When was the first car invented?
History of the automobile
Sources point to different creations as the first electric car. Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain) Robert Anderson of Scotland invented a crude electric carriage, powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working three-wheeled car powered by electricity at the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris. But others regard the "Flocken Elektrowagen" of 1888 by German inventor Andreas Flocken as the first true electric car.
Edward Butler (inventor)
Butler showed plans for his three-wheeled petrol vehicle at the Stanley Cycle Show in London in 1884, two years earlier than Karl Benz, who is generally recognized as the inventor of the modern automobile. Butler's vehicle was also the first design to be shown at the 1885 Inventions Exhibition, also in London.
Benz Velo
Karl Benz's Velo participated in the world's first automobile race. A Parisian daily newspaper, by the name of Le Petit Journal, organized the race. The editors of Le Petit intended to display horseless carriages as a viable means of transportation. Rather than fastest time, the automobiles would be judged on whether they were safe and cost effective to operate. It took place in 1894, starting in Paris and ending in Rouen. The winners of the Paris-Rouen race were Panhard & Levassor (Panhard) and Peugeot, both French manufacturers using Benz internal combustion engines. The Velo placed 5th overall in Le Petit's race. Benz had proven with this race that his engines and his automobiles were not only attainable, but also safe and reliable to operate. Eventually, manufacturers began optimizing automobile design for racing. In addition to promoting Benz and his automobiles, the Paris-Rouen race gave birth to modern Motorsport, which now includes the likes of Formula One.
America on Wheels
A historically important part of the museum's collection is the 1889 Nadig Gas-Powered Carriage, one of the first gas-powered vehicles driven in America. Henry Nadig, a German-born mechanic living in Allentown, built his gas-powered carriage in 1889, two years before Charles E. Duryea's first gas-powered automobile. Police forced him to drive the carriage at night, because during the day it scared horses. The vehicle was discovered rusting in a collapsed shed in Allentown, and restored.
Car gwyllt
The car gwyllt was invented around 1870 by the quarry blacksmith, Edward Ellis. In later years they were made by Edward Jones, an independent smith living on Manod Road, who charged 5 shillings. Each quarryman had their own car and so an early purchase with a new starter's "tal mawr" would be a new car gwyllt.
Car
The first design for an American car with a gasoline internal combustion engine was made in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York. Selden applied for a patent for a car in 1879, but the patent application expired because the vehicle was never built. After a delay of sixteen years and a series of attachments to his application, on 5 November 1895, Selden was granted a United States patent () for a two-stroke car engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of cars in the United States. His patent was challenged by Henry Ford and others, and overturned in 1911.
Slot car
The first commercial slot cars were made by Lionel (USA) and appeared in their catalogues from 1912, drawing power from a toy train rail sunk in a trough or wide slot between the rails. They were surprisingly similar to modern slot cars, but independent speed control was available only as an optional extra. Production was discontinued after 1915. Sporadically over the next forty years, several other electrically powered commercial products came and went. Although a patent was registered as far back as March 1936 for a slot car, until the late 1950s, nearly all powered toy vehicles were guided by raised rails, either at the wheels (railroad-style), or at the lane center, or edge.
History of the automobile
Within the 15 years that make up this era, the various experimental designs and alternate power systems would be marginalised. Although the modern touring car had been invented earlier, it was not until Panhard et Levassor's "Système Panhard" was widely licensed and adopted that recognisable and standardised automobiles were created. This system specified front-engined, rear-wheel drive internal combustion engined cars with a sliding gear transmission. Traditional coach-style vehicles were rapidly abandoned, and buckboard runabouts lost favour with the introduction of tonneaus and other less-expensive touring bodies.
Automotive industry in New Zealand
The first New Zealand designed and constructed automobile known to have run was made by Frederick Dennison. It was a motor tricycle reported in the local newspaper on 8 May 1900. The article stated that Dennison intended to convert the tricycle to a four-wheel motor-car. He did so and drove it from Christchurch to Oamaru in July 1900. It was the only one made and was destroyed by fire on its return journey. A replica of this car was completed and driven in June 2000 in celebration of its first journey.
Ford Quadricycle
The Ford Quadricycle was the first vehicle developed by Henry Ford. Ford's first car was a simple frame with an ethanol-powered engine and four bicycle wheels mounted on it.
Charles H. Black
Remarkably, research has failed to bring to light contemporary reports from the 1890s of Black's first automobile, but eyewitness accounts and early photographs exist. A business card of the C. H. Black Manufacturing Company dated 1892 shows a picture of Black's first automobile with the legend "Estimates furnished for power-equipped vehicles of any style", and two of his early vehicles are extant, one on display at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the other in a private collection. Black's design failed to go into larger scale production, largely because its ignition system required the use of a kerosene torch.
Second Industrial Revolution
Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as the Benz Patent Motorwagen) in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history.
History of the automobile
The American George B. Selden filed for a patent on 8 May 1879. His application included not only the engine but its use in a 4-wheeled car. Selden filed a series of amendments to his application which stretched out the legal process, resulting in a delay of 16 years before the patent was granted on 5 November 1895. This patent did more to hinder than encourage development of autos in the United States. Selden licensed his patent to most major American automakers, collecting a fee on every car they produced.
Child safety seat
Since the first car was manufactured and put on the market in the early 1900s, many modifications and adjustments have been implemented to protect those that drive and ride in motorized vehicles. Most restraints were put into place to protect adults without regard for young children. Though child seats were beginning to be manufactured in the early 1930s, their purpose was not the safety of children. The purpose was to act as booster seats to bring the child to a height easier for the driving parent to see them. It was not until 1962 that two designs with the purpose of protecting a child were developed independently. British inventor Jean Ames created a rear-facing child seat with a Y-shaped strap similar to today's models. American Leonard Rivkin, of Denver Colorado, designed a forward-facing seat with a metal frame to protect the child. It is noted that seat belts for adults were not standard equipment in automobiles until the 1960s.
Ferdinand Verbiest
During the 1670s, Verbiest designed what some claim to be the first ever self-propelled vehicle – many claim this as the world's first automobile, in spite of its small size and the lack of evidence that it was actually built.
Second Industrial Revolution
Henry Ford built his first car in 1896 and worked as a pioneer in the industry, with others who would eventually form their own companies, until the founding of Ford Motor Company in 1903. Ford and others at the company struggled with ways to scale up production in keeping with Henry Ford's vision of a car designed and manufactured on a scale so as to be affordable by the average worker. The solution that Ford Motor developed was a completely redesigned factory with machine tools and special purpose machines that were systematically positioned in the work sequence. All unnecessary human motions were eliminated by placing all work and tools within easy reach, and where practical on conveyors, forming the assembly line, the complete process being called mass production. This was the first time in history when a large, complex product consisting of 5000 parts had been produced on a scale of hundreds of thousands per year. The savings from mass production methods allowed the price of the Model T to decline from $780 in 1910 to $360 in 1916. In 1924 2 million T-Fords were produced and retailed $290 each.
Garrett Morgan
The first American-made automobiles were introduced to consumers just before the turn of the twentieth century, and pedestrians, bicycles, animal-drawn wagons and motor vehicles all had to share the same roads. To deal with the growing problem of traffic accidents, a number of versions of traffic signaling devices began to be developed, starting around 1913.
Rue Lepic
Louis Renault built his first car in 1898, calling his car the "Voiturette". On December 24, 1898, he won a bet with his friends that his invention was capable of driving up the slope of Rue Lepic. As well as winning the bet, Renault received 12 definite orders for the vehicle.
History of the automobile
In 1769 the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.
Car
In 1893, the first running, gasoline-powered American car was built and road-tested by the Duryea brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts. The first public run of the Duryea Motor Wagon took place on 21 September 1893, on Taylor Street in Metro Center Springfield. The Studebaker Automobile Company, subsidiary of a long-established wagon and coach manufacturer, started to build cars in 1897 and commenced sales of electric vehicles in 1902 and gasoline vehicles in 1904.
Karl Benz
It was the first automobile entirely designed as such to generate its own power, not simply a motorized stage coach or horse carriage, which is why Karl Benz was granted his patent and is regarded as its inventor.
Car
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited with building the first full-scale, self-propelled mechanical vehicle or car in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle. He also constructed two steam tractors for the French Army, one of which is preserved in the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. His inventions were, however, handicapped by problems with water supply and maintaining steam pressure. In 1801, Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle. It was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods and was of little practical use.
Ader
The Ader car was built in Levallois-Perret, Seine, by his Société Industrielle des Téléphones-Voitures Système Ader
between 1900 and 1907. The company first built bicycles in 1869 and tried steam powered aeroplanes between 1890 and 1897. In 1900 the first car was made with a V-twin engine of 904 cc and chain drive. In 1901 shaft drive was introduced along with a four cylinder car where the engine was essentially two of the V-twins coupled together. Two of the four-cylinder engines were joined to make a 3616 cc V-8 which was fitted to a car that ran in the 1903 Paris-Madrid race. That year Ader listed twin-cylinder cars of 904 cc and 1571 cc, as well as four-cylinder ones of 1810 cc and 3142 cc; each was available in a wide range of coachwork. A 24 hp vertical four was introduced in December 1903 at the Paris Salon.
Vabis
The first automobile built related to the company was a four-seater designed by Gustaf Erikson in Surahammar in 1897. Erikson had been hired by Vabis in 1896 to design engines and motorized carriages. Strongly resembling a contemporary carriage, it used a one-cylinder kerosene engine, tiller steering, and was not a success. Erikson replaced it with a tube-ignition four-stroke flat-twin in 1898, mounting it in a horse carriage, which he drove briefly. He then joined Vabis and started building automobiles. The first truck was built in 1902. In December 1903, one of their automobiles was displayed at the auto show in Paris. The same year, they also received the first actual order for a motor vehicle, a rail inspection car for Ystad–Eslövs Järnväg, powered by a one-cylinder 3.5-horsepower engine.
Automobile safety
Automobile safety may have become an issue almost from the beginning of mechanised road vehicle development. The second steam-powered "Fardier" (artillery tractor), created by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1771, is reported by some to have crashed into a wall during its demonstration run. However, according to Georges Ageon, the earliest mention of this occurrence dates from 1801 and it does not feature in contemporary accounts. One of the earliest recorded automobile fatalities was Mary Ward, on August 31, 1869 in Parsonstown, Ireland.
Émile Levassor
The Panhard of 1891, with an engine built under Daimler licence, introduced a series of innovations that effectively created the modern car. Levassor moved the engine from the rear to the front of the car and cooled it via a front-mounted water radiator rather than relying, as had been customary, on natural aspiration, which was often insufficient. He also introduced a crankshaft to link the engine with the gearing, eschewing the bicycle-style belt drive of previous cars; and he installed a clutch pedal and a gear stick, situated between the seats, to operate the gearbox, thus creating the first modern transmission. The siting of the engine on the front of the car rather than the rear provided far more room for passengers. The resultant configuration – unfortunately for Levassor – was soon called the systeme Panhard.
Crash test dummy
On August 31, 1869, Mary Ward became the first recorded victim of an automobile accident; the car involved was steam-powered (Karl Benz did not invent the gasoline-powered automobile until 1886). Ward, of Parsonstown, Ireland, was thrown out of a motor vehicle and killed. Thirty years later, on September 13, 1899, Henry Bliss became North America's first motor vehicle fatality when hit while stepping off a New York City trolley. Since then, over 20 million people worldwide have died due to motor vehicle accidents.
Hans Clarin Hovind Mustad
Clarin Mustad was also involved in the emerging car industry. Having travelled by car for the first time in 1892, during a stay abroad, he conducted his first car travel on Norwegian soil in 1906. During the trip, from Kristiania to Aandalsnes, he passed several hundred horses, and stopped the engine as to not frighten the animals. Using an external handle to start the engine, he grew tired of this and invented a system with which the driver could ignite the engine from the driver's seat.
Elwood Haynes
According to Haynes, he began laying out "plans for the construction of a mechanically propelled vehicle for use on highways" in 1891. His first idea was for a steam-powered vehicle, but after careful consideration he decided the use of a furnace on the device would be too dangerous. His second plan was to use electrical power, but after research he found that no practical means existed to store the electricity required for operation. He continued to develop his plans until the summer of 1893 when he attended the Chicago World's Fair, where he first witnessed a gasoline engine. The demonstration of the newly invented engine inspired him to decide that an internal combustion engine would be the most practical method to propel his vehicle. A gasoline-powered European automobile built by German inventor Karl Benz (who patented the first automobile in 1886) also was on display during the fair, although it is unknown if Haynes witnessed this vehicle during his visit.
Hammel (automobile)
The Hammel is an early car from Denmark, built by Urban Johansen und Albert F. Hammel. It is connected with some controversy regarding its exact year of construction. One claim is that it was introduced in 1886, making it one of the very first motorcars in the world. Other sources mention the years between 1887 and 1890 as more probable. Only one was constructed. It has been restored and is exhibited in the Technological Museum in Helsingør.
Buckeye gasoline buggy
George B. Selden applied for a patent on a vehicle in 1879 of an "improved road engine" based on a compression engine that used liquid-hydrocarbon fuel (i.e. gasoline). The patent covered the basics of constructing a horseless carriage of a self-propelled automobile, however he had not actually built such a vehicle. Selden worked off the principles of George Brayton's two-cycle gasoline engine patented in 1872. Blayton had exhibited his engine at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and Selden then decided to use that engine or a modified version of it as the basis for a patent. He went about drawing up a model of a vehicle and applied for a patent strictly based on the drawing alone. Selden then used legal evasive tactics to stall the patent's acceptance each year making minor amendments until he felt it was favorable for commercial production of the American automobile. The idea behind this was that he wanted to secure the claim of being the first to have invented the automobile and get the seventeen-year legal rights to all the automobile royalties. He legally stalled the process until he was forced to complete the application process. This was sixteen years after he first applied for the patent
and a few months before the actual mass-production of automobiles by car manufactures. History records of automobile technology do not support his claim as being the first to have invented the automobile because at the time he was issued the patent Selden had not been able to make a working model. This evasion and stalling of finalizing a patent then had much influence as to how future automobile patents were handled from then on.
Ford Quadricycle
The earliest cars were hand built, one by one, and very expensive. The peculiar machines were seen as toys for the rich.
In the 1890s, the "horseless carriage" was a relatively new idea, with no one having a fixed, universal idea of what a car should look like or how it should work. Most of the first car builders were inventors, rather than businessmen, working with their imaginations and the parts they had on hand. Thus, the invention of the Quadricycle marks an important innovation as a proto-automobile that would lay the foundation for the future, with more practical designs to follow.
Dynamometer car
The first dynamometer car was probably one built in about 1838 by the "Father of Computing" Charles Babbage. Working for the Great Western Railway of Great Britain, he equipped a passenger carriage to be placed between an engine and train and record data on a continuously moving roll of paper. The recorded data included the pulling force of the engine, a plot of the path of the carriage and the vertical shake of the carriage. The work was undertaken to help support the position of the Great Western Railway in the controversy over standardizing the British track gauge.
Balzer (automobile)
On May 16, 1899, Balzer donated his prototype to the Smithsonian Institution, the first automobile in its collection. This was the first car given to the Smithsonian. It is currently in collection.
Stephen M. Balzer
On May 16, 1899, Balzer donated his prototype to the Smithsonian Institution, the first automobile in its collection. This was the first car given to the Smithsonian. It is currently in collection.
Electrobat
The Electrobat was one of the first electric automobiles. It was designed and built in 1894 by mechanical engineer Henry G. Morris and chemist Pedro G. Salom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both had backgrounds in battery streetcars and, as the battery streetcar business was fading, they teamed up to make battery road vehicles. Their effort was patented on August 31, 1894. Built like a small version of a battery streetcar, it was a slow, heavy, impractical vehicle with steel tires to support the 1,600 pound immense weight of its large lead battery. It entered production in 1895. In 1896, Morris and Salom founded the Morris & Salom Electric Carriage and Wagon Company, evidently the first electric car company in America.
Armored car (military)
At the beginning of the 20th century, the first military armored vehicles were manufactured, by adding armor and weapons to existing vehicles.
The first armored car was the Simms' Motor War Car, designed by F.R. Simms and built by Vickers, Sons & Maxim of Barrow on a special Coventry-built Daimler chassis with a German-built Daimler motor in 1899. and a single prototype was ordered in April 1899 The prototype was finished in 1902, too late to be used during the Boer War.
Timeline of United States inventions (1890–1945)
Car audio/video (car AV) is a sound or video system fitted in an automobile. In 1930, the Galvin Corporation introduced the first commercial car radio, the Motorola model 5T71, which sold for between $110 and $130 and could be installed in most popular automobiles. Inventors Paul Galvin and Joe Galvin came up with the name Motorola when their company started manufacturing car radios.
Horsecar
In the United States the very first streetcar appeared on November 26, 1832, on the New York and Harlem Railroad in New York City. The cars were designed by John Stephenson of New Rochelle, New York, and constructed at his company in New York City. The earliest streetcars used horses and sometimes mules, usually two as a team, to haul the cars. Rarely, other animals were tried, including humans in emergency circumstances. By the mid-1880s, there were 415 street railway companies in the USA operating over of track and carrying 188 million passengers per year using horsecars. By 1890 New Yorkers took 297 horsecar rides per capita per year. The average street car horse had a life expectancy of about two years.
Edwin H. Tomlinson
In 1905, Tomlinson brought the first car to St. Petersburg. At the time the car could only go 6 miles per hour.
Ferdinand Verbiest
Beside his work in astronomy, Verbiest also experimented with steam. Around 1672 he designed – as a toy for the Chinese Emperor – a steam-propelled trolley which was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile'). Verbiest describes it in his manuscript "Astronomia Europea" that was finished in 1681. A friar brought it to europe and it was then printed in 1687 in Germany. In this work, Verbiest first mentioned the (latin) term "motor" in its present meaning. With one filling of coal, he wrote that the vehicle was able to move more than one hour. As it was only long, and therefore effectively a scale model, not designed to carry human passengers, nor a driver or goods, it is not strictly accurate to call it a 'car'. Despite this, it was the first vehicle that was able to move by 'self-made' engine power.
Oldsmobile
The 1902 to 1904 Oldsmobile Curved Dash was the first mass-produced car, made from the first automotive assembly line, an invention that is often miscredited to Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. (Ford was the first to manufacture cars on a "moving" assembly line.) After Olds merged Olds Motor Vehicle Co. with the Olds Gas Engine Works in 1899, it was renamed Olds Motor Works and moved to a new plant in Detroit, located at the corner of East Jefferson Avenue and MacArthur Bridge. By March 1901, the company had a whole line of models ready for mass production. However, a mistake by a worker caused the factory to catch fire, and it burned to the ground, with all of the prototypes destroyed. The only car that survived the fire was a Curved Dash prototype, which was wheeled out of the factory by two workers while escaping the fire. A new factory was built in Lansing, and production of the Curved Dash commenced.
History of the automobile
Steam-powered self-propelled vehicles large enough to transport people and cargo were first devised in the late 18th century. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his "fardier à vapeur" ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France. The center of innovation shifted to Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the roads in Camborne. The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789.
Delamare-Deboutteville
Delamare-Deboutteville was among the earliest designs of car, driven by an internal combustion engine. It was developed in France by Édouard Delamare-Deboutteville and patented in 1884, but did not achieve commercial success.
Édouard Delamare-Deboutteville described how, with his assistant Leon Malandin, he had built and driven his car in early 1884. The car had a front bench seat and a rear platform, four wheels, a transmission to the rear wheels by chain, shaft transmission and a differential. In 1883 Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville made a trial run of a car whose engine was powered by gas; but the gas supply hose broke during this first trial, so he replaced the gas with fuel oil. In order to use this product, he invented a wick carburetor. This vehicle travelled for the first time on the little road from Fontaine-le-Bourg to Cailly in Normandy in early February 1884. On 12 February 1884, he registered his design under patent number 160267.
Several replicas were made of the Delamare-Deboutteville design and have been entered in all kinds of different events.
Armored car (valuables)
Among the first armored cars built was the Bellamore Armored Motor Bank Car, of 1910, which was meant to function like the banking service armored cars of today, but also as a mobile bank branch. It was built on an Autocar Type XXI truck. It was not until Rolls-Royce came out with the Rolls-Royce Ghost in August 1914 that the first armored vehicle was introduced to the British military. The vehicle proved to be superior during the war, creating a demand for armored cars across the globe. In 1930, Mercedes Benz introduced the Nurburg 460, which was an armored car used to protect Pope Pius XI. As the armored car became more and more popular, vehicle manufacturers around the world started creating their own versions.
Antique car
On Christmas Eve in 1801 Richard Trevithick of England demonstrated a steam-powered carriage, the Puffing Devil, that is considered the first horseless carriage, but Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot has the claim of the first steam-powered vehicle with the "fardier à vapeur" in 1770. The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under licence from Benz, in France by Emile Roger.
Frederick C. Brower
Research by local historian, Richard N. Wright, in 1954, "revealed that the car was first road tested on September 22, 1893." City founder, William S. Teall remembered seeing it as early as 1895. Dr. Horatio B. Williams of Greenwich, Connecticut reported riding in the car that same year when, as a boy of 18, during a visit to the Brower family, he rode in the car from the Brower locksmith shop at East Genesee Street to the family home on Crouse Avenue.
Guido da Vigevano
Guido created a vehicle that moved using a windmill that relayed force to gear and then to the wheels. Some consider this machine to be first car in history, or at least a forerunner.
Steam car
A French inventor, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle. There is an unsubstantiated story that a pair of Yorkshiremen, engineer Robert Fourness and his cousin, physician James Ashworth had a steam carriage running in 1788, after being granted a British Patent, No.1674 of December 1788. An illustration of it even appeared in Hergé's book "Tintin raconte l'Histoire de l'Automobile" (Casterman, 1953). The first substantiated steam carriage for personal use was that of Josef Božek in 1815. He was followed by Thomas Blanchard of Massachusetts in 1825. Over thirty years passed before there was a flurry of steam cars from 1857 onwards with Dugeon, Roper and Spenser from the United States, Thomes Rickett, Austin, Catley and Ayres from England, Innocenzo Manzetti from Italy, and Elijah Leonard of London, Canada being the earliest. Others followed with Amédée Bollée and Louis Lejeune of France in 1878, and Rene Thury of Switzerland in 1879.
Uruk period
A debated question in the realm of transport is whether it was in the Uruk period that the wheel was invented. Towards the end of the Uruk period, cylinder seals depict sleds, which had hitherto been the most commonly depicted form of land transport, less and less. They begin to show the first vehicles that appear to be on wheels, but it is not certain that they actually depict wheels themselves. It remains most likely that the wheel was invented in the northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) or Eastern Europe (Cucuteni-Trypillian culture), where the most ancient surviving examples have been found. In any case, the wheel spread extremely rapidly and enabled the creation of vehicles that enabled much easier transport of much larger loads. There were certainly chariots in southern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. Their wheels were solid blocks; spokes were not invented until c. 2000 BC.
Gottlieb Daimler
Daimler had developed the first liquid petroleum vehicle in 1885 and Karl Benz had developed the first purpose built automobile using a 2 cycle engine of his own design a few months later. Daimler never met Karl Benz during the period of invention. In 1896 Daimler (DMG) sued Benz & Cie for violating his 1883 patent on hot tube ignition. Daimler won and Benz had to pay royalties to DMG. Daimler did not meet Karl Benz while they were in court in Mannheim. Later at the founding of the Central European Motor Car Association Daimler and Benz still did not speak to each other.
Car
The word "car" is believed to originate from the Latin word "carrus" or "carrum" ("wheeled vehicle"), or the Middle English word "carre" (meaning "two-wheel cart", from Old North French). In turn, these originated from the Gaulish word "karros" (a Gallic chariot). It originally referred to any wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, such as a cart, carriage, or wagon. "Motor car" is attested from 1895, and is the usual formal name for cars in British English. "Autocar" is a variant that is also attested from 1895, but that is now considered archaic. It literally means "self-propelled car". The term "horseless carriage" was used by some to refer to the first cars at the time that they were being built, and is attested from 1895.
History of the automobile
In the United States, brothers Charles and Frank Duryea founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1893, becoming the first American automobile manufacturing company. The Autocar Company, founded in 1897, established a number of innovations still in use and remains the oldest operating motor vehicle manufacturer in the United States. However, it was Ransom E. Olds and his Olds Motor Vehicle Company (later known as Oldsmobile) who would dominate this era with the introduction of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. Its production line was running in 1901. The Thomas B. Jeffery Company developed the world's second mass-produced automobile, and 1,500 Ramblers were built and sold in its first year, representing one-sixth of all existing motorcars in the United States at the time. Within a year, Cadillac (formed from the Henry Ford Company), Winton, and Ford were also producing cars in the thousands. The Studebaker brothers, having become the world's leading manufacturers of horse-drawn vehicles, made a transition to electric automobiles in 1902, and gasoline engines in 1904. They continued to build horse-drawn vehicles until 1919.
List of steam car makers
The first experimental steam-powered vehicles were built in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was not until after Richard Trevithick had developed the use of high-pressure steam, around 1800, that mobile steam engines became a practical proposition. The first half of the 19th century saw great progress in steam vehicle design, and by the 1850s it was viable to produce them on a commercial basis. The next sixty years saw continuing improvements in vehicle technology and manufacturing techniques and steam road vehicles were used for many applications. In the 20th century, the rapid development of internal combustion engine technology led to the demise of the steam engine as a source of propulsion of vehicles on a commercial basis prior to World War II. Since then there have been sporadic resurgences of interest in steam, particularly in the late 1960s in California to address air pollution issues and later in response to the 1973 oil crisis.
Car
Daimler and Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Cannstatt in 1890, and sold their first car in 1892 under the brand name "Daimler". It was a horse-drawn stagecoach built by another manufacturer, which they retrofitted with an engine of their design. By 1895 about 30 vehicles had been built by Daimler and Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann, where they set up shop after disputes with their backers. Benz, Maybach and the Daimler team seem to have been unaware of each other's early work. They never worked together; by the time of the merger of the two companies, Daimler and Maybach were no longer part of DMG. Daimler died in 1900 and later that year, Maybach designed an engine named "Daimler-Mercedes" that was placed in a specially ordered model built to specifications set by Emil Jellinek. This was a production of a small number of vehicles for Jellinek to race and market in his country. Two years later, in 1902, a new model DMG car was produced and the model was named Mercedes after the Maybach engine, which generated 35 hp. Maybach quit DMG shortly thereafter and opened a business of his own. Rights to the "Daimler" brand name were sold to other manufacturers.
History of the automobile
The first motor car in Central Europe was produced by the Austro-Hungarian company Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau (later renamed to Tatra in today's Czech Republic) in 1897, the Präsident automobile. In 1898, Louis Renault had a De Dion-Bouton modified, with fixed drive shaft and differential, making "perhaps the first hot rod in history" and bringing Renault and his brothers into the car industry. Innovation was rapid and rampant, with no clear standards for basic vehicle architectures, body styles, construction materials, or controls, for example many veteran cars use a tiller, rather than a wheel for steering. During 1903, Rambler standardized on the steering wheel and moved the driver's position to the left-hand side of the vehicle. Chain drive was dominant over the drive shaft, and closed bodies were extremely rare. Drum brakes were introduced by Renault in 1902. The next year, Dutch designer Jacobus Spijker built the first four-wheel drive racing car; it never competed and it would be 1965 and the Jensen FF before four-wheel drive was used on a production car.
Timeline of motor vehicle brands
Karl Benz's vehicle was the first true automobile, entirely designed as such, rather than simply being a motorized stage coach or horse carriage. This is why he was granted his patent, and is regarded as its inventor. His wife and sons became the first true motorists, in 1889, when they took the car out for the specific task of paying a family visit.
Automotive industry in Sweden
The first Swedish automobile was a steam car built in 1891-92 by brothers Jöns and Anders Cederholm. They planned to use it for transportation between their home in Ystad and their summer house outside town. Unfortunately the automobile was destroyed in Sweden’s first automobile accident but the Cederholm brothers soon built a second, improved version of their steam car reusing many parts from the first one. The car is preserved in a museum in Skurup.
In 1898 Gustaf Erikson at Surahammars Bruk built an automobile with an internal combustion engine for Vabis in Södertälje. Erikson continuously improved his car until Vabis was satisfied, and started production of automobiles and trucks in 1902.
History of the automobile
The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under license from Benz, in France by Emile Roger. There were numerous others, including tricycle builders Rudolf Egg, Edward Butler, and Léon Bollée. Bollée, using a engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average in the 1897 Paris-Tourville rally. By 1900, mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States.
History of the automobile
About 1870, in Vienna, Austria (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire), inventor Siegfried Marcus put a liquid-fuelled internal combustion engine on a simple handcart which made him the first man to propel a vehicle by means of gasoline. Today, this car is known as "the first Marcus car". In 1883, Marcus secured a German patent for a low-voltage ignition system of the magneto type; this was his only automotive patent. This design was used for all further engines, and the four-seat "second Marcus car" of 1888/89. This ignition, in conjunction with the "rotating-brush carburetor", made the second car's design very innovative. His second car is on display at the Technical Museum in Vienna. During his lifetime he was honored as the originator of the motorcar but his place in history was all but erased by the Nazis during World War II. Because Marcus was of Jewish descent, the Nazi propaganda office ordered his work to be destroyed, his name expunged from future textbooks, and his public memorials removed, giving credit instead to Karl Benz.
Steam car
In 1892, painter Jöns Cederholm and his brother, André, a blacksmith, designed their first steam car, a two-seater, introducing a condenser in 1894. They planned to use it for transportation between their home in Ystad and their summer house outside town. Unfortunately the automobile was destroyed in Sweden's first automobile accident but the Cederholm brothers soon built a second, improved version of their steam car reusing many parts from the first one. The car is preserved in a museum in Skurup.
Kit car
Kit cars have been around from the earliest days of the automobile. In 1896 the Englishman Thomas Hyler-White developed a design for a car that could be assembled at home and technical designs were published in a magazine called "The English Mechanic". In the USA, the Lad's Car of 1912 could be bought for $160 ($3000 US in 2006) fully assembled or $140 ($2600 US in 2006) in kit form.
World car
In 1933, Ford introduced their first car designed for European tastes that was not sold in the United States, the Ford Model Y, developed by Ford of Britain, and also manufactured by Ford of Germany as the Ford Köln. General Motors responded with the Opel 1.2 litre, developed by GM in the United States but exclusively built and sold in Europe. This would begin the divergence of vehicles sold by Ford and General Motors worldwide. In Australia, the Coupé utility was beginning to catch on in popularity, as “a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays.”
Driver's license
Karl Benz, inventor of the modern automobile, had to receive written permission from the Grand Ducal authorities to operate his car on public roads in 1888 after residents complained about the noise and smell of his "Motorwagen". Up until the start of the 20th century, European authorities issued licenses to drive motor vehicles similarly "ad hoc," if at all.
Car
In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated the first working (three-wheeled) car powered by electricity at the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris. Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the modern car.
Second Industrial Revolution
German inventor Karl Benz patented the world's first automobile in 1886. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones) with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by means of two roller chains to the rear axle. It was the first automobile entirely designed as such to generate its own power, not simply a motorized-stage coach or horse carriage.
Robert Davidson (inventor)
Davidson staged an exhibition of electrical machinery at Aberdeen, Scotland in 1840, Edinburgh, one year later—where it was visited by the young James Clerk Maxwell and later at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in London, where he hoped to attract sponsorship for his work. Amongst the machines shown were electrically operated lathes and printing presses. Robert Davidson made the first car in 1839
Tarrant automobile
Colonel Harley Tarrant built his first car in 1901. After a small number of motor vehicles were built, it became apparent that it was uneconomic to build indigenous vehicles, in the face of overseas technology. Tarrant assumed the responsibility for distribution of Ford automobiles in Victoria in 1908, and production of Tarrants ceased.
The Tarrant automobile was a 2 cylinder vehicle and contained only 2 seats; the driver and the passenger.
Electric car
In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built the first practical production electric car in London using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries. The "Flocken Elektrowagen" of 1888 was designed by German inventor Andreas Flocken. Electric cars were among the preferred methods for automobile propulsion in the late 19th century and early 20th century, providing a level of comfort and ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline cars of the time. The electric vehicle stock peaked at approximately 30,000 vehicles at the turn of the 20th century.
History of the automobile
Early experimenters used gases. In 1806, Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built an engine powered by internal combustion of a hydrogen and oxygen mixture. In 1826, Englishman Samuel Brown tested his hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine by using it to propel a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in south-east London. Belgian-born Etienne Lenoir's Hippomobile with a hydrogen-gas-fuelled one-cylinder internal combustion engine made a test drive from Paris to Joinville-le-Pont in 1860, covering some nine kilometres in about three hours. A later version was propelled by coal gas. A Delamare-Deboutteville vehicle was patented and trialled in 1884.
Bertha Benz
In 1886, Benz presented the Patent-Motorwagen automobile to the world. Within the decade, 25 vehicles had been built. With cutting-edge bicycle constructions, the Model I was the original Patent Motor Car and the world's first automobile.
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft
Historians consider that the automobile was ""a German invention, while France expanded it commercially"", mainly by publicity from car-racing since in January 1886 Karl Benz was granted the first patent for an automobile he designed and built in 1885.
History of the automobile
In 1870 Siegfried Marcus built the first gasoline powered combustion engine, which he placed on a pushcart, building four progressively more sophisticated combustion-engine cars over a 10-to-15-year span that influenced later cars. Marcus created the two-cycle combustion engine. The car's second incarnation in 1880 introduced a four-cycle, gasoline-powered engine, an ingenious carburetor design and magneto ignition. He created an additional two models further refining his design with steering, a clutch and a brake.
Meudon
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, the inventor of the 'world's first automobile', is reported to have carried out some early trials at Meudon in the early 1770s.
History of the automobile
The four-stroke petrol (gasoline) internal combustion engine that still constitutes the most prevalent form of modern automotive propulsion was patented by Nikolaus Otto. The similar four-stroke diesel engine was invented by Rudolf Diesel. The hydrogen fuel cell, one of the technologies hailed as a replacement for gasoline as an energy source for cars, was discovered in principle by Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838. The battery electric car owes its beginnings to Ányos Jedlik, one of the inventors of the electric motor, and Gaston Planté, who invented the lead–acid battery in 1859.
Garter (stockings)
During the world's first long distance journey by automobile in 1888 Bertha Benz, the wife of the inventor of the automobile Dr Carl Benz, used a garter to insulate a broken wire of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen Nr. 3. In remembrance of this historic road trip today's official German scenic byway Bertha Benz Memorial Route follows the tracks of Bertha Benz from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back. Stockings have also been used as an emergency replacement for a car's fanbelt.
Antique car
The Veteran era began with the invention of the automobile and continued up to 1896.
History of the electric vehicle
The first electric car in the United States was developed in 1890-91 by William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa; the vehicle was a six-passenger wagon capable of reaching a speed of . It was not until 1895 that consumers began to devote attention to electric vehicles, after A.L. Ryker introduced the first electric tricycles to the U.S., by which point Europeans had been making use of electric tricycles, bicycles, and cars for almost 15 years.
Automotive engine
Electric vehicles seemed to be the most viable option, similar to the steam automobiles. It was first invented in the early 1800s, and became a viable option of transportation around 1890, when William Morrison created the first electric car that traveled 14 miles per hour. The electric cars offered low pollution and a soundless ride, unlike their gasoline counterparts. The greatest downside of electric cars was the range. The typical electric car could reach around 20 miles before requiring a recharge. Manufacturers could not increase the number of batteries, due to the bulkiness of the batteries at the time. Without an incentive to purchase the electric automobiles, gas automobiles was the most viable option at the time.
Charles Francis Jenkins
At the same time Jenkins dabbled in automobiles, Jenkins Automobile Company. In 1898, Jenkins invented the first automobile with the engine in the front of the car. In 1901 he constructed the smallest car for the 26-inch tall Cuban performer Chiquita.
Benz Velo
The Benz Velo was one of the first cars. Introduced by Karl Benz in 1894 as the followup to the Patent Motorwagen, the Velo is credited, together with the Duryea Motor Wagon, patented in 1895, as one of two first standardized cars. 67 Benz Velos were built in 1894 and 134 in 1895. The early Velo had a 1L 1.5 hp engine and later a 3 hp engine giving a top speed of 12 mph (20 km/h). The Velo was officially introduced by Karl Benz as the Velocipede, and became the world's first large-scale production car. The Velocipede remained in production between 1894 and 1902, with a final count of over 1,200 produced. It was the first car introduced to South-Africa and was demonstrated to then President Paul Kruger on 4 January 1897.
Adamson
The first car of 1912 was a small two-seater bullnosed cyclecar and had a 1,099 cc twin-cylinder or 1,074 cc four-cylinder engine made by Alpha of Coventry driving the rear wheels via a three-speed-and-reverse gearbox and a countershaft from which two V-belts went to the rear wheels. The engine could be started from the driving seat using a mechanical linkage. The channel section steel chassis was placed under the axles with suspension by semi-elliptic leaf springs. This arrangement allowed the car to have a low, sporting appearance. In 1914 the option of a larger four-cylinder version was added. A new model was announced in 1916 with 1330 cc four-cylinder engine, but few if any reached the public before car production ceased later that year.
Elwood Haynes
In 1905, three years after the Apperson brothers split from Haynes, Haynes-Apperson was renamed the Haynes Automobile Company and Haynes launched a series of publicity campaigns. A parade of 2,000 cars was organized in New York City during 1908 and Haynes, whom many recognized as the inventor of the American automobile, led the parade down Broadway riding in the "Pioneer". He was followed by ten Haynes cars, a model from each year to display the advancement in technology. On his way to the parade, Haynes was unaware of the city's newly established speeding laws and was arrested for driving too fast—in a car with a top speed of 15 mph (17 km/h)—and taken to jail. He was soon able to see a magistrate who released him after learning that he was Elwood Haynes and had come to lead the parade. The celebration was intended to be a ten-year commemoration of the invention of the automobile, although earlier self-vehicles dated back nearly twenty years in Europe. Haynes donated the "Pioneer" to the United States Government in 1910 to be placed in the Smithsonian Institution where it is still on display in the National Museum of American History as the second oldest motorized vehicle in the United States.
Front-wheel drive
Experiments with front-wheel-drive cars date to the early days of the automobile. According to various sources, sometime between 1895 and 1898 Gräf & Stift built a "voiturette" with a one-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine fitted in the front of the vehicle, powering the front axle. It was thus arguably the world's first front-wheel-drive automobile, but it never saw mass production, with only one copy ever made. In 1898, Latil, in France, devised a front-wheel-drive system for motorising horse-drawn carts.
History of the automobile
The first company formed exclusively to build automobiles was Panhard et Levassor in France, which also introduced the first four-cylinder engine. Formed in 1889, Panhard was quickly followed by Peugeot two years later. By the start of the 20th century, the automobile industry was beginning to take off in Western Europe, especially in France, where 30,204 were produced in 1903, representing 48.8% of world automobile production that year.
Brayton cycle
In 1878, George B. Selden patented the first internal combustion automobile. Inspired by the internal combustion engine invented by Brayton displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, Selden patented a four-wheel car working on a smaller, lighter, multicylinder version. He then filed a series of amendments to his application which stretched out the legal process, resulting in a delay of 16 years before the patent was granted on November 5, 1895. In 1903, Selden sued Ford for patent infringement and Henry Ford fought the Selden patent until 1911. Selden had never actually produced a working car, so during the trial, two machines were constructed according to the patent drawings. Ford argued his cars used the four-stroke Alphonse Beau de Rochas cycle or Otto cycle and not the Brayton-cycle engine used in the Selden auto. Ford won the appeal of the original case.
History of transport
The first earth tracks were created by humans carrying goods and often followed trails. Tracks would be naturally created at points of high traffic density. As animals were domesticated, horses, oxen and donkeys became an element in track-creation. With the growth of trade, tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate animal traffic. Later, the travois, a frame used to drag loads, was developed. Animal-drawn wheeled vehicles were probably developed in the Ancient Near East in the 4th or 5th millennium BC and spread to Europe and India in the 4th millennium BC and China in about 1200 BC. The Romans had a significant need for good roads to extend and maintain their empire and developed Roman roads.
History of the automobile
Throughout the veteran car era, the automobile was seen more as a novelty than as a genuinely useful device. Breakdowns were frequent, fuel was difficult to obtain, roads suitable for traveling were scarce, and rapid innovation meant that a year-old car was nearly worthless. Major breakthroughs in proving the usefulness of the automobile came with the historic long-distance drive of Bertha Benz in 1888, when she traveled more than from Mannheim to Pforzheim, to make people aware of the potential of the vehicles her husband, Karl Benz, manufactured, and after Horatio Nelson Jackson's successful transcontinental drive across the United States in 1903.
Elwood Haynes
Haynes continued to drive his car as he added improvements to the vehicle, and constructed the "Pioneer II" in 1895 to incorporate his improved steering designs and an exhaust pipe. He built the new car with the intention of running it in the 1895 Chicago Times-Herald Race, the first automobile race in the United States. Although over seventy-five cars were entered in the race, most of their owners did not have them completed in time for race so only three cars and six early motorcycles showed up. While driving to the race, Haynes had a confrontation with a Chicago policeman who insisted that Haynes had no right to drive his vehicle on public roads, forcing him to requisition a horse to pull the car the rest of the way. Similar incidents happened with the other race's entries so the city passed an ordinance a few days later to clear up any ambiguity in the laws and allow automobiles equal access to the city streets, allowing the postponed race to take place. While giving his car a ride around the town on the following day Haynes was involved in what is believed to be the first automobile accident after swerving to miss a street car and striking a sharp curb, busting a tire and damaging the axle. Without a spare tire, Haynes was unable to run in the race. The race was held on November 28, and thousands of spectators turned out. Duryea's car won first place and a German Benz came in second. Another contest was held in which Haynes won a prize for most intuitive design.
Disruptive innovation
Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary. For example, the first automobiles in the late 19th century were not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower-priced Ford Model T in 1908. The "mass-produced" automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of automobiles did not.
Steam car
This early period also saw the first repossession of an automobile in 1867 and the first getaway car the same year - both by Francis Curtis of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Self-driving car
Experiments have been conducted on automated driving systems (ADS) since at least the 1920s; trials began in the 1950s. The first truly automated car was developed in 1977, by Japan's Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. The vehicle tracked white street markers, which were interpreted by two cameras on the vehicle, using an analog computer for signal processing. The vehicle reached speeds up to , with the support of an elevated rail.
Transport
The first forms of road transport involved animals, such as horses (domesticated in the 4th or the 3rd millennium BCE), oxen (from about 8000 BCE)
or humans carrying goods over dirt tracks that often followed game trails. Many early civilizations, including those in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, constructed paved roads. In classical antiquity, the Persian and Roman empires built stone-paved roads to allow armies to travel quickly. Deep roadbeds of crushed stone underneath kept such roads dry. The medieval Caliphate later built tar-paved roads. The first watercraft were canoes cut out from tree trunks. Early water transport was accomplished with ships that were either rowed or used the wind for propulsion, or a combination of the two. The importance of water has led to most cities that grew up as sites for trading being located on rivers or on the sea-shore, often at the intersection of two bodies of water. Until the Industrial Revolution, transport remained slow and costly, and production and consumption gravitated as close to each other as feasible.
The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century saw a number of inventions fundamentally change transport. With telegraphy, communication became instant and independent of the transport of physical objects. The invention of the steam engine, closely followed by its application in rail transport, made land transport independent of human or animal muscles. Both speed and capacity increased rapidly, allowing specialization through manufacturing being located independently of natural resources. The 19th century also saw the development of the steam ship, which sped up global transport.
History of the motorcycle
The very first commercial design for a self-propelled bicycle was a three-wheel design called the "Butler Petrol Cycle", conceived of and built by Edward Butler in England in 1884. He exhibited his plans for the vehicle at the Stanley Cycle Show in London in 1884, two years earlier than Karl Benz invented his first automobile who is generally recognized as the inventor of the modern automobile. Butler's vehicle was also the first design to be shown at the 1885 International Inventions Exhibition in London.
Car controls
Before the appearance of the starter motor, engines were started by various difficult and dangerous methods. These methods included: wind-up springs, gunpowder cylinders, and human-powered techniques such as a removable hand-crank. In 1896, the first electric starter was installed on an Arnold, one of the first motor cars manufactured in the United Kingdom. Charles Kettering and Henry Leland later invented and filed for the first electric starter in America in 1911. In 1912, the Cadillac Model Thirty became the first American car to have a starter installed.
Car song
In the turn of the twentieth century, the recent invention of the automobile began to appear within popular music. Many of the earliest pieces had no lyrics, instead attempting to musically emulate the sounds of the automobile, such as "The Motor Car" (1903) and "The Auto Race" (1904). Dance, ragtime, and march compositions began emerging that, though wordless, were musically inspired by the automobile. Eventually, some of these songs took on words, such as Henry Krull's "Automobile Races". In 1905, Gus Edwards premiered the song "In My Merry Oldsmobile", a tune which Kenneth T. Jackson calls "the best-known car song ever written about the automobile."
Car
In 1807, Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude created what was probably the world's first internal combustion engine (which they called a Pyréolophore), but they chose to install it in a boat on the river Saone in France. Coincidentally, in 1807 the Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz designed his own 'de Rivaz internal combustion engine' and used it to develop the world's first vehicle to be powered by such an engine. The Niépces' Pyréolophore was fuelled by a mixture of Lycopodium powder (dried spores of the Lycopodium plant), finely crushed coal dust and resin that were mixed with oil, whereas de Rivaz used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Neither design was very successful, as was the case with others, such as Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir with his hippomobile, who each produced vehicles (usually adapted carriages or carts) powered by internal combustion engines.
Charles Duryea
On November 28, 1895 in Chicago, their vehicle, driven by brother Frank, had won America's first car race. It ran to Evanston, Illinois and back. The only other finisher was one of three Benz cars mostly made in Germany. After Frank won, demand grew for the Duryea Motor Wagon. In 1896, the Duryea Brothers produced 13 cars by hand — in their garage at 47 Taylor Street — and thus Duryea became the first-ever commercially produced vehicle, and also the largest automobile factory in the United States. For the history of the company and its cars, see Duryea Motor Wagon Company.
Stearns Steam Carriage Company
Stearns moved into automobile production after building his first car in 1899. The prototype was built by J. S. Leggett and Stearn's engineer, F. L. Corey, and was an electric model. It was entered in the "New York Automobile Show" and won first prize that year. The automobile sold so few models through 1900 that the company changed to steam power in 1901.
History of the automobile
The first four-wheeled petrol-driven automobile in Britain was built in Walthamstow by Frederick Bremer in 1892. Another was made in Birmingham in 1895 by Frederick William Lanchester, who also patented the disc brake. The first electric starter was installed on an Arnold, an adaptation of the Benz Velo, built in Kent between 1895 and 1898.
W.W. (automobile)
The first car, the W.W. of 1913 was a light car powered by an 8hp V-twin engine bought in from the Precision company. This drove the rear wheels through a gear box by Chater-Lea and shaft drive to a worm gear final drive on the rear axle.