If railroads were IBM mainframes, then cars were like Linux PCs.

Think of "Make" Magazine in the 1920s.

In the first decades of motor travel, between 1900 and 1940, Americans were buying automobiles in record numbers. Cars were becoming more easily affordable, not only for high-income families but for middle-class families as well. And as they bought, they redesigned. By examining the ways Americans creatively adapted their automobiles, Tinkering takes a fresh look at automotive design from the bottom up, as a process that included manufacturers, engineers, designers, advice experts, and consumers, from savvy buyers to grass-roots inventors.

With the automobile came the possibility of touring; travel was no longer constrained by railroad service or availability of hotels. Consumers became tinkerers and, occasionally, inventors as they outfitted their cars for travel and to meet middle-class standards of comfort and economy on the road. Franz weaves together a variety of popular sources, from serial fiction to corporate documents to explore how Americans not only embraced the automobile but became fascinated with ingenuity in the early twentieth century. Some canny drivers moved beyond modifying their individual cars to become inventors, patenting and selling automotive accessories for a burgeoning national market.

Tinkering documents how the inventive dexterity of consumers was both practical and creative, from the addition of steel fenders for safety to the development of attachments that would allow motorists to use their cars as tents. Earl S. Tupper, an early and eager automotive tinkerer, would go on to invent Tupperware. Women were also extremely active in this reinvention, as the automobile had revolutionized the daily life of the American housewife.

Kathleen Franz takes us under the hood of American prewar automobile culture to reveal a vibrant enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit.