a historical perspective, or significant developments over the years

[djb]

I have always had an interest in looking at a topic from a historical point of view, seeing how developments shape the history of a given subject. First of all, please bear with my goings on before I get to the motorsport angle.

In my field, photography, technical changes had a direct effect on how photographs were taken, how they looked and what situations could be photographed, constantly changing the impact of images in our society. From the beginnings, where an individual had to manually paint on an emulsion onto a glass or metal plate and then quickly take a picture, changed to pre-prepared dry emulsions on smaller and smaller plates, allowing easier picture taking, although still rather laborious (think of the staid portraits and set-up shots with lots of blurry kids who couldn’t sit still for the exposure). The next step was emulsion on plastic and the Kodak Brownie revolution, now anyone could take family pictures. Then the 20’s and 30’s small 35mm camera developments allowed people like Cartier-Bresson to introduce the "perfect moment" shot, and then faster films led to the whole 40's, 50’s and 60’s era of "fly-on-the-wall journalism. Faster colour films came next, and now today, digital technology is changing how we take, manipulate and distribute images, whether you like it or not.

After all that rambling, I’d like to ask those of you with a broad motosport knowledge, to reflect on significant technical changes that have moved autoracing along over, let’s say, the last 70 years or so. I’m thinking of things like chassis development, suspension, tire construction and widths, aerodynamic tinkerings ---you name it. Although I’m mentioning the tech side, one cannot forget the drivers that introduced significant changes in driving styles and touched off new technical changes as a result.
Thinking of this topic over the last week, things that have come to mind are Auto Union, drifting by Nuvolari, D-types with disks, Birdcages, monocoques, DFV’s,ground-effects….but mostly, I ‘d be interested in any of your more informed overviews. I realize this covers a hell of a lot of ground, but I’m always up to a good read, and anyway, we aren’t watching much racing now, so I figure it’s a good a time as any.

djb