I was flipping channels yesterday and ran across this show on the History channel. A few years ago the History Channel did a series called “The Cars that Made America”. Loved that show. It was a multipart docudrama about the history of the auto in the US. “The Cars that Made the World” is the same format narrated by the same guy who narrated “The Cars that Made America”. Difference they are now looking at European and Japanese market. I saw part of part 1 yesterday. Showed the making of Rolls Royce and Bentley and Mercedes…Very fascinating. Part 2 is on tonight. No idea how many parts in the series. Hopefully they’ll rerun part 1 so can catch what I missed.
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Just change your DVR setting from ‘new episodes’ to ‘all episodes’.
I am watching part 1 right now… On Demand. So far, pretty good.
Nikolas Otto deserved a mention but, sadly, was left out.
I also tuned-in late, so I don’t know if they began with Siegfried Marcus. If they didn’t, then they omitted one of the major figures in the early development of the gas-powered automobile–who developed a functioning car at least a decade prior to Daimler and Benz.
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They did not mention Mr. Marcus and Thank You for the reference. I did not know that piece of history. Seems Mr. Benz gets more credit than he deserves.
Muntangman Seems Mr. Benz gets more credit than he deserves.
I wonder if that is due to the Hitler connection?
THC is re-running episode one tonight at 7PM EDST, followed by episode two at 9.
Is this a programming error? Actual history on the History Channel??
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Absolutely correct.
Siegfried Marcus committed the “unpardonable sin of being Jewish”. As a result, when the Nazis took control of Austria, one of the items on their agenda was to wipe out any record of him having operated his little gas-powered wagon on the streets of Vienna as early as the 1860s.
However, the curator of the Vienna Technical Museum was one step ahead of the Nazis, and he had his workmen build a false wall to conceal Marcus’ little wagon and some of his technical drawings and patent records.
The Nazis then began the fable that Daimler and Benz were the inventors of the gas-powered automobile, and it wasn’t until after WW II that this Big Lie was disproven by the re-unveiling of the Marcus car–which is still operable.
It’s bad enough that the Nazis invented the myth about Daimler and Benz having invented the gas-powered automobile, but it is even more shameful that Mercedes-Benz continues to repeat this lie in order to build a halo around their company.
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In case you haven’t already seen it, this article from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers tells much of the history of Marcus and the gas-powered automobile:
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Seems Otto gets more credit that he deserves as well given de Rochas’ work and Reithmann’s.
Once history gets established into general knowledge, even if later proven wrong, it is very difficult to get it corrected.
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Can we still call it the “Otto Cycle” engine?
Really!! I was amazed too. History channel should be renamed “The American Picker Channel”. The show is OK…but 10-16 hours a day is too much. And when they’re not showing American Pickers they’re showing “The Lost Secret Alien Files.”
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The early years of the History Channel… all WW2 all the time. Sure it was history, but expand a bit, cover some other eras. American Pickers was interesting for a while but c’mon, give it a rest.
The reason they do it is because it’s CHEAPER. This has been going on for several years on many different networks. AMC use to show a lot of different movies. Now that selection has dwindled down drastically. They’ll show only a handful of movies over and over again…slowly phasing each movie out and bring in a newer one - which again is showed over and over again. Many other channels are doing the same thing. And now the big push is to pay for some of these channels. Nope…Improve programming and I might consider it.
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Oh, yeah! History is part of the Discovery family of channels. They want their hit shows spread across each of the channels so they can bundle them and offer them under the Discovery Plus banner for $5 a month, or $7 and month add-free, making this look like a real bargain.
Sort of like cable offering “200 Channels” with 95 of them being home shopping channels of some sort. Makes that Discovery bundle look fairly cheap just to avoid these wastelands.
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This type of programming was predicted in a late seventies short story published in Analog SF.
A man gets a satellite dish that would provide 500 channels, he anticipated watching all sorts of cultural programs. When he watched the majority of channels were showing reruns of 60s sitcoms.
What do we get in waiting rooms, Home&Garden, so boring, no one watches and no fights break out.
Now that we have taken this thread and tied it in a Gordian Knot, will we get the hijacking a thread comment?
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I’m sure they’ll explain that the internal combustion engine was invented by aliens soon. 
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History Channel is part of the A&E network at last report. They did bring us Top Gear when it was hosted by Tanner Foust, Rutledge Wood, and Adam Ferrara. Like the other channels up and down the cable guide some shows stay closer to the theme than others, Some I really just watch when I find an episode.
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I’m now convinced they’re going to find the evidence to that in the Money Pit on Oak Island. And the big clue to where the money pit is will be discovered in this old hoarder’s garage and discovered by American Pickers. But they didn’t know what they had so they sold it to Rick from Pawn Stars.
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