Not great, but I appreciate how Warner Brothers threw in this extra for free.

archival footage of early races at Altoona Speedway board track

John Eldredge and Stanley Ridges in They're Always Caught (1938)

Charley Chase, Eugenia Gilbert, and Hal Roach in There Ain't No Santa Claus (1926)

Debbie Reynolds and Dick Powell in Susan Slept Here (1954)

Angela Lansbury, George Murphy, and Margaret O'Brien in Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)

June Duprez, John Loder, and Michael St. Angel in The Brighton Strangler (1945)

Nina Foch, Charles Middleton, Addison Richards, and Robert Shayne in Wagon Wheels West (1943)

Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, and Risë Stevens in Going My Way (1944)

Dwight Weist

Ward Wilson

Barney Oldfield

Robert Youngson

Assembled from dozens of film clips, with voice-over narration, this short film is a humorous &quot;little history of a very big event, the coming of the automobile.&quot; It highlights the first few decades of autos and their impact in the...

Gadgets Galore

Crazy cars

Most people don&apos;t like when well established traditions change, and this short from the 50s (even though it looks more like the 30s) shows that even groundbreaking inventions can have a hard time gaining traction. This film says how the horse, mankind&apos;s means of rapid transportation for millennia, is finally being replaced by automobiles. The early 1900s had the owners of these machines and horse riders clashing like titans. People in rural America often challenged car drivers to races, willing to bet that the horse was the tried, true, and faster method of getting somewhere. Eventually, these competitions disappear and give way to races purely involving automobiles. By the outbreak of World War 1, auto racing was a national sport and it was a common sight for drivers to keep on going if a tire came off one of the wheels. Just like what racers did with their horses, they gave their cars names and praised them when they carried them to victory. Crash proof bumpers get invented once cars start becoming more numerous, even though as late as 1904, there was less than 150 miles of paved roads in the US. Interestingly, the auto industry today isn&apos;t anything like how it once was. There&apos;s only so many car companies you hear about now, and as of the time this short was made, there were only 6. In the early days of cars, there were 140. Experimental cars that were built and swiftly forgotten hit the scene, such as a hybrid car that burned coal like a train, had a smokestack and even a furnace. A car shaped like a torpedo was meant to go at supersonic speeds, but ended up achieving not even a tenth of that. A backwards car is shown as well; basically a normal vehicle on the outside but all the chairs are pointing the opposite way. Finally, inventors from Europe tried to come up with &quot;cars&quot; that had submarine-like hulls in order to go underwater, a giant tire that someone sat inside and steered, and a German rocket powered car that ran on railroad tracks. As history has shown, all these ambitious contraptions went away and left the normal car triumphant. Typically, I don&apos;t really care for these short films that TCM puts on after something, but this one wasn&apos;t overly long and even told me things I never knew so I thought it was passable. I have no idea why someone would design a backwards car, but it happened. While many people back then (and even now) are against cars, it looks like they&apos;re here to stay. We&apos;ve come a long way since riding on animals.

Most people don't like when well established traditions change, and this short from the 50s (even though it looks more like the 30s) shows that even groundbreaking inventions can have a hard time gaining traction. This film says how the horse, mankind's means of rapid transportation for millennia, is finally being replaced by automobiles. The early 1900s had the owners of these machines and horse riders clashing like titans. People in rural America often challenged car drivers to races, willing to bet that the horse was the tried, true, and faster method of getting somewhere. Eventually, these competitions disappear and give way to races purely involving automobiles. By the outbreak of World War 1, auto racing was a national sport and it was a common sight for drivers to keep on going if a tire came off one of the wheels. Just like what racers did with their horses, they gave their cars names and praised them when they carried them to victory. Crash proof bumpers get invented once cars start becoming more numerous, even though as late as 1904, there was less than 150 miles of paved roads in the US. Interestingly, the auto industry today isn't anything like how it once was. There's only so many car companies you hear about now, and as of the time this short was made, there were only 6. In the early days of cars, there were 140. Experimental cars that were built and swiftly forgotten hit the scene, such as a hybrid car that burned coal like a train, had a smokestack and even a furnace. A car shaped like a torpedo was meant to go at supersonic speeds, but ended up achieving not even a tenth of that. A backwards car is shown as well; basically a normal vehicle on the outside but all the chairs are pointing the opposite way. Finally, inventors from Europe tried to come up with "cars" that had submarine-like hulls in order to go underwater, a giant tire that someone sat inside and steered, and a German rocket powered car that ran on railroad tracks. As history has shown, all these ambitious contraptions went away and left the normal car triumphant. Typically, I don't really care for these short films that TCM puts on after something, but this one wasn't overly long and even told me things I never knew so I thought it was passable. I have no idea why someone would design a backwards car, but it happened. While many people back then (and even now) are against cars, it looks like they're here to stay. We've come a long way since riding on animals.

Assembled from dozens of film clips, with voice-over narration, this short film is a humorous "little history of a very big event, the coming of the automobile." It highlights the first few decades of autos and their impact in the U.S.

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