Matt Novak of the always worthwhile blog PaleoFuture just stumbled across this ad for an electric car — from 1912.

The Columbus Buggy Company once employed 1,000 people in a factory that produced horse-drawn carriages, and at the dawn of the automobile it attempted to make the leap to motorized versions.

At the time, there was nothing odd about electric cars, given that no one had any preconceived notions about how a car should operate. Then Henry Ford rolled out the Model T and the rest is history.