This is a photo of one of the first automobiles in California. The design stands out to me – it looks like it’s missing a horse. The thing looks like a wagon. I’d imagine it looks that way because that’s what we knew then. It makes sense that it would look like something that’s familiar.

There’s probably visual studies on how automobile body styles have changed over the years, and how they’ve migrated from looking like a wagon to what we know now as a car, or a truck, or an SUV.

Looking at this, we can see how far we’ve come in our automobile design, but at the time, this was it, this was the stuff. This would be fun to own now, but it wouldn’t be useful in today’s society. You wouldn’t make this your commuter. I’d venture a guess that some of the features of today’s cars would have been useful on the day this photo was taken as well. Small things like parking breaks, blinkers, and windshields.

This photo makes me wonder what I’m doing, what I’m designing today, that is the equivalent of this car; not that there’s anything wrong with it, it was a breakthrough. But, we see how the car has been made better, and so I wonder, how can what I’m doing be made better? This photo makes me think about this.