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Since the late nineteenth century, Canada has required modern construction machines for industrial growth. Thanks to their novelty and visibility, these machines entered the Canadian psyche, symbolizing hopes and fears about the relentless transformations of modernity. Metaphors depicting these machines as zoomorphic and monstruous reflected the environmental-technological infrastructures they built, which redefined nature through technologies like trains, ships, and automobiles. This article discusses how Anglo-Canadians, particularly Ontarians, interpreted technology, drawing parallels with the automobile's history. Both had a problematic coexistence with humans as equally empowering and oppressive mobile machines that were imposed on public spaces and constructed as necessary for progress. The builders used the machines' allure to present construction as an inclusive civic spectacle and foster public tolerance for their relentless disruptions. They accomplished this faster than the automobile industry came to dominate the streets, as evidenced by the celebration of "sidewalk superintendents," compared to the contentious reproach of "jaywalkers."

Did the 1980s automotive standards reflect the European Economic Community's move toward a "technical democracy" or a broader democratic deficit? In the early 1980s, Europe's automotive sector faced multiple challenges: the European Commission's desire to harmonize technical standards and achieve greater European integration, intense competition between manufacturers, and environmental issues like acid rain. Debates on reducing air pollution focused on unleaded petrol and catalytic converters. Two associations representing civil society in Brussels responded to the increase in environmental concerns with a 1982 joint campaign. Despite a rich historiography on pollutant emission standards, highlighting the strategies of governments and companies, no study has dealt with the role nongovernmental organizations played. Based on public and private archives, particularly those of the European Bureau of Consumers' Unions, this article argues the new regulations did not result from the EU's consultation with civil society organizations like consumer groups but rather with the automotive industry.

This article explores the attempts in the United States in the 1970s to implement a new paradigm for automobile safety-crashworthiness, the idea that automobile passengers should be protected in the event of a crash. A large number of strategies were proposed, including air bags, seatbelt modifications, mandatory belt-use laws, and ignition interlocks. Many of these did not initially come to fruition, but they did give the automobile safety community a chance to experiment with different ways of distributing responsibilities between automobile occupants, automobile manufacturers, and, to a lesser extent, government agencies. These experiments helped pave the way for the successful implementation of a number of new strategies in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

The 1917-25 planning and construction at the University of Michigan of a new University Hospital, later dubbed Old Main, offers a noteworthy case study of the formal convergence of hospital and factory in early twentieth-century America. Designed by Albert Kahn, the architect responsible for Ford Motor Company's archetypal automobile plants, and located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, less than forty miles from Detroit's burgeoning factory landscape, Old Main was well positioned to reflect the values of industry in both appearance and operation. The building's outer surface represents a striking departure from the historicism that characterized several other hospitals of this period, while plans for the building's novel diagnostic unit demonstrate unique operational parallels to the assembly line model of production. Ultimately, Old Main's industrial design similarities cast it as a precociously modernist hospital, relating streamlined form to function more explicitly than many of its contemporary institutions.

Between the end of the fifties and the second half of the sixties the Italian car industry was one of the few in Europe to introduce technical changes for car safety. Some Italian popular magazines took part in this plan not only by an information and prevention campaign, but also by promoting experimental safety car projects. Among them Quattroruote, rivista mensile per gli automobilisti di oggi e di domani stands out.

The birth of the automobile in the late nineteenth century was greeted with a mixture of awe, scepticism and sometimes even disdain from sections of the European public. In this article, the steps taken in France to pioneer and promote this new invention are examined. Unreliable and noisy, the early automobile owes a debt of gratitude to the French aristocracy who organised and codified motor racing in an effort to test these new inventions while at the same time introduce them to a wider public. City-to-city races demonstrated the potential of the automobile before the initiative of Gordon Bennett proved to be the catalyst for the birth of international motor sport as we recognise it today. Finally this article looks at the special connection between Le Mans and the automobile. Le Mans has, through its 24-hour race, maintained a strong link with the development of everyday automobile tourism and offers the enthusiast an alternative to the machines that reach incredible speeds on modern-day closed circuits. This article examines how French roads were veritable testing grounds for the earliest cars and how the public roads of Le Mans maintain the tradition to this day.

The profuse historiography on the automobile in America near completely overlooks the ubiquitous cultural practice of entertaining live audiences by deliberately crashing cars. This paper seeks to rectify some of this ongoing neglect by providing a socio-historical exploration into the origins of this unique genre. The planned automobile wreck’s birth is traced to the early 1920s and is situated contextually within an established tradition of disaster and destruction reenactments, key historical developments in the system of automobility, and the phenomenon of traffic accidents. By exposing the political economy behind this form of amusement and the dominant discourse surrounding it, the paper provides an explanation for how and why the deliberate demolition of such an iconic and celebrated technology was able to flourish in America.

Today, in the midst of economic crisis, senior executives at US automakers and influential industry analysts frequently reflect on the progression that safety testing has taken from the crude trials done on the road, to controlled laboratory experiments, and to today's complex math-based simulation models. They use stories of this seemingly linear and natural sequence to justify further investment in simulation technologies. The analysis presented in this paper shows that change in the structures of automakers' organizations co-evolved with regulations specifying who was at fault in vehicle impacts, how vehicles should be built to withstand the force of an impact, and how testing should be done to assure that vehicles met those requirements. Changes in the regulatory environment were bolstered by new theories about crash test dynamics and changing technologies with which to test those theories. Thus, as new technological and regulatory innovations co-evolved with innovations in organizational structuring, ideas about how to best conduct crash tests shifted and catalyzed new cycles of technological, regulatory, and organizational innovation. However, this co-evolutionary story tells us that the move from road to lab to math was not natural or linear as today's managerial rhetoric would have us believe. Rather, the logic of math-based simulation was the result of technological, regulatory and organizational changes that created an industry-wide ideology that supported the move toward math while making it appear natural within the shifting structure of the industry.

Motor vehicle crashes result in some 1.2 million deaths and many more injuries worldwide each year and is one of the biggest public health problems facing societies today. This article reviews the history of, and future potential for, one important countermeasure-designing vehicles that reduce occupant deaths and injuries. For many years, people had urged automakers to add design features to reduce crash injuries, but it was not until the mid-1960s that the idea of pursuing vehicle countermeasures gained any significant momentum. In 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, requiring the government to issue a comprehensive set of vehicle safety standards. This was the first broad set of requirements issued anywhere in the world, and within a few years similar standards were adopted in Europe and Australia. Early vehicle safety standards specified a variety of safety designs resulting in cars being equipped with lap/shoulder belts, energy-absorbing steering columns, crash-resistant door locks, high-penetration-resistant windshields, etc. Later, the standards moved away from specifying particular design approaches and instead used crash tests and instrumented dummies to set limits on the potential for serious occupant injuries by crash mode. These newer standards paved the way for an approach that used the marketplace, in addition to government regulation, to improve vehicle safety designs-using crash tests and instrumented dummies to provide consumers with comparative safety ratings for new vehicles. The approach began in the late 1970s, when NHTSA started publishing injury measures from belted dummies in new passenger vehicles subjected to frontal barrier crash tests at speeds somewhat higher than specified in the corresponding regulation. This program became the world's first New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and rated frontal crashworthiness by awarding stars (five stars being the best and one the worst) derived from head and chest injury measures recorded on driver and front-seat test dummies. NHTSA later added side crash tests and rollover ratings to the U.S. NCAP. Consumer crash testing spread worldwide in the 1990s. In 1995, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) began using frontal offset crash tests to rate and compare frontal crashworthiness and later added side and rear crash assessments. Shortly after, Europe launched EuroNCAP to assesses new car performance including front, side, and front-end pedestrian tests. The influence of these consumer-oriented crash test programs on vehicle designs has been major. From the beginning, U.S. NCAP results prompted manufacturers to improve seat belt performance. Frontal offset tests from IIHS and EuroNCAP resulted in greatly improved front-end crumple zones and occupant compartments. Side impact tests have similarly resulted in improved side structures and accelerated the introduction of side impact airbags, especially those designed to protect occupant's heads. Vehicle safety designs, initially driven by regulations and later by consumer demand because of crash testing, have proven to be very successful public health measures. Since they were first introduced in the late 1960s, vehicle safety designs have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented countless injuries worldwide. The designs that improved vehicle crashworthiness have been particularly effective. Some newer crash avoidance designs also have the potential to be effective-e.g., electronic stability control is already saving many lives in single-vehicle crashes. However, determining the actual effectiveness of these new technologies is a slow process and needs real-world crash experience because there are no assessment equivalent of crash tests for crash avoidance designs.

For almost 20 years the authors have been selecting and editing the material referring to the means of transport which Danish veterinarians used in the 18th, 19th and 20th century. The source material contains memoirs, advertisements from veterinary medical journals, obituaries and other sources, based on which a 210-page book in the Danish language has been published. The article presents an abridged version of this book. In Denmark, the first veterinarians rendered their services at the time when this profession had not yet established itself. They were relatively poor and very often they had to walk even 15 to 20 km per day in order to visit two or three farms, where their professional help was needed. In the first half of the 19th century, the economic situation of Danish veterinarians improved, so they could afford a horse of their own. From the second half of the 19th century, the gig, a light two-wheel vehicle drawn by one horse, was in use. At the end of the 19th century, bicycles and motor-bicycles were slowly gaining ground. The gig, however, continued to be the main means of transport, because it was cheap and safe. In the 20th century, the automobile era began, but World War I prevented the widespread use of cars due to the shortage of petrol, rubber parts and the like. After the war, automobiles came into common use both in medical and veterinary practice. Only in hard winters with much snow, horses and sledges were coming to the fore again. World War II once again created the shortage of petrol and rubber tyres, so horses and gas generators were in demand. After the war, various car models completely dominated the veterinary practice, cars with built-in shelves for medicines, instruments and other medical supplies in particular. The telephone was a great help and of service to veterinarians, because many of long trips to clients were not necessary any more, thanks to the simple communication over the phone. Veterinarians were often among the first owners of the telephone in a town or village, which can still be seen in their valid phone numbers (ending with 01, 02, etc.). Some veterinarians travelled also by train, during the war in particular. When there was much snow, some used skis. Some Danish veterinarians had to accompany exotic animals on their journey from Africa or Thailand, where planes were the main means of transport. In the 19th and 20th century, veterinarians used to accompany animals during their transport at sea, for example from South America to Danish colonies in West India (Tranquebar). After World War II, several veterinarians accompanied animals transported by ships to some of the Baltic harbours in the former USSR. In Denmark, there are many islands with numerous farms, therefore, if required, veterinarians from the continent have to be ready to go to the islands any time, day or night. In such cases boats are the primary means of transport, but planes and helicopters are also used in modern times. In Greenland, veterinary services are provided by veterinarians travelling by ships or boats, helicopters, and sometimes even dog-sledges.

This paper analyzes how in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century the development of surgery and modern automobile traffic were intertwined. It describes the mutual influence of traffic policy and trauma surgery under the conditions of National Socialist politics of modernization. This coevolutionary development provides an example of how the rise of much of modern surgery can be better understood by taking into account other, nonmedical developments in society.

The first recorded automobile fatality occurred in a small town in the Irish Midlands in 1869. Mary Ward, a celebrated microscopist, artist, astronomer and naturalist, fell from a steam carriage and died after crush injuries from its heavy iron wheels. The story of first automobile fatality characterizes the individual tragedy that is each premature death. It also illuminates the story of a remarkable Victorian scientific family. Among their many achievements was the building of a reflector telescope in the heart of rural Ireland that was the largest in the world for 74 years.

Hubert Ingham Clements was an inventor, designer and engineer who manufactured many pieces of apparatus for use in the scientific and medical practice, particularly in the field of anaesthesia from 1917 when he designed and manufactured suction pumps and anaesthetic machines. His products were ingenious, light and portable where desirable, but sturdy, extraordinarily reliable, of low maintenance and high performance. His contribution to the specialty of anaesthesia is acknowledged.

This contribution focuses on medical and psychological discussions about the consequences of early automobilism in Germany. It can be shown that the medical profession was reasonable discordant concerning attitudes towards the motorcar. Whereas a growing number of doctors used the relative inexpensive and useful small cars, which were aggressively advertised by industry, an influential minority identified the risks and damages of motorized driving very clear sighted. Medical criticism was not fundamental but focused on personal mistakes of drivers or technical and technological inadequateness that could be removed. It therefore differed significantly from the basic opposition of several "enemies of progress".

A search via databases and indexes, as well as the American Dental Association package library collection, yielded no evidence of participation by American dentists in outboard motor or hydroplane inboard motor boat racing. There may be or have been such participants, but the contributions of Paul Sheppard Burnham, DDS are noteworthy and quite probably unique. Competing always as an amateur, his racing ability was respected; on many occasions he outraced professional drivers. Dr. Burnham led an interesting life. In his 83 years, he operated and soon thereafter traded automobile after automobile (a total of 49)--satisfying his love for fast and unusual cars. While practicing dentistry most of his adult life, he managed to become an integral part of the Rehoboth Beach, DE beach patrol, serving for ten years as captain of lifeguards and, in a few of his senior years, as chief. As the 20th century comes to a close, a good deal is written and spoken about those identified as unusual, vibrant, daring, spirited, competitive, self-confident, and colorful--travelers in the fast lane. Paul S. Burnham, DDS spent a great part of his life in the fast lane, with very few in front of him.