FT Thwaites - Wisconsin

[John E. Guitar]

https://search.library.wisc.edu/search/ ... les%5D=yes

[John E. Guitar]

[John E. Guitar]

[George House]

Verrrry interesting !...... 2nd picture of ‘New and Improved’ pickup with much earlier style kerosene cowl lamps

[Wayne Sheldon]

Several very interesting photos here!
Number 2 is neat. Detail in the photo isn't great, but plenty can be seen. Open cars clear into 1926 and 1927 were offered without the starter and generator option. Cars without that option were equipped with oil side and tail lamps. The tail lamp, beginning about a year earlier, was the odd "Ford O" taillamp with a small red lens and a large clear lens to light the license plate. The sidelamps I believe were mostly unchanged from earlier versions, except that the font bowls had the more extreme indentation (which cannot be seen in this photo).
The RPU is an early 1926, with angled post mount headlamps.
What is really interesting is that the sidelamps indicate it likely had no starter or generator. However it does have demountable clincher rims and tires! That combination is quite unusual in era photographs. It is way more common for 1920s model T open cars to have the electric option with non-demountable rim wheels! I have long speculated that the occasional inconvenience of fixing flats on the road was considered less annoying than the few times per day of cranking the engine to start it.
Nice knobby tires also.

There is a legend behind the "Ford O" taillamp. I can't swear to it, but some better researchers than I posted the story about a decade ago.

It seems the "Ford O" was a bit of a nasty response from Henry to a couple states that tried to force Henry to change the taillamp to something else (maybe electric I think?). They couldn't name Ford specifically, and they couldn't ban oil lamps per se as they were still commonly used on a lot of trucks. So they drafted size and shape restrictions that would exclude Ford's long running lamp. Now, Henry probably already knew that he would be eliminating the oil lamps soon, they were already archaic for new cars. And he could have simply made the changes the few states wanted him to. But giving in to something that way would have set a bad precedent. So, a careful reading of the new laws showed that a simple albeit bad alteration could make the lamps meet the new rules. Special lamps were already being made and sold with the lenses positioned right, and a simple change in the lenses used and the side mounting bolt made the "Ford O" meet the new rules using already available dies and parts.
(I have a pair of commercial back lamps with rear mounts like the standard Ford sidelamps, but clear big lenses as well as little side lenses. I have seen photos of trucks using such lamps on the back of the truck for loading in the dark!)
So that slight-of-hand didn't cost Ford much, and the states didn't get what they wanted. The new "Ford O" taillamp was too small, hard to see in the dark, although it lit up the back of the car enough one really didn't need to see the taillamp anyway!
I find it very interesting that the late version of the sidelamps are quite rare. I suspect that since they weren't that different from the ones that had been used for about seven years, that many survivors eventually wound up with the more common earlier font bowls, and therefore are around, but unrecognized. And I suspect that most of the late sidelamps stayed on their cars all the way to the wrecking yard and were eventually scrapped.
The "Ford O" taillamp however is quite common! There must be a thousand of them out there! And MOST of them are early take-offs or nearly new old stock. I do not collect much improved era model T stuff. But even I have a nearly NOS "Ford O" taillamp! I have seen a dozen or more for sale on our classifieds over the past several years. And I have probably seen fifty of them for sale at swap meets over the past forty years! I couldn't possibly have seen even two percent of all survivors? Simple math says there must be a few thousand of them hiding in parts hoards!
I suspect that a lot of owners replaced the "Ford O" with after-market electric taillamps (I have seen era photos!). I also suspect that a lot of owners disliked the new "Ford O" enough that they simply swapped it out for a common older taillamp that worked better. I have seen that in era photos also, although they are hard to find because few photos were taken of the back of such cars actually showing that detail. I suspect that those two common change-outs are why so many nearly NOS "Ford O" taillamps are hiding in boxes and on collector's shelves.

[jab35]

John: Thanks for posting this. As a Wisconsin native, the subject matter is especially interesting.

It's worth looking at other photographs in that original link. There are several more photos of the cars you show, and one of the original photo captions wrongly identifies one of the larger cars as 'a Ford Model T'. I also believe the statement regarding U S highway 16 (the sinkhole pics) now being part of Wis Hwy 29 is incorrect. Regardless of these fine details, roadbuilding in the early days was a challenge, as was life in general. Thanks again for bringing this bit of history to the Forum, jb