Word: autocar
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Lame, lank, atrabilious Charles Grey Grey is a 32nd generation Northumberlander. He studied engineering at London's Crystal Palace School of Engineering. Never more than a competent draftsman, he took to peddling bicycles, then advertising for a motoring journal, The Autocar. The Autocar's, editors presently discovered in Grey a clever pen, converted him into a reporter, in 1908 gave him his first big assignment: a Paris air show. When Cub Grey pointed out that he spoke no French his editor tut-tutted: "At least you won't be misled by French eloquence." Nor was he ever...
...Frank Desiderio, a strapping, grey-haired Italian, arrived in the U. S. in 1904, penniless, unemployed, unable to speak English. On borrowed money he bought a pushcart, tramped Newark's streets collecting wastepaper. In two years he had a horse and wagon, traded them for a two-cylinder Autocar in 1918. By 1926 the Desiderios owned a 100-truck fleet. When the old Clifton firm went bankrupt six years ago, they turned up with a batch of uncollected bills and a checkbook. By 1935 they had two more plants - in Whippany, N. J. and Durham, Pa. But their first...
...airport units, indicated the range of utility covered by the U. S. trucking industry, which gives employment to more than 3,000,000, pays special taxes of $417,500,000 ($89,000,000 more than the amount of all taxes that U. S. railroads pay). Truck manufacturers represented were Autocar, Baker-Raulang, Brockway, Diamond T, Divco-Twin, Dodge, Federal, Ford, Four Wheel Drive, Fruehauf Trailers, General Motors, International Harvester, Mack, Marmon-Herrington, Pak-Age-Car, Reo, Sterling, Studebaker, Truck-tor, Walker, Walter and White. Motor-makers were Aircooled Motors Corp., Buda, Continental, Cummins, Hercules, and Waukesha. Represented, too, were some...
Although A-to-Baggage, as the editors point out, is composed chiefly of abstract words, it contains many U. S. technical coinages like airbrake, airline, automobile, autobus, autocar, autotruck. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes thought up the word anaesthetic in 1846. Appendicitis was introduced by another U. S. physician, Reginald Heber Fitz, 40 years later. Alumnus was taken directly from Latin about 1696, and in 1882 Doglover Albert Payson Terhune's mother, Essayist "Marion Harland," first used alumnae. Politics produced Abolitionist, anti-liquor, anti-saloon, anti-imperialist. From the Southwestern border filtered Spanish words like adobe, alfalfa, arroyo. Also listed...
...Autocar's first catalog in 1898 listed a $450 "package carrier fitted with special gear, capacity 700 Ib. including driver." For the next few years Autocar was a popular passenger make, sporting a propeller shaft at a time when most cars were chain-driven. It pioneered the porcelain spark plug in the U. S., and its thread has since become standard for all spark plugs. In 1911 Autocar started to specialize on trucks, now makes models from 2%½ ton to 15½ ton capacity. An Autocar feature was long the under-the-seat motor, now being adopted...