Somewhere between an early car and the head-in-the-bed scene in The Godfather,
the Horsey Horseless, the brainfart of inventor Uriah Smith of Battle
Creek, Mich., was intended to soothe the skittish nerves of our equine
servants. A wooden horse head was attached to the front of the chuffing
buggy in order to make it resemble a horse and carriage (Smith
recommended the horse head be hollow to contain volatile fuel — another
great idea). "The live horse would be thinking of another horse," said
Smith, "and before he could discover his error and see that he had been
fooled, the strange carriage would be passed." Stupid horse! It's not
clear if the Horsey Horseless was ever actually built or if it is a
chimera of auto history, but it reminds us just what a radical,
hard-to-conceptualize thing a horseless carriage was.
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