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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that proves there's more than one way to

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Speaker 1: make history. I'm Gabe Lousier, and today we're talking about

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Speaker 1: an unprecedented crime in American history. The very first person

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Speaker 1: to be caught speedy in an automobile. The day was

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Speaker 1: May twenty eighteen. Jacob German spent a night in jail

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Speaker 1: after committing the first speeding infraction in the United States.

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Speaker 1: The twenty six year old taxi driver was caught going

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Speaker 1: twelve miles per hour down Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The

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Speaker 1: speed limit for that area was eight miles per hour

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Speaker 1: on straightaway roads and just four miles per hour when

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Speaker 1: turning around corners. At the turn of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: city streets were still the domain of pedestrians, bicycles, and

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Speaker 1: horse drawn carriages. Cars were few and far between, and

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Speaker 1: that rarity made germans offenses all the more egregious. In

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Speaker 1: the New York Times reporting of the crime, the author

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Speaker 1: referred to twelve miles per hour as quote breakneck speed

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Speaker 1: and a reckless rate. The car that German was driving

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Speaker 1: was actually a fully electric vehicle called an electro bat.

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Speaker 1: He didn't known the car himself, it had been loaned

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Speaker 1: to him by the Electric Vehicle Company, a taxi service

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Speaker 1: run by a forward thinking businessman named William C. Whitney

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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine. Most cab companies still used horse

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Speaker 1: drawn carriages or handsome cabs to transport their customers, but

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Speaker 1: Whitney believed electric vehicles were the way of the future.

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Speaker 1: He had about sixty e vs in operation by the

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Speaker 1: turn of the century, which may not sound like a lot,

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Speaker 1: but it was still far more than the number of

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Speaker 1: gas powered cars in New York at the time. Of course,

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Speaker 1: no matter what vehicle someone was driving, figuring out how

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Speaker 1: fast they were going was a lot more complicated than

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Speaker 1: it is today. There were no speed guns back then. Instead,

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Speaker 1: police used stop watches to monitor and calculate the speed

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Speaker 1: of traffic. To do this, they relied on a series

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Speaker 1: of markers or landmarks whose distance from one another was

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Speaker 1: precisely known. By dividing that known distance by the time

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Speaker 1: it took a vehicle to traverse it, the cop could

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Speaker 1: quickly and reliably determine the speed of that vehicle. And

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Speaker 1: that's exactly what a bicycle patrolman named John Shoosler did

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Speaker 1: on the evening of May twenty. After crunching the numbers,

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Speaker 1: Schusler hopped on his bike and chased down German speeding taxi.

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Speaker 1: To be clear, this wasn't the patrolman's first rodeo. He

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Speaker 1: had already earned the nickname the Scorcher's Terror due to

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Speaker 1: the high number of speeding carriages and cyclists that he

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Speaker 1: had intercepted. A reckless automobile was a first for the

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Speaker 1: stalwart officer and for the country, but Schusler handled it

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Speaker 1: in much the same way. You might imagine that Jacob

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Speaker 1: German was issued a citation or speeding ticket, but there's

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Speaker 1: no record of one ever being written. Instead, he was

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Speaker 1: arrested on the spot and taken to the East twenty

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Speaker 1: two Street station house, where he spent the rest of

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Speaker 1: the night behind bars. That means that although Jacob German

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Speaker 1: was the first person to be arrested for speeding in

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Speaker 1: an automobile, he wasn't the first to receive a speeding ticket.

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Speaker 1: At dubious honor belongs to Walter Arnold of East Peckham

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Speaker 1: in England. He was issued a written ticket on January eighteen,

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Speaker 1: nine six for driving his car eight miles per hour

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Speaker 1: in a two mile per hour zone. The fine was

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Speaker 1: a single shilling. Back in the States, the first known

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Speaker 1: speeding ticket wouldn't be issued until nineteen o four, when

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Speaker 1: a driver named Harry Myers received a written citation in Dayton, Ohio.

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Speaker 1: Just like German, he was going the breakneck speed of

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Speaker 1: twelve miles per hour. Although Jacob German didn't get a

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Speaker 1: ticket on May twenty, the company he worked for was

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Speaker 1: notified of his crime, and, according to the New York

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Speaker 1: Times quote, its members were astonished. The electric vehicle company

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Speaker 1: did recover from that scandal, but after a period of

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Speaker 1: hasty expansion, it ultimately went bankrupt in seven. The very

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Speaker 1: next year, Henry Ford rolled out his gasoline powered Model T,

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Speaker 1: putting an end to the electric cars brief window of

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Speaker 1: dominance and giving bicycle patrolman a whole new threat to

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Speaker 1: contend with. I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know

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Speaker 1: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: you can send your feedback directly to me by writing

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Speaker 1: to this Day at i heeart media dot com. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to

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Speaker 1: you for listening. I'll see you back here again soon

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Speaker 1: for another day in History class