Cars
1896 is the year of the introduction of the motorcar on the Dutch market. Sounds of combustion-engined transportation have been part of our acoustic environment ever since. Developments in motorcar technology have continuously rendered new car-related sounds and made others disappear.

2 old car horns / 2 claxons
A car has to have a horn, but no one really needs it anymore. In the beginning, things were different. The local police often had ordered that every driver should sound his horn whenever he reached a crossing in order to prevent accidents. It did prove insufficient, though. Soon the horn regulations were replaced by regulations of right of way.
The first car horns were simple horns equipped with rubber balls of the kind you still see on childrenŐs bicycles. An electric claxon makes its sound with a membrane moved by an electromagnet. A horn provides acoustic amplification.

De Dion Bouton start / end
De Dion Bouton is one of the big names from the early history of the motorcar. It used to make steam cars and produced combustion-engined cars already quite early. Initially, De Dion Bouton was widely known for its fine one-cilinder engines it sold to other car manufacturers as well. Until 1920. De Dion Bouton was one of the protagonists in the car industry. They built, for example, eight-cylinder engines and adventurous models at an early stage. After 1920, however, they got more conventional. Until 1950 De Dion Bouton ha been making Ôjust normalŐ cars.

Ford hot rod '32 passes by
A hot rod basically consists of an old car chassis equipped with a big noisy engine and flashy coachwork. Hot rods used to be a popular American teenager's pastime. The film Grease shows teenage gangs fighting each other in a hot rod race, and the band ZZ Top has made a hot rod their trade mark. Old Fords such as the first mass-produced Model T were fine for building hot rods.

Old petrol pump with bell / old petrol pump with cars
In the beginning there were no such things as filling stations and drivers used to buy their fuel at the drugstore. But soon the firts hand-operated pumps appeared on the streets. The electric petrol pump followed in 1927. Such petrol pumps were equipped with a counting mechanism. The fuel would often run through a looking glass so that the driver could see that he was indeed getting fuel. On one of these recordings you can hear a little bell ounding everytime a litre of petrol has been issued.