1899 Locomobile

[Narrator] On American roads, each new era of travel has emerged from the one before it. First came the rhythm of horses and wagon wheels. Then the rise of railroads and their unmatched speed. And at the turn of the century, a vehicle that tried to bridge the two.

This 1899 locomobile is a steam powered carriage built by minds still thinking in buggies and wagons, even as the age of the automobile was just beginning to take shape.

(A carriage with a red and white color scheme, with a prominent black canopy atop its driver's seat. The wheels are large and wooden, with visible spokes painted in red. The driver's seat is cushioned and has a quilted pattern.)

[Leo Landis, Historian] The steam powered locomobile from 1899 is a great Iowa story and a great story of technology. It was used both in Davenport area and also in Linn County, but taking a technology that had been around since 1807 with steamboats and putting it into an automobile. And so with a locomobile, one of the more successful steam cars. A really great example of how car technology, automobile technology is introduced to Iowans when, pre 1904, under 500 Iowans had cars. So how do you adapt to a new technology? You find something that looks to be successful and try to put it into a new sort of vehicle.

[Narrator] Housed at the State Historical Society of Iowa, this vehicle was often called a horseless carriage, a real term people used as they related this new form of transportation to the only kind they had ever known.

Its wire wheels were borrowed from the bicycle boom of the 1890s.

Its tiller steering mechanism was inspired by boats and steam powered tractors,

but there was another familiar aspect of steam powered technology that simply couldn't compete with the electric and gasoline powered automobiles of the time.

[Landis] The challenge with steam engine technology for automobiles is that you don't just jump in a steam car and drive away. You had to put water in the boiler or the tank, and then you had to light your fuel source and heat that water up to steam. So it would take 20 to 30 minutes before you could take off in your steam car.

[Narrator] Although this particular locomobile was owned by Senator Haskill of Cedar Rapids, it was famous author Rudyard Kipling who captured what was likely a common experience among early steam car owners.

"I suppose she, the locomobile, will settle down someday to her conception of duty. But just now her record is one of eternal and continuous breakdown. It is true that she is noiseless, but so is a corpse." (Text on screen: Rudyard Kipling (1901) Author & Locomobile Owner)

In the 1920s, steam powered automobiles eventually gave way to more practical gasoline cars. A century later, it's fun to imagine this locomobile once moving quietly along Iowa's roads. Part buggy, part machine, and part glimpse into the future.