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Show UNKNOWN GENIUS GAVE AMERICAN BUGGY TO WORLD Many of our land transportation methods are of European origin, but the old family buggy is distinctly American. No one knows just who did build the first one, according to Carl W. Mitman, of the Smithsonian" institution, who spent a lot of time looking the matter up, but it was used in this ountry first of all. American roads were extremely bad following thexRevolution (some still are) and the only conveyances were the heavy wagons drawn by horses or oxen. This was a very slow method of transportation. About the best way to get any place was to cut across the hills and walk. Of course, if you were well-to-do and owned a horse and saddle, that was faster, too. Yankee ingenuity wouldn't be de-ned de-ned even then, nnd about 1S20 some smart fellow built the first light wagon wag-on and equipped it with springs. Thus we had our first sprng-wagon Thus we had our first spring-wagon from which our buggy was developed. Then, about 1S10, somebody else wanted to go still faster, and built the first "one-hoss shay" and the gig (the same thing In a different form) with two wheels In which the sports went rattling about at a great rate of speed. Of course, the railroad came along about that time, but you didn't have to lay tracks for a buggy, and it held its own throughout the Nineteenth century, until the auto finally Just about put it out of business. busi-ness. The depression made a lot of folks get out their old buggies, however, how-ever, so we still see a few of them around even In the National Capital. Capi-tal. Pathfinder Magazine. |