Lew Dockstader, a popular comedian in 1908, assumed the persona of Abraham Lincoln on the holiday morning of Feb. 12, taking a walk through the city of New York: 'I was much surprised as well as gratified when I arrived,' he said, 'to find myself so well-heralded. I walked up Broadway, and flying from many hotel fronts I noticed bunting and flags telling the glad news that I was here.' But then Dockstader's Mr. Lincoln finished by adding, in a rather perplexed way, 'Someone just told me that the decorations were not for me - but for a car race.'

The crowds gathering on Broadway all morning were not out to honor Lincoln's birthday, either. They were on the avenue to catch sight of the start of the New York-to-Paris Automobile Race. There would only be one - one race around the world, one start, and one particular way that, for the people who lived through it, the world would never be the same. The automobile was about to take it all on: not just Broadway, but the furthest reaches to which it could lead. On that absurdity, the auto was to come of age.


'By ten o'clock,' reported the New York Tribune, 'Broadway up to the northernmost reaches of Harlem looked as though everybody was expecting the circus to come to town.' The excitement was generated by the potential of the auto to overcome the three challenges most frustrating to the 20th century: distance, nature and technology. First, distance: in the form of 22,000 miles of the Northern Hemisphere, from New York west to Paris. Second, nature: in seasons at their most unyielding. And third, the very machinery itself, which would be pressed hard by the race to defeat itself. Barely 20 years old as a contraption and only 10 as a practical conveyance, the automobile couldn't reasonably be expected to be ready to take on the world. But there were men who were ready and that was what mattered.

With the six cars entered in the race parked in Times Square, the race was due to begin at 11:00 a.m. As the time drew near, some observers detected a somber atmosphere bestilling the crowd, as bystanders looked at the race teams and realized just what a treacherous a trip lay in store for them. Most experts agreed that it was impossible and some added that it was suicidal, to boot.

Read more about A Race Like No Other
Volume 47 Number 3