JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
In browsing bits and pieces of a January-June 1922 volume of the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig) I took notice of several ads that appeared in the back of each weekly issue. Cars. Fast cars. Fast cars going fast. It occurred to me that I really didn't have any knowledge about when "speed" was shown in the sale of an automobile, though these ads were definitely in attendance here in 1922:
The are other ads to follow, images depicting great speed...though it strikes me that these sorts of displays come a little late in the history of the depiction of speed, especially given the experimentation in the art world with space and time. I'll have a look at earlier volumes to see if I can determine when the ads began to appear, though it seems to my intuition and deep memory that 1922 is actually "early".
And even though this has nothing necessarily to do with the depiction of speeding cars in advertisements, it is a little interesting to note that in the history of land speed records that in the early days the records were dominated by the French and the Belgians--in the opening stages of the speed race they held 14 of the first 17 land speed records between 1898-1904. From 1905-1925, the Brits appear and begin a speed reign, taking 5 of the 13 speed records made during 1905-1925 (with France taking 3 and the U.S. 5), this at a time when the record speeds advanced from 104 mph to 150 mph. From 1926 to 1947 (152-394 mph) of the 19 new records Great Britain took the crown 18 times. After that, the records became mostly a GB/USA affair, and by the 60's it was mostly the United States.
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