Co-Winner of the 2005 Hagley Business History Book Prize given by the Busines History Conference. In 1926, the Carriage Builders' National Association met for the last time, signaling the automobile's final triumph over the horse-drawn carriage. Only a decade earlier, carriages and wagons were still a common sight on every Main Street in America. In the previous century, carriage-building had been one of the largest and most dynamic industries in the country. In this sweeping study of a forgotten trade, Thomas A. Kinney extends our understanding of nineteenth-century American industrialization far beyond the steel mill and railroad. The legendary Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company in 1880 produced a hundred wagons a day—one every six minutes. Across the country, smaller factories fashioned vast quantities of buggies, farm wagons, and luxury carriages. Today, if we think of carriage and wagon at all, we assume it merely foreshadowed the automobile industry. Yet., the carriage industry epitomized a batch-work approach to production that flourished for decades. Contradicting the model of industrial development in which hand tools, small firms, and individual craftsmanship simply gave way to mechanized factories, the carriage industry successfully employed small-scale business and manufacturing practices throughout its history. The Carriage Trade traces the rise and fall of this heterogeneous industry, from the pre-industrial shop system to the coming of the automobile, using as case studies Studebaker, the New York–based luxury carriage-maker Brewsters, and dozens of smallerfirms from around the country. Kinney also explores the experiences of the carriage and wagon worker over the life of the industry. Deeply researched and strikingly original, this study contributes a vivid chapter to the story of America's industrial revolution.

A history of coaches and carriages.

Surveys the prominent people and the political, scientific, and artistic events in the world during the period from 1801 to 1821.

This book presents the technological and social history of early land transport -- horses, wagons, chariots and wheeled conveyances of all kinds -- including the history of vehicles and mounts as symbols of status and eminence, fit to be presented to potentates, or buried with them. The author assembles evidence from texts and archaeology in the form of a grand chronological narrative that touches on matters as diverse as the fodder of King Solomon's horses, the military significance of the cavalry stirrup and the role of women on horseback. It begins with the ox-wagon: humble enough to us but, over 4000 years ago, the very first luxury transport. During the second millennium BC it was supplanted -- in lands as far apart as Egypt, India and China -- by the horse-drawn chariot, not merely as an engine of war, but as a parade car for public display and hunting in royal parks. Yet the chariot itself was gradually displaced by the ridden horse, which became the cardinal attribute of monarchy and nobility. The image of the heroic ruler on horseback remained constant from Marcus Aurelius until the eve of the modern era, by which time the covered carriage and coach had long since assumed the mantle of prestige vehicles.

This reference work is the definitive source for the terminology, nomenclature, and illustrative diagrams for all known carriage types of the Western world, as well as many of the better known vehicles of other areas.