The Fastest Thing on Wheels

This article package includes items from Literary Digest and Popular Mechanics. The most important of which is the Literary Digest item titled "The Fastest Thing on Wheels." Barney Oldfield's land speed record runs at Daytona Beach underscored a milestone in automotive engineering - when the car became the fastest vehicle on Earth. From the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth century the railroad locomotive held that distinction. Airplanes were still a nascent technology that could carry two people at most and were largely seen as a novelty with the potential for military survellience applications.