On December 18, 1898, Comte Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat of France set the first ever land speed record in an automobile. There are several aspects of his record that might seem interesting to the modern observer, including the fact that he set it while driving an electric car, and that to achieve the fastest land speed ever recorded, he had to travel just 39 miles per hour. It was a turning point in the history of wheeled speed, where the novelty of the horseless carriage was wearing thin and the question turned to just what these new contraptions could do. How much could they haul? How far could they travel? And how fast could they go?
The French were the first to truly embrace the automobile. While today they are overshadowed by the Germans, the Japanese, and the Americans, the French were true pioneers in developing early versions of electric, steam, and internal combustion engined cars. More importantly to the sporting world, they were innovators in the world of speed and racing. Some of the first long distance rallies occurred between Paris and Bordeaux and Paris and Marseilles, and the very idea of setting speed records for different cars and drivers was developed by the French automobiling magazine La France Automobile. They organized a competition, the first of many, to see who could go the fastest. In his Jeantaud, essentially a 19th century go-kart, Chasseloup-Laubat traveled at 39.24 miles per hour over the kilometer long course, becoming at that point in time, the fastest man in the world.
The interesting thing about the land speed record, especially in the early days, is that it never lasted for very long. Chasseloup-Laubat broke his own record in January of the next year by traveling 43.64 miles per hour, and then again, nearly doubling his initial record in March of 1899 by going 57.6 miles per hour. While these speeds don’t seem all impressive to us today as many of us surpass them on a daily basis, for Chasseloup-Laubat and his contemporaries they were pushing the edge of possibility. Like these early automobiles, technology moved quickly, and within just ten years of Chasseloup-Laubat’s initial record the land speed trophy sat over three times higher, at 125.94 miles per hour.
Today, Chasseloup-Laubat’s record wouldn’t stand. Not for the obvious reason that people on bicycles routinely break the 40 miles per hour barrier these days, but because the way we track records has changed. Most importantly, to officially hold any record today, Chasseloup-Laubat would have needed to complete his run twice in opposite directions, with his average speed from both runs standing as his record. While this seems to be some over-involved statistician’s damper on the fun of racing, it actually makes sense in that it removes any possibility that the car was helped along by a nudging breeze. Today, Chasseloup-Laubat would only be able to set records in the wheel-driven class, as land speed records have jumped beyond the internal combustion engine to jet and rocket powered cars. The current land speed record holder traveled at over 750 miles per hour, or over 19 times as fast as Chasseloup-Laubat drove in that first run over a century ago. And while he would no doubt be dismayed to see the record is no longer in his name, he would no doubt be proud of how far we’ve come.