Car History
A car (or automobile)
is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transportation.
Most definitions of car say they run primarily on roads, seat
one to eight people, have four tires,
and mainly transport people rather than goods. Cars came into global use
during the 20th century, and developed
economies depend on them. The year 1886 is regarded as the
birth year of the modern car when German inventor Karl Benz patented
his Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Cars became widely
available in the early 20th century. One of the first cars that were accessible
to the masses was the 1908 Model T,
an American car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Cars were rapidly adopted
in the US, where they replaced animal-drawn carriages and
carts, but took much longer to be accepted in Western Europe and other parts of
the world.
There are costs and benefits to
car use. The costs include acquiring the vehicle, interest payments (if the car
is financed), repairs and maintenance,
fuel, depreciation, driving time, parking fees,
taxes, and insurance. The costs to society include maintaining
roads, land use, road congestion,
air pollution, public health, health care, and disposing of
the vehicle at the end of its life. Road traffic accidents are the largest
cause of injury-related deaths worldwide.
The benefits include on-demand
transportation, mobility, independence, and convenience.[7] The
societal benefits include economic benefits, such as job and wealth creation
from the automotive industry, transportation provision,
societal well-being from leisure and travel opportunities, and revenue
generation from the taxes. The ability for people to move flexibly
from place to place has far-reaching implications for the nature of societies. It
was estimated in 2014 that the number of cars was over 1.25 billion vehicles, up
from the 500 million of 1986. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially
in China, India and other newly industrialized countries.
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.
The word
"automobile" is a classical compound derived
from the Ancient Greek word autós (αὐτός),
meaning "self", and the Latin word mobilis, meaning
"movable". It entered the English language from French, and was first adopted by the Automobile Club of
Great Britain in 1897. Over time, the word
"automobile" fell out of favour in Britain, and was replaced by
"motor car". "Automobile" remains chiefly North American,
particularly as a formal or commercial term. An abbreviated form,
"auto", was formerly a common way to refer to cars in English, but is
now considered old-fashioned. The word is still very common as an adjective in
American English, usually in compound formations like "auto industry"
and "auto mechanic". In Dutch and German, two languages historically related to English, the
abbreviated form "auto" (Dutch) / "Auto" (German), as well
as the formal full version "automobiel" (Dutch) /
"Automobil" (German) are still used — in either the short form is the
most regular word for "car".
The first working
steam-powered vehicle was designed — and quite possibly built — by Ferdinand Verbiest,
a Flemish member of a Jesuit mission in China around
1672. It was a 65-cm-long scale-model toy for the Chinese Emperor that was
unable to carry a driver or a passenger. It is not known with certainty if
Verbiest's model was successfully built or ran.
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.
The development of
external combustion engines is detailed as part of the history of the car, but
often treated separately from the development of true cars. A variety of
steam-powered road vehicles were used during the first part of the 19th
century, including steam cars, steam buses, phaetons, and steam rollers. Sentiment against them led to the Locomotive Acts of 1865.
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.
Karl Benz, the inventor of the modern 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.
In 1879, Benz was
granted a patent for his first engine, which had been designed in 1878. Many of
his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible
for powering a vehicle. His first Motorwagen was
built in 1885 in Mannheim, Germany. He was awarded the
patent for its invention as of his application on 29 January 1886 (under the
auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883). Benz began
promotion of the vehicle on 3 July 1886, and about 25 Benz vehicles were sold
between 1888 and 1893, when his first four-wheeler was introduced along with a
model intended for affordability. They also were powered with four-stroke engines of his own design. Emile Roger of
France, already producing Benz engines under license, now added the Benz car to
his line of products. Because France was more open to the early cars, initially
more were built and sold in France through Roger than Benz sold in Germany. In
August 1888 Bertha Benz, the wife of
Karl Benz, undertook the first road trip by car, to prove the road-worthiness of her
husband's invention.
Bertha Benz, the first long distance driver
In 1896, Benz designed
and patented the first internal-combustion flat engine, called boxermotor. During the last
years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest car company in the world
with 572 units produced in 1899 and, because of its size, Benz & Cie.,
became a joint-stock company. The
first motor car in central Europe and one of the first factory-made cars in the
world, was produced by Czech company
Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau (later renamed to Tatra) in 1897, the Präsident automobil.
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.
Karl Benz proposed
co-operation between DMG and Benz & Cie. when economic conditions began to
deteriorate in Germany following the First World War, but the directors of DMG refused to consider
it initially. Negotiations between the two companies resumed several years
later when these conditions worsened and, in 1924 they signed an Agreement of
Mutual Interest, valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized
design, production, purchasing, and sales and they advertised or marketed their
car models jointly, although keeping their respective brands. On 28 June 1926,
Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the Daimler-Benz company, baptizing
all of its cars Mercedes Benz, as a brand honoring the most important model of
the DMG cars, the Maybach design later referred to as the 1902
Mercedes-35 hp, along with the Benz name. Karl Benz remained a member of
the board of directors of Daimler-Benz until his death in 1929, and at times
his two sons also participated in the management of the company.
In 1890, Émile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and
so laid the foundation of the automotive industry in
France. In 1891, Auguste Doriot and his Peugeot colleague Louis Rigoulot
completed the longest trip by a gasoline-powered vehicle when their
self-designed and built Daimler powered Peugeot Type 3 completed 2,100 km (1,300 miles)
from Valentigney to Paris
and Brest and back again. They were attached to the first Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle
race, but finished 6 days after the winning cyclist, Charles Terront.
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 (U.S. Patent
549,160) 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.
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.
In Britain, there had
been several attempts to build steam cars with varying degrees of success,
with Thomas Rickett even
attempting a production run in 1860. Santler from Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car
Club of Great Britain as having made the first gasoline-powered car in the
country in 1894, followed by Frederick William
Lanchester in 1895, but these were both one-offs. The
first production vehicles in Great Britain came from the Daimler Company, a company founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896, after purchasing the right to
use the name of the engines. Lawson's company made its first car in 1897, and
they bore the name Daimler.
In 1892, German
engineer Rudolf Diesel was
granted a patent for a "New Rational Combustion Engine". In 1897, he
built the first diesel engine. Steam-,
electric-, and gasoline-powered vehicles competed for decades, with gasoline
internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. Although
various pistonless rotary
engine designs have attempted to compete with the
conventional piston and crankshaft design, only Mazda's version of
the Wankel engine has had
more than very limited success.
All in all, it is
estimated that over 100,000 patents created the modern automobile and
motorcycle.
................Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car
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