Cars - History of the automobile

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	Cars - History of the automobile

Although self-powered vehicles were demonstrated as early as 1769, it was not until the turn of the 20th Century that the history of the automobile truly began. Automotive history is generally divided into a number of eras based on the major design and technology shifts seen over the last century. Although the exact boundaries of each era can be hazy, scholarship has defined them as follows:

Prehistory

Steam-powered self propelled vehicles were devised in the late 17th century. A Flemish priest, Ferdinand Verbiest, demonstrated in 1678 a small steam car. The car was made for the Chinese emperor. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot successfully demonstrated such a vehicle on a real scale as early as 1769. Cugnot's invention initially saw little application in his native France, and the center of innovation passed to Great Britain, where Richard Trevithick was running a steam-carriage in 1801. Such vehicles were in vogue for a time, and over the next decades such innovations as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions, and improved speed and steering were developed. Some were commercially successful in providing mass transit, until a backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in passing laws that self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom must be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn. This effectively killed road auto development in the UK for most of the rest of the 19th century, as inventors and engineers shifted their efforts to improvements in railway locomotives. The red flag law was not repealed until 1896.

The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789. Later, in 1804, Evans demonstrated his first successful self-propelled vehicle, which not only was the first automobile in the USA but was also the first amphibious vehicle, as his steam-powered vehicle was able to travel on wheels on land and via a paddle wheel in the water.

Belgian born Etienne Lenoir made a car with an internal combustion engine around 1860, though it was driven by coal-gas. His experiment lasted for 7 miles, but it took him 3 hours; He would have been faster on foot. Lenoir never tried experimenting with cars again. The French claim that a Deboutteville-Delamare was succesfull, and the French celebrated the 100th birthday of the car in 1984.

It is generally claimed that the first automobiles with gasoline powered internal combustion engines were completed almost simultaneously in 1885 by German inventors working independently: Carl Benz in 1885 in Mannheim, resp. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Stuttgart (1886) (also inventors of the first motor bike (1885)) and Austrian inventor Siegfried Marcus in Vienna (around 1870, though it is disputed if it ever ran). The first four wheel petrol-driven automobiles built in Britain came in Birmingham in 1895 by Frederick William Lanchester who also patented the disc brake.

Veteran era

:Main article: Veteran car

Mass production of automobiles began just before 1900 in France and the United States. The first company to form exclusively to build automobiles was Panhard et Levassor in France. Formed in 1889, they were quickly followed by Peugeot two years later. In the United States, brothers Charles and Frank Duryea founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1893, becoming the first American automobile manufacturing company. However, it was Oldsmobile who would dominate this era of automobile production. Their large scale production line was running in 1902. Within a year, Cadillac (formed from the Henry Ford Company), Winton, and Ford] were producing cars in the thousands.

Within a few years, a dizzying assortment of technologies were being produced by hundreds of producers all over the Western world. Steam, electricity, and gasoline-powered autos competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. Dual- and even quad-engine cars were designed, and engine displacement ranged to more than a dozen liters. Many modern advances, including gas/electric hybrids, multi-valve engines, overhead camshafts, and four-wheel drive, were attempted and discarded at this time.

Innovation was rapid and rampant, with no clear standards for basic vehicle architectures, body styles, construction materials, or controls. Many veteran cars use a tiller rather than a wheel for steering, for example, and most operated at a single speed. Chain drive was dominant over the modern driveshaft, and closed bodies were extremely rare.

On November 5, 1895, George B. Selden was granted a United States patent for a two-stroke automobile engine (). This patent did more to hinder than encourage development of autos in the USA. Selden licensed his patent to most major American auto makers, collecting a fee on every car they produced.

Throughout the veteran car era, however, automobiles were seen as more of a novelty than a genuinely useful device. Breakdowns were frequent, and quick innovation meant that a year-old car was nearly worthless. Major breakthroughs in proving the car came with the historic long-distance drive of Berta Benz in 1888 and Horatio Nelson Jackson's successful trans-continental drive in America in 1903.

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