The horse, one of the most remarkable prime movers on the planet, pretty much ruled 19th century urban life and rural culture in both Europe and North America.
Then along came the combustion engine. But it took the automobile and tractor nearly 50 years to dislodge the horse from farms, public transport and wagon delivery systems throughout North America.
Contrary to public perception, the transition was not smooth or inevitable. Nor was it exclusively beneficial. “There were winners and losers,” says Ann Norton Greene, a U.S. historian at the University of Pennsylvania, whose remarkable book, Horses At Work, offers a fascinating portrait of how messy energy transitions can be.
“You can’t change the conditions of a system without damaging a lot of people, business, practices and habits that go with it,” says Greene. “People lose not from some fault of their own, but because they are in the wrong place in history.”
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