Car turntable

A car turntable or driveway turntable is a rotating platform designed for use by a car; they can be motorized or manually rotated and are usually installed in a driveway or in a garage floor. They rotate a motor vehicle to facilitate its easier or safer egress. Sometimes a local zoning prohibition of vehicles backing onto busy roadways prompts the installation of car turntables.

The residential car turntable traces its history to the steam locomotives turntable engine shed, or roundhouse. The first turntable engine shed was the North Midland Railway roundhouse, built in 1839 at Derby, England. The turntable allowed steam locomotives, which could not safety be run in reverse owing to their design, to be rotated to a forward position.

The car turntable has existed nearly as long as the mass-produced automotive. Oldsmobile was the first mass production automobile built on assembly lines in 1902. Henry Ford greatly expanded his production line manufacture with affordable automobiles beginning in 1913, most notably with his Ford Model T. Henry Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan Fair Lane Estate garage (Estate construction began in 1914 and was completed in 1916) included an automobile turntable.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed and implemented several residential vehicle turntables including the 1922 Doheny Ranch Estate in Beverly Hills, California, designed but never built for Edward L. Doheny, a Los Angeles oil tycoon and the Westcott House built in 1908 in Springfield, Ohio, for Burton J. Westcott, designer of the Westcott automobile and founder of the Westcott Motor Car Company.

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Wikipedia