[mikestew]

I don't know about horse-drawn carriages, but bicycles of the late 1800s were luxuries for, well, not rich people but certainly for the well-to-do. It's one of the reasons that child-sized highwheel bicycles are rare: they were ridiculously expensive, and most certainly not a child's toy. And they did arguably serve a utilitarian purpose; at least a bicycle doesn't eat if you don't ride it. But how were bicycles, specifically highwheelers, portrayed by the press of the day? As ridiculous toys for wealthy people. Source: grew up around antique bicycle collectors, and have an 1886 Columbia Standard myself.

I remain unconvinced, however, that an early ICE-powered automobile was nothing but a temperamental toy that the owner really, really wanted to be practical. I've hung around with enough people with Ford Model Ts (my parents also had a Ford A for a while) to suspect that something built twenty years prior to the Ford T had to be laughably unreliable. Because I only rely on a T to get me to work if my boss were pretty laid back. :-)