A fascinating time capsule came across my desktop this week. Originally published in 1930, this Saturday Evening Post essay by automotive pioneer Alexander Winton recounts his early efforts, beginning in the 1890s, to convince the public that the “horseless carriage” was the future.
Winton was a Columbus, Ohio-based bicycle manufacturer who turned to developing cars, and by 1898 completed one of the first commercial sales of an automobile in the United States. That vehicle is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Winton’s story is fascinating in itself, and also offers broader insights into how new technologies develop and spread. The parallels to challenges faced by crypto developers are particularly uncanny: Winton describes facing down endless mockery, fraudulent competitors, the hostility of banks – and a case of automotive “patent trolling” that calls to mind a particularly notorious crypto figure.
These common threads between the development of the automobile and of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology aren’t simply a cosmic coincidence. The same challenges have accompanied many modern innovations, thanks above all to the way capitalist investment and speculation shape human behavior.
‘Dishonest practices did much harm when support was most needed.’
Most notable in Winton’s account is the difficulty he found separating his real (and ultimately very successful) auto company from both competitors with flawed ideas, and from outright frauds.
The well-intentioned bad ideas for cars are fascinating to look back on. One early automaker built a literal mechanical horse, which rode on a single wheel and attached to buggy shafts just like a real horse. It was guided not by a steering wheel, but with reins attached to the “mouth” of the motorized stallion. Other early experimental cars ran on compressed natural gas (yikes), steam, compressed air and even, yes, electricity.
These were honest efforts that failed thanks to technological flaws or market mismatches. They parallel a variety of early digital cash efforts, from Liberty Reserve through Colored Coins on Bitcoin – useful…
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