The early years of the American auto industry looked a lot like Silicon Valley today. Instead of countless apps and startups aiming to fix problems that probably don’t exist, the entrepreneurs of the age were making all sorts of new kinds of cars, before the industry was pared down to just a few juggernauts. That includes Uriah Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher who also dabbled in engineering. He figured the biggest problem with cars was that they scared the bejeezus out of horses, with dangerous results… Plus, Smith missed the bigger point: Visual trickery wasn’t the way to go. “The biggest thing that horses use for recognition is smell,” says Dr. Carey Williams, an equine specialist at Rutgers University. It doesn’t matter how much mare urine you pour on the wooden sculpture, “it’s not gonna smell like a horse.”
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