Motor Vehicle Acceleration: "Get Going" 1936 Chevrolet Motor Company; Jam Handy

more at http://quickfound.net/

Live action and animation by Max Fleischer show what happens when a driver steps on the accelerator.

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity of an object with respect to time. An object's acceleration is the net result of all forces acting on the object, as described by Newton's Second Law. The SI unit for acceleration is metre per second squared (m⋅s−2). Accelerations are vector quantities (they have magnitude and direction) and add according to the parallelogram law. The vector of the net force acting on a body has the same direction as the vector of the body's acceleration, and its magnitude is proportional to the magnitude of the acceleration, with the object's mass (a scalar quantity) as proportionality constant.

For example, when a car starts from a standstill (zero velocity, in an inertial frame of reference) and travels in a straight line at increasing speeds, it is accelerating in the direction of travel. If the car turns, an acceleration occurs toward the new direction. The forward acceleration of the car is called a linear (or tangential) acceleration, the reaction to which passengers in the car experience as a force pushing them back into their seats. When changing direction, this is called radial (as orthogonal to tangential) acceleration, the reaction to which passengers experience as a sideways force. If the speed of the car decreases, this is an acceleration in the opposite direction of the velocity of the vehicle, sometimes called deceleration or Retrograde burning in spacecraft. Passengers experience the reaction to deceleration as a force pushing them forwards. Both acceleration and deceleration are treated the same, they are both changes in velocity. Each of these accelerations (tangential, radial, deceleration) is felt by passengers until their velocity (speed and direction) matches that of the uniformly moving car...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_controls#Throttle_control

Throttle control

The throttle, which controls fuel and air supply to the engine and is also known as the "accelerator" or "gas pedal", is normally the right-most floor pedal. It has a fail-safe design – a spring, which returns it to the idle position when not depressed by the driver. Normally the throttle and brake are operated by the right foot, while the clutch is operated by the left foot. In the US, drivers mistake the accelerator for the brake, leading to sudden unintended acceleration, cause 16,000 accidents per year. However, there are drivers who practice left-foot braking.

Early cars had a hand lever to control the throttle, either directly, or by controlling an engine speed governor which in turn controlled both the throttle and timing. In 1900 the Wilson-Pilcher car was introduced in Britain which had a hand controlled speed governor, and a foot throttle which could override the action of the governor. Unlike modern throttle pedals this could be raised to accelerate the car or depressed to slow it, "and thus quick accelerations or retardations can be effected" without interfering with the governed speed set using the hand control. The combination of governed engine speed with foot throttle override is in many ways similar to a modern cruise control. In spite of this development, steering column mounted hand throttles remained common, especially in mass produced cars such as the Ford Model T Later cars used both a foot pedal and a hand lever to set the minimum throttle. The 1918 Stutz Bearcat had a central throttle pedal with the clutch and brake to the right and left. Modern cruise control was invented in 1948...