Brian Grinder uses these photos— of his grandfather branding cows and his father recovering in St. Joseph’ s hospital— to introduce his students to the concept of risk management.
Samuel Pierpont Langley’ s“ aerodrome,” ready to be catapulted from a houseboat on the Potomac River, 1903. Langley spent 70 times as much as the Wright Brothers in his failed attempt to be the first to fly a manned heavier-than-air craft.
Hulton Archive / Stringer state tax credit for EVs.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the federal government currently provides a tax credit of up to $ 7,500 each for the first 200,000 electric vehicles sold by a manufacturer. Tesla will likely hit the 200,000 mark in early 2018. When this happens, it will take about a year to phase out the tax credit. As the tax credit phases out, a subsequent reduction in Tesla sales is likely to follow.
Perhaps government-subsidized Tesla will be able to overcome all of the obstacles in its path and dominate the automotive industry with its EVs. Wouldn’ t it be great, though, if somewhere a couple of obsessed, bicycle-shop-owning siblings, in their spare time and at their own expense, were at this moment perfecting an inexpensive EV with a single charge capacity of 1,000 miles or more? Maybe it will even be capable of flight!
Brian Grinder is a professor at Eastern Washington University and a member of Financial History’ s editorial board. Dr. Dan Cooper is the president of Active Learning Technologies.
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Cummings, Steve.“ GM vs. Tesla: Who Will Reach 200,000 US Electric Car Sales First?” Clean Technia. September 23, 2016.
Elimination of Federal Tax Credits Likely to Kill US EV Market. Edmunds. com. 2017.
Goldstone, Lawrence. Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies. New York: Ballantine Books. 2014
Ip, Greg.“ Electric Cars Are the Future? Not So Fast.” The Wall Street Journal. July 13, 2017.
Kelly, Fred C. The Wright Brothers: A Biography. New York: Dover Publications. 1989. Langley, S P.“ The Flying-Machine.” McClure’ s
Magazine. IX, 647 – 660. 1897. McCullough, David G. The Wright Brothers.
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McFarland, Marvin W., ed. The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1953.
Stiles, TJ. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2009.
Summers, Mark W. The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849 – 1861. New York: Oxford University Press. 1987.
Tobin, James. To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. New York: Free Press. 2003.
Whitney, Ralph.“ The Unlucky Collins Line.” American Heritage. 8, 48 – 53, 100 – 102. 1957.
10 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2017 | www. MoAF. org