There's little doubt that with the advent of cars in modern society, everything changed. From travel to leisure, our lives have been forever shaped by the introduction of these complex and convenient machines. But the history of the car's development is long and speckled with individual triumphs and astounding firsts that are worthy of recognition in their own right. Here are some of automotive history's grandest, if lesser-known, landmark firsts.

First mass-produced car
While Henry Ford is often credited as the father of modern automobiles with the Model T assembly line, he actually wasn't the first to the table in the auto production game. In fact, Auto Evolution pointed out that car manufacturer Oldsmobile was actually mass-producing cars a full seven years before the early runs of the Model T. In April 1901, the curved-dash Olds began seeing "mass production" – defined at the time as more than 10 cars per week, each selling for $650.

First cross-country road trip
Summer road-trippers may not be surprised to learn that the cross-country drive has been around almost as long as cars have. According to Jalopnik, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker set out in 1903 to drive from San Francisco to New York, bulldog in tow. The stalwart trio managed to make the nearly 2,600-mile journey before anyone else, despite only 150 of those miles being driven on paved roads.

First commercial car radio
The emergence of the car radio is more of a spectrum than a single event. Esurance estimated that the first radio was attributed to an 18-year-old who, in 1922, simply strapped a portable radio to the door of his car. However, it wasn't until eight years later when Motorola brought its 5T71 radio to cars on the consumer market. In fact, the company's name itself is an homage to this early endeavor – Motorola being a portmanteau of "motor" and "victrola."

First air-conditioned car
Anyone who's taken refuge in the cool embrace of their car's air conditioning in the summer months will appreciate this first. As Popular Mechanics reported, air conditioning has been around in some form or other for a couple centuries, but it wasn't until 1939 that motorists got to cool off on the go with an in-car version. Developed by car company Packard, the invention cooled down drivers but did little else. It didn't allow for dashboard temperature adjustment, and if you wanted to turn it off, you had to shut off the car's engine, pop the hood and manually disconnect the air conditioning from there.

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