It was always a chore for me to try to figure out the mileage from here to there by consulting a travel atlas. I recall pulling out the map book, looking at the “Mileage and Driving Times” on a back page and doing the math.
There was seemingly no way else to do it, until smartphones and GPS arrived and “poof!” went the time and frustration.
At auction recently, I came across another little device that was advertised in the 1950s to make road distance calculations so much easier. I found it lying inside a glass serving dish on a table, unpretentiously waiting for someone to discover it. It was in a red box marked “The New Precision Mile-O-Graph Mileage Measurer.”
I automatically assumed that it would offer directions to a given point, just like my smartphone. Opening the box, I encountered a device that resembled a thermometer. It was in great condition – as was its instructions sheet – as if no one had ever used it.
After reading the instructions, I saw that I was expecting too much of this small device. It, in fact, would calculate the distance from here to there – much like what the mileage and driving map would do. This device, however, did the addition for you. I was obviously curious about it, and started reading the instructions: Turn the (red) knob to set the scale on the map, roll the wheel (which is the bottom of the device) along the route on your map, and see the distance on the readout.
The measurer had no manufacturing date on it, so I Googled. I found several ads for the product in a newspaper and magazines – including Popular Science, Flying and Popular Mechanics – from 1957 and 1958. It seemed to have been promoted as a man’s device, presuming that men did most of the driving at that time.
It was being sold for $2 each or 3 for $5, boxed, and the ad came with an order form. The ad also noted that the device could be used for measuring air charts, sea charts and blueprints. “Saves time and temper, on the sea or on the road,” touted one conception of the ad by a New York company bearing the same name as the product.
The ads were basically the same, showing the parts of the Mile-o-Graph and how they were used. An ad in the Ocala, FL, newspaper, focused on sea charts. For Popular Mechanics, it was touting a way to find “the shortest road route.” For Flying: “ceiling zero? Be a hero with combination Mile-O-Graph. … Fits into your flight suit pocket.”
The Mile-O-Graph and other devices like it seemed to have grown out of the 1950s when this country evolved into a car culture. American companies made and sold millions of cars each year, with both men and women as drivers. Many families were hitting the roads in their new un-air-conditioned cars to places that had been cut off from them before. They had the freedom to go wherever they wanted, whether across country or down the road.
It was the decade of family road trips, stopping along the way at roadside hotels and motels – an industry that also mushroomed – and fast-food restaurants. At one auction a couple years ago, I came across a Pennsylvania family’s slides from a road trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico in 1958. African Americans who traveled for business or pleasure consulted “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” first published in 1936 and updated often. It listed private homes, hotels, service stations, restaurants and other places where they would not be turned away because of segregation.
Hotels and service stations offered road maps to help guide travelers to their destinations (many are turning up now as those drivers pass on). I found for sale on the web a mileage chart inside a plastic container imprinted with the name “Holiday Inn” that listed the distance in mileage to cities and towns. Called a mileage meter, the device was available at the front desk at most hotels and service stations, according to the website. (An aside: The meter also noted that reservations could be made by teletype.) Another site displayed what it says is a 1950s Coke mileage meter similar to the hotel one. A paper Speed-O-Mile Teller helped drivers to determine their gas mileage.
Cars became essential and more affordable in most households, and the federal government and individual states obliged by improving the roads and making them easier to travel. The state of Pennsylvania built the first turnpike in 1940. Four years later, an interstate highway system was authorized by Congress but not funded, followed by several other attempts.
In the early 1950s, President Eisenhower, after seeing the autobahn in Germany while stationed there during World War II, pushed for the system. In 1956, Congress approved the interstate highway system, allocating money to construct 41,000 miles of roadway across the nation with two lanes and speeds of 50 to 70 miles per hour. One of its purposes was to allow quick exit from cities in case of an atomic attack (this was the Cold War era with Russia).
With so many folks traveling to so many new places, the Mile-O-Graph seems to have been a necessary device to measure mileage so they didn’t have to.
