1900s: April 2008 Archives

After recently posting the article on the 20 horse power York-made Pullman’s win in a 1908 hill climb, I was curious to see what the car looked like.

Click here to read about the hill climb.

The newspaper article didn’t say if the winning auto was a 1907 or 1908 model. Since the race was in early 1908, I went to a 1907 Pullman catalog in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives.

The factory turned out three 20 horse power models that year. I’m including illustrations below from the catalog of all three models, along with specs and price. Which do you think beat the competitors up the hill?

Automobile manufacturing was booming in York a hundred years ago. One of the most successful was the Pullman automobile, made by the York Motor Car Company. Manufacturers entered the cars in all kinds of races and competition to capture the attention of the public, and the results were duly reported in the sports pages.

One such competition was a hill climb in New York. The account in the April 11, 1908 York Gazette reads:

I keep harping away that the “good old days” often weren’t as good as they are remembered to be. One thing that is certainly better now than it was then is medical knowledge and technology.

The article below, from the April 30, 1908 York Gazette, certainly points out how lucky we are to have the x-rays, MRIs, and various scans now, so that the surgeons can see where the problem is before they cut.