Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 January 10

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January 10

Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Co.

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I'm trying to work out pretty much anything about the Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Co., including whether it was just a rebranding of someone else's trucks. A note in Mack AC alludes to there being a Kelly-Springfield truck company (so pinging User:Cavalryman in case he has a clue). There was definitely a Kelly-Springfield Tire Company. We have three photos on Commons that say they are Kelly-Springfield trucks (gallery above; they look suspiciously like Mack ACs). There is a landmarked Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Co. Building in Seattle (1525 11th Avenue), which appears to have been a retail and service outlet. This came up because of the photos, I'm trying to categorize a big batch on Commons from Seattle's Museum of History and Industry. Maybe my Google-fu is weak, but I haven't been able to come up with much else. - Jmabel | Talk 00:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I found This bit in the Springfield News-Sun, which covers an exhibit about the company at [The Heritage Center], a local history museum in Springfield, Ohio. You may be able to contact the Heritage Center directly for more information. --Jayron32 01:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

(ec) According to this 1920 Lansing State Journal article, Hare's Motors took over Kelly-Springfield because it had a factory in Springfield, Ohio, turning out trucks: "The Kelly-Springfield plant today is one of the most completely equipped and best organized in the country, and the Kelly-Springfield truck is built - not assembled - under ideal manufacturing conditions." Also, "Everyone recognizes the excellence of both Riker and Kelly-Springfield trucks. Each is the successful development of the ideas of a capable engineering staff ..." So it doesn't sound like they were Macks, Mac. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:16, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

In March 1914, it landed an order for 105 trucks ("believed to be the largest single order ever placed for motor trucks").[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 01:23, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

A distributor claimed Kelly-Springfield fulfilled an order for 5900 trucks for the US post office in September 1918 and expanded its plant capacity 600% (over August 1914) for the war effort.[2] Clarityfiend (talk) 01:29, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• @Clarityfiend: Thanks! That certainly clinches that they really manufactured trucks. I wonder what was the corporate relation to Kelly-Springfield Tire Company. Our article on the latter makes no mention of a truck company, most likely it should if we can work out the relation. - Jmabel | Talk 02:26, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The Springfield News-Sun article The Heritage Center: the Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Company provides some more info. Among other things, it says Edwin S. Kelly organized the truck company in 1910. An Edwin S. Kelly established the tire company in 1894.[3] According to the findagrave entry for Edwin Stewart Kelly[4], he founded the tire company and the "Kelly Motor Truck Co." Clarityfiend (talk) 07:34, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Mack AC grill

Hello Jmabel, I am sorry I cannot tell you much, in an entry about the Mack AC the source lists the Kelly-Springfield as another manufacturer of radiator behind engine trucks [5]. Elsewhere it does include an illustration without commentary of a Kelly-Springfield K-50 model [6] which is very Mack AC in appearance (no doubt because of the radiator behind engine design). I suspect those photos above are of Kelly-Springfield trucks, the Mack AC has the original Mack symbol (pre-bulldog) on their grill, as shown on the right. Good luck with your search. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 09:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC).

Why couldn't the Exodus have happened circa 1600 bc?

A lot of archeologists say it never happened and say if it did happen, then it was around 1200bc. But then they say if it happened, the stories in the boook of joshua must be false, for ex. Jericho never fell around that time. But according to wikipedia, Jericho did fall around 1573bc, which could fit an exodus from egypt about 1600. Also, isn't King David said to have lived hundreds of years later than Joshua? Because Wikipedia also says that approximately 240 years after Jericho fell, that Abdi-Heba, a chieftain of Jerusalem in about 1330bc, was telling the Pharoah he was being attacked, at least in part by "Apiru. That could fit with King David conquering Jerusalem around then.Rich (talk) 14:04, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• See The Exodus#Origins and historicity. It will give you a start for your research in this realm, there's a wealth of sources to follow on from there. There are a wide variety of possible historical settings for the exodus, and you're likely to find some level of support for just about any century within the second millenium BCE has having some support, especially in the sense that where evidence is sparse, possibilities become legion. --Jayron32 14:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Josephus identified the Exodus with the end of Hyksos rule in Egypt, but he was just guessing. There's not much external evidence for Israelites (as opposed to generalized nomads and "Asiatics", as a disparaging Egyptian term is commonly translated into English) until the Merneptah Stele and the rise of the Four room house (both occurring centuries after 1600 B.C.). AnonMoos (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)m

The earliest "early Exodus" chronologies are still later than 1600 BCE. That's still during rule of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos, who were of Canaanite origin and distinct from the native Egyptians. Many have found it appealing to associate the Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos a little later, but not with a Hyksos ruler as the Pharoah of Exodus. Joshua involves a lot more than Jericho -- does the 1573 BCE date work for all sites? (My understanding is no). I'm pretty certain that locating David in the 14th century won't work at all: no Philistines yet, no match with timeline of the later monarchy, etc. --Amble (talk) 00:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Good point. The Philistines didn't come into the southern coastal plain of Canaan until the migrations of the Sea Peoples during the "Late Bronze Age collapse". The United Monarchy of David and Solomon probably would not have been able to come into existence without the diminishing of the Egyptian sphere of influence at that time. AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Why not? Temerarius (talk) 06:02, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

If the situation in the 10th-century B.C. had been like that in the Amarna letters, with Egypt often interfering in Canaan, and local leaders appealing to the Egyptians to settle their disputes, then it's hard to see how an independent power, not concerned with being either pro-Egyptian or anti-Egyptian, could have arisen to control large territories for any length of time. AnonMoos (talk) 18:12, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

That's if there ever was a United Monarchy of David and Solomon. Some archaologists (yeah, yeah: "Who?") argue that at the time of David, whose existence is indirectly implied (once) in a datable record from a neighboring state, the population he can have controlled numbered (from archeological evidence) only a couple of thousand; that the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah arose and remained separate until much later; and that the biblical accounts of a relatively rich and powerful single kingdom were post-Babylonian exile propaganda of the 5th-century BCE created to strengthen support of the later, shakily emerging united nation of that time.

Others, of course, disagree. Inevitably, many scholars in the field have conscious or unconscious biases due to religious and cultural backgrounds (or reactions against them), which likely effect their interpretations of the all-too-sparse evidence, and indeed what they do or do not recognise as valid evidence. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.208.90.210 (talk) 18:50, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Part of the reason why the United Monarchy isn't well documented in inscriptions and such is because of the very same "Late Bronze Age collapse" which made its existence possible. The population of Jerusalem might have been a few thousand during the United Monarchy period (the "City of David" had a rather small area), but the population of the whole kingdom was much greater... AnonMoos (talk) 19:26, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

This gets back closer to the OP's question. The existence (or not) of the United Monarchy is related to the level of population, centralization, and building at the time, which depends on the chronology. But those are questions of a few decades as in Israel Finkelstein's "low chronology". Putting David in the Amarna period would be an adjustment of > 300 years. It would completely remove David from his context, like having Napoleon fight the English at Agincourt instead of Waterloo. For the Exodus, which the OP primarily asked about, there is less to tie it to a definite context and proposed dates do vary by centuries. --Amble (talk) 20:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

You're saying that the truth is hard to find because the field is muddled due to the biases of academics against the truth of the Bible. I disagree. Let's not throw our hands up because "people disagree." The scholarly opinion (if not consensus, then nearly) is that there was not a united monarchy as portrayed in the Bible. Temerarius (talk) 05:33, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

This seems to me kind of like a request for "opinions, predictions, or debate", which is a no-no on the Ref Desk. Many many things could possibly theoretically have happened at some point, like a teapot entering orbit near Jupiter. The burden of proof is on the party making the claim. The events of the Exodus narrative have zero evidence for them outside of the Exodus narrative itself, which is a good reason to be extremely skeptical about the narrative's historicity. You seem to be saying, let's assume they happened, and then work backward to find a good historical period to assign them to, which is not how sound historians operate. I can give you a near limitless list of things that might have happened, like the gazillions of years of Jain cosmology. --47.155.96.47 (talk) 01:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Exactly what is recounted in the Book of Exodus most certainly did not happen as an event in history -- but on the other hand, there's plenty of evidence that Semitic-language speakers sometimes intruded into Egypt, and even a surviving account of Egyptian authorities pursuing nomads/"Asiatics" fleeing from Egypt (though not likely connected with Israelites). What is written down in the book of Exodus is a version of an originally oral national legend/narrative about the formation of Israelites as a people, which takes place in a detailed geographical context of places which actually existed. It's not stupid to try to find out what historical reality (in terms of what is known about Egypt) may have been behind this narrative -- and I really don't see what this has to do with "Russell's Teapot" (which is about theology, not history or geography). AnonMoos (talk) 07:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I think i've read that Abraham met a Philistine king. Whether or not Abraham even existed, it could mean there were Philistines much earlier than late Bronze Age, or people that were "retro-named Philistines in later writing, so I don't see why people living later than Abraham, like in 1600bc or 1330bc, could also been retro-named Philistines, if they lived in the same regions that Philistines later lived. Rich (talk) 12:14, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Internal Soviet border changes in 1927

According to [7], page 470: "In the space of a few months in 1927, Isfara and Sokh were originally allocated to the Uzbek SSR, then ceded to the Kyrgyz SSR, and finally returned to do the Uzbek SSR"

Does anyone know where I can find more information on this? Specific dates, laws, borders? Was it the Sokh district as it currently exists hopping around, and likewise was it the whole Isfara District? --Golbez (talk) 22:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

I can't cite any source right now, but I remember reading that the Soviets divided the Ferghana Valley with a complicated jigsaw of SSR borders so that no one ethnic group could have a consolidated power base there... AnonMoos (talk) 01:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm working on a version of Territorial evolution of the United States but for the USSR, so the specifics of dates and borders is what I'm after. --Golbez (talk) 02:55, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Megoran, Nick (2010). "The Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary". Borderlines and Borderlands: political oddities at the edge of the nation-state. p. 40.
• Koichiev, Arslan (2003). "Ethno-Territorial Claims in the Ferghana Valley During the Process of National Delimitation, 1924-7". In Everett-Heath, Tom (ed.). Central Asia: aspects of transition. p. 55. -- 16:04, 11 January 2022 Fiveby
  • @Fiveby: thank you so much! --Golbez (talk) 04:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)