C. E. Woods
Chicago and New York: Herbert S. Stone & Company, 1900.

One of the earliest monographs devoted to electric vehicles, covering their construction, maintenance, and practical operation at a time when electrics were serious competitors to petrol-powered cars. Clinton Edgar Woods (1863-1927), an electrical and mechanical engineer, founded the Woods Motor Vehicle Company in Chicago in 1896 and was a committed advocate of electric propulsion, anticipating that both electric and gasoline vehicles would displace horse-drawn transport. Writing at a moment when the relative futures of electric and gasoline power remained uncertain (though the limitations of battery range were already apparent) Woods expresses a cautious scepticism that would, for much of the following century, be borne out by the dominance of the internal combustion engine. “Will not a battery some time be made to run a vehicle 100 or more miles on one charge? While this may be possible, the writer hardly thinks it probable.”