On this very day in 1903, Ford Motor Co. sold the first Model A (not to be confused with the Roaring Twenties version) to a Chicago dentist named Dr. Ernst Pfenning.

A mere 80.6 million people resided in the United States 105 years ago. Only 8 percent of American households possessed a telephone, a house sold for around $2,000, the average breadwinner's annual salary was $703 and gasoline cost approximately a nickel a gallon.

Although 88 new auto manufacturers entered the marketplace in 1903, an aggressive advertising campaign touting the mass-produced Model A as "Boss of the Road: The Latest and Best," deposited 658 so-called "Fordmobiles" on the nation's highways and byways by mid-May of 1904.

Henry Ford, who is reputed to have quipped, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black," rolled out the Model A line in a single color as well — fire-engine red. However, the car, which operated on a two-cylinder, eight-horsepower engine, could be ordered as a two-seater runabout or four-seater tonneau model.

The vehicle's top speed was clocked at a sluggish 30 miles per hour but, with a sticker price of only $850 (when the average for all new cars hovered around $1,157), the Model A introduced a long line of dependable, reasonably priced automobiles that, by 1908, would include the Model T, the vehicle that "put America on wheels" as it puttered along 25 miles of rutted road on a single gallon of gasoline.

As we learned in school, Henry Ford, whatever his personal foibles, can be credited with two innovations that, arguably, contributed to the emergence of America's middle class — the assembly line and $5-a-day wages enabling Ford employees to afford a Ford.

Not even three years would pass before The New York Times would be kvetching about the rapid rise in the price of gasoline. Doesn't that sound familiar? In a March 18, 1906, article, "automobilists" were simply aghast that "the man who buys in only small quantities pays nearly 20 cents (a gallon) for his gasoline." In 2007 CPI-adjusted dollars, that would amount to $4.56 per gallon. Doesn't that also sound familiar?

The 1906 spike in the price of gas was so consternating to the American public that the fledgling (founded in 1902) Automobile Club of America decided to offer "prizes sufficiently attractive to manufacturers and inventors to stimulate their best efforts." Doesn't that also sound familiar? The leading candidate to replace gasoline was — and this is the familiarity topper for the day — denatured alcohol distilled from corn.

Yet, a century ago, not only did seemingly insurmountable challenges in creating efficient alcohol-burning engines exist — chiefly pollution and problems with carburetion — but the greatest drawback, according to The New York Times article, was "the high internal revenue tax (around $2 a gallon) which has made no discrimination between the highest grades of alcohol and the lower or denatured grades." Without the levy, denatured alcohol could have been purchased for 12 to 15 cents a gallon.

The Free Alcohol bill (June 7, 1906), promoted by Big Oil foe Teddy Roosevelt, actually slashed the odious (to alternative-fuel advocates) duty on denatured alcohol but the discovery of new oil fields in Texas the following year, likewise sent the cost of gasoline spiraling downward — at least momentarily.

Congress, on the other hand, was most reluctant to impose a tax on gasoline (as alcohol-friendly officials in France and Germany had done) in order to promote alternative energy sources. Think Standard Oil, et al. Using alcohol to fuel American automobiles, with the exception of racecars, went virtually nowhere until the 21st century.

Now, consider this particular July 23. Americans are fuming — a condition that can only be described as a chronic pain in the gas tank. Big girls do cry as they foot the bill for filling up their SUVs. Greenies tooling around in electric cars look smug as they spot fossil fuel-foulers finally getting their comeuppance.

Even if Detroit refuses to buy global warming, Americans are now demanding honest-to-God-provable fuel efficiency as they trade in gas-guzzlers for hybrids and lofty MPG-getting foreign cars. J.D. Power and Associates predicts diesel engines, which boast 30 percent better mileage than gasoline, will be the next big thing among auto mall-crawlers.

Gas prices may have risen before, but only now, with fuel fees nudging $5 a gallon, are drivers changing their behavior. Mass transit is seeing staggering gains in ridership. Folks are walking (gasp) to Starbucks, biking to their gyms and looking for all manner of ways to conserve gasoline. My question is — just exactly what took so long?

I think Dr. Pfenning might know. Wasn't he the first to fall in love?

— Beverly Kelley, Ph.D., who writes every other Monday for The Star, is an author ("Reelpolitik" and "Reelpolitik II") and professor in the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. Visit http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog/. Her e-mail address is Kelley@clunet.edu.