H73.252.56

• los angeles

Dip Stick, wood. Description: Gasoline tank dip stick for automobile, wood.. Calibrated on one side "Atwater Kent Gasoline Gauge, Pt. May 18, 1909" Other side has advertising for Red Crown Gasoline, Polarine Motor Oil. From the History Information Station: Object: Gasoline dipstick gauge with black painted markings, marked "Atwater Kent Gasoline Gauge. Pat. March 1909." History: Early automobiles did not have fuel gauges on the dashboard. To find out how much gas you had in the tank, you had to put a stick like this one into the tank. When you took it out you could read it, much like you read the oil stick today. Each company's gas tanks were different; some were deep but narrow, others long and shallow. This stick reads "for Ford cars;" you could not use it in another company's models and get an accurate reading of how much gas you had. Lent by Mr. Donald Church Love at first sight: California and the early automobile. Californians fell in love with the automobile almost at once. The Northern and Southern California Auto Clubs were both formed in 1900. Far from remaining mere curiosities, cars quickly became accepted here. After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the Overland Monthly applauded them, saying that "without the aid of the automobile, the damage and suffering would have been immeasurably increased." By 1910 eight percent of the cars registered in the nation were in California alone. The state Department of Engineering had begun to map a network of roads between the county seats and the large cities, and the first highway bonds were issued in that year. In 1912 the first paved roads appeared, and in 1915 the state issued its first driver's licenses. By 1920, at the end of the First World War, there were 600,000 cars in the state, waiting for the great oil finds at Signal Hill and Huntington Beach to "rev up" and get on the road!

Used: automobile | Atwater Kent | Gasoline Gauge | Advertisement ~ Red Crown Gasoline | Advertisement ~ Polarine Motor Oil