgyptAir has its beginnings in the government-owned Misr Air (Misr is Arabic for Egypt); based at Cairo; it will resist privatization into the next century as it becomes an international carrier employing 22,000 people who will include about 600 pilots.

Air India has its beginnings in Tata Airlines. Tata Sons Ltd. director Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata, 28, spent much of his childhood in France (his mother is French), met Louis Blériot, learned to fly, and pilots the inaugural flight between Karachi and Bombay (Mumbai) (see 1946).