"Foreword Welcome to The Automobile: A Century of Progress! This book marks the culmination of a five-year effort by the SAE Historical Committee commemorating the 100th anniversary of the automobile industry in the United States. When this project was first contemplated in 1992@ we anticipated doing a chronological review of the technical history of the automobile in the ""who-did-what-when"" manner that is typical of most automotive history publications. Then@ one of the committee members suggested@ ""Let's deviate from the norm and use the systems approach because this is the way a car is engineered."" His suggestion was unanimously accepted. With inspired enthusiasm@ we set out to develop a series of twelve systems-oriented articles for publication in Automotive Engineering magazine@ delineating the technological progress of the American automobile over the past 100 years. After the task was defined@ selecting the exact topics to be covered turned out to be a greater challenge than we had anticipated. In an effort to obtain the assistance of the various SAE technical committees@ we aligned the subjects of our articles accordingly and then proceeded to enlist appropriate authors from the committees. However@ as the clock ticked and the calendar rolled@ we experienced mixed response from the committees. Thus@ we came to what should have been an obvious realization: Technical committees look to the future and not to the past@ which is as it should be. After this bit of wisdom was understood@ we refocused our attention on the more traditional automotive systems and sought authors from SAE at large to write about the topics on which they had both expertise and genuine historical interest. This turned out to be the proper approach. As a result@ we produced and published a series of fourteen articles covering ten topics@ including a time line in the September 1996 issue of Automotive Engineering. Those articles have now been compiled in this book. Although we are indeed proud of our efforts@ our pride is tempered somewhat because we were unable to complete the series as originally intended. When we could not find an author available to do justice to driveline@ chassis@ and lighting systems development@ we elected to eliminate these topics rather than cover them inadequately. Rest assured that we regret these omissions as much as you do. Having said that@ let us now extend kudos to all who have contributed to this book. We trust that you will enjoy the fruits of our effort as we pledge to continue serving SAE in the preservation of the history of mobility technology."