Combination Sets

Transportation: Canals, Trains & Motor Vehicles History – A Mediagraphy

Combination Sets

Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip in DVD, Book & CD Combo. (VHS is possible with combo for $5 less). 2004. PBS Paramount. 146 minutes. 1 disc for DVD and 1 disc for CD. Format: Color, DVD-video, Full Screen, NTSC. Ratio: 1.33:1. ASIN: B000BITUHA. Not Rated. Price $63.91 from Shop PBS.

Summary: Get set for an adventure that marked a new era in America! Filmmaker Ken Burns presents the hilarious 1903 saga of the first transcontinental automobile trip. On a visionary whim and $50 bet, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson became the first person to drive an automobile across the continent His arrival in New York City, after every imaginable breakdown and delay, proved that the “horseless carriage really did have a future.

Review:except from James A Ward’s 2004 review in the American Historical Reivew 104 (April) 537-538. Accessed through Academic Search Premier.Horatio’s Drive is a classic Ken Burns production, lively, well-written, and featuring numerous historical photographs interspersed with modern footage shot in the same locales and peppy music from the period—in this case, ragtime—to draw the viewer into the mood of the era. Most of the documentary is in black and white, including much of the recent footage of western roads shot from a surviving 1903 Winton. Many modern views, however, particularly those of spectacular western scenery and Plains electrical storms, are in full color.

 


 

Created by Celia Bandelier (cband13@verizon.net) on July 2, 2008. Celia is the Director of the Roanoke Public Library, Roanoke, Indiana.