From bicycles to cars
An advertisement for the Overland Six. (Image: periodpaper.com)On this date in 1873, John North Willys, a “leading automobile industrialist,” was born in Canandaigua, New York. He began his career selling bicycles and was quite successful – by 1900 (when he was only 27) he had sold more than $500,000 in bicycles. However, when Willys (pronounced Will-is) saw his first automobile he realized that autos would supplant bicycles as the primary mode of personal...