The inventors had taken the
automobile from an Idea to a reality by 1900, but it was still a wealthy family
toy. The inventors were still at it with
additions to the automobile. By 1900, the utility and viability of the automobile
was apparent to those who were working on it.
It was time to make it affordable for more consumers.
History of the automobile From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
20th century - Pre
WWII
1924
Doble Model E
Steam-powered road vehicles, both cars
and wagons, reached the peak of their development in the early 1930s with
fast-steaming lightweight boilers and efficient engine designs. Internal
combustion engines also developed greatly during WWI, becoming simpler to
operate and more reliable.
The development of the high-speed diesel
engine from 1930 began to replace them for wagons, accelerated in the UK
by tax changes making steam wagons uneconomic
overnight. Although a few designers continued to advocate steam power, no
significant developments in production steam cars took place after Doble in
1931.
Post-WWII
Whether steam cars will ever be reborn
in later technological eras remains to be seen. Magazines such as Light Steam Power continued to describe them into the 1980s. The 1950s
saw interest in steam-turbine cars powered by small nuclear reactors (this
was also true of aircraft), but the dangers inherent in nuclear fission technology soon
killed these ideas.
Electric
automobiles
German Flocken
Elektrowagen of 1888, regarded as the first electric car of the world
In 1828, Ányos Jedlik,
a Hungarian who invented an early type of electric motor,
created a tiny model car powered by his new motor. In 1834, Vermont blacksmith Thomas Davenport, the inventor of the first
American DC electrical motor, installed his motor in a small
model car, which he operated on a short circular electrified track. In
1835, Professor Sibrandus Stratingh of Groningen,
the Netherlands and his assistant Christopher
Becker created a small-scale electrical car, powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. In
1838, Scotsman Robert Davidson built an electric locomotive that
attained a speed of 4 miles per hour. In England, a patent was granted in 1840
for the use of rail tracks as conductors of electric current,
and similar American patents were issued to Lilley and Colten in 1847. Between
1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain) Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first
crude electric carriage, powered by non-rechargeable
The Flocken Elektrowagen of
1888 by German inventor Andreas Flocken is regarded as the first real electric
car of the world.
Electric cars enjoyed popularity between
the late 19th century and early 20th century, when electricity was among the
preferred methods for automobile propulsion, providing a level of comfort and
ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline cars of the time.
Advances in internal combustion technology, especially the
electric starter, soon rendered this advantage moot; the greater range of
gasoline cars, quicker refueling times, and growing petroleum infrastructure,
along with the mass production of gasoline vehicles by companies such as
the Ford Motor Company, which reduced prices of gasoline cars
to less than half that of equivalent electric cars, led to a decline in the use
of electric propulsion, effectively removing it from important markets such as
the United States by the 1930s.
However, in recent years, increased
concerns over the
environmental impact of gasoline cars, higher gasoline prices, improvements
in battery technology, and the prospect of peak oil,
have brought about renewed interest in electric cars, which are perceived to be
more environmentally friendly and cheaper to maintain and run, despite high
initial costs, after a failed reappearance in the late-1990s.
Internal
combustion engines
1885-built Benz
Patent-Motorwagen,
the first car to go into production with an internal combustion engine The
second Marcus car of 1888 at the Technical Museum in Vienna
Early attempts at making and using internal combustion
engines were
hampered by the lack of suitable fuels, particularly liquids, therefore the
earliest engines used gas mixtures.
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.
About 1870, in Vienna,
Austria (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire), inventor Siegfried Marcus put
a liquid-fueled 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.
It is generally acknowledged that
the first really practical automobiles with petrol/gasoline-powered internal combustion engines were completed almost
simultaneously by several German inventors working independently: Karl Benz
built his first automobile in 1885 in Mannheim.
Benz was granted a patent for his automobile on 29 January 1886, and began
the first production of automobiles in 1888, after Bertha Benz,
his wife, had proved – with the first long-distance trip in August 1888, from
Mannheim to Pforzheim and back – that the horseless coach was absolutely
suitable for daily use. Since 2008 a Bertha Benz Memorial
Route commemorates this event.
Soon after, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Stuttgart in
1889 designed a vehicle from scratch to be an automobile, rather than a horse-drawn carriage fitted with an engine. They also
are usually credited with invention of the first motorcycle in 1886, but
Italy's
Enrico Bernardi of the University of Padua, in 1882, patented a 0.024 horsepower
(17.9 W) 122 cc (7.4 cu in) one-cylinder petrol motor, fitting it
into his son's tricycle, making it at least a candidate for the
first automobile and first motorcycle;
Bernardi enlarged the tricycle in 1892
to carry two adults.
One of the first four-wheeled
petrol-driven automobiles in Britain was built in Birmingham in
1895 by Frederick William
Lanchester, who also
patented the disc brake and the first electric starter was
installed on an Arnold, an adaptation of the Benz Velo,
built in Kent between 1895 and 1898. George F. Foss of Sherbrooke,
Quebec built a single-cylinder gasoline car in 1896 which he drove for 4 years,
ignoring city officials' warnings of arrest for his "mad antics."
In all the turmoil, many early pioneers
are nearly forgotten. In 1891, John William Lambert built a three-wheeler in Ohio
City, Ohio, which was destroyed in a fire the same year, while Henry Nadig constructed a four-wheeler
in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It is likely they were not the only
ones.
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 650 cc(40 cu in)
engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average 45 kilometres
per hour (28.0 mph) in the 1897 Paris-Tourville rally. By 1900, mass production of
automobiles had begun in France and the United States.
The first motor car in Central Europe
was produced by the Austro-Hungarian company
Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau (later renamed to Tatrain today's
Czech Republic) in 1897, the Präsident 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. The first automobile in Japan, a French Panhard-Levassor,
in 1898
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.
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 of
automobile production. 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. Within a few years, a dizzying assortment of technologies were being used by hundreds of
producers all over the western world. Steam, electricity,
and petrol/gasoline-powered automobiles competed for decades,
with petrol/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.
In
1898, Louis Renault had a De Dion-Bouton modified with fixed driveshaft 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.
Innovation was not limited to the
vehicles themselves, either. Increasing numbers of cars propelled the growth of
the petroleum industry, as well as the development of
technology to produce gasoline (replacing kerosene and coal oil)
and of improvements in heat-tolerant mineral oil lubricants(replacing vegetable and animal oils).
There were social effects, also. Music
would be made about cars, such as "In My Merry Oldsmobile" (a
tradition that continues) while, in 1896, William Jennings
Bryan would be the
first presidential candidate to campaign in a car (a donated Mueller), in Decatur, Illinois. Three
years later, Jacob German would start a tradition for New York City cabdrivers when
he sped down Lexington Avenue, at the "reckless" speed of
12 mph. Also in 1899, Akron, Ohio,
adopted the first self-propelled paddy wagon. In
My Merry Oldsmobile songbook
featuring an Oldsmobile Curved
Dash automobile
(produced 1901–1907) and period driving clothing
By 1900, the early centers of national
automotive industry developed in many countries, including Belgium (home
to Vincke, which copied Benz; Germain, a pseudo-Panhard;
and Linon and Nagant, both based on
the Gobron-Brillié), Switzerland (led by Fritz Henriod,
Rudolf Egg,
Saurer, Johann Weber,
and Lorenz Popp), Vagnfabrik
AB in
Sweden, Hammel (by A. F. Hammel and H. U. Johansen
at Copenhagen, in Denmark, which only built one car, ca. 1886, Irgens (starting in
Bergen, Norway, in 1883, but without success), Italy (where FIATstarted in 1899), and
as far afield as Australia (where Pioneer set
up shop in 1898, with an already archaic paraffin-fueled centre-pivot-steered
wagon).
Meanwhile, the export trade had begun,
with Koch exporting cars and trucks from Paris to Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and
the Dutch East Indies. 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, but also continued to build
horse-drawn vehicles until 1919.
In 1908, the first South American
automobile was built in Peru, the Grieve. Motor
cars were also exported very early to British colonies and the first motor car
was exported to India in 1897.
Throughout the veteran car era, however,
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 (50 mi) 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.
The 1908 New York to
Paris Race was the
first circumnavigation of the world by automobile. German, French, Italian and
American teams began in New York City 12 February 1908 with three of the
competitors ultimately reaching Paris. The US built Thomas Flyer with George Schuster
(driver) won the
race covering 22,000 miles in 169 days. While other automakers provided
motorists with tire repair kits, Rambler was first in
1909 to equip its cars with a spare tire that
was mounted on a fifth wheel
Brass or
Edwardian era
Model-T
Ford car parked near the Geelong Art Gallery at its launch in Australia
in 1915
This period lasted from roughly 1905
through to 1914 and the beginning of World War I. It is generally referred to
as the Edwardian era, but in the United States is often
known as the Brass era from the widespread use of brass in vehicles during this time.
Within the 15 years that make up this
era, the various experimental designs and alternate power systems would be
marginalized. 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 recognizable and standardized 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
favor with the introduction of tonneaus and
other less-expensive touring bodies.
A Stanley Steamer racecar in 1903.
In 1906, a similar Stanley Rocket set the world land speed record at 205.5km/h
at Daytona Beach Road Course. By
1906, steam car development had advanced, and they
were among the fastest road vehicles in that period.
Throughout
this era, development of automotive
technology was
rapid, due in part to hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the
world's attention. Key developments included the electric ignition system
(by dynamotor on the Arnold in 1898, though Robert Bosch,
1903, tends to get the credit), independent suspension (actually
conceived by Bollée in 1873), and four-wheel brakes (by the Arrol-Johnston Company
of Scotland in
1909). Leaf springs were widely used for suspension, though many other systems were still
in use, with angle steel taking over from armored wood as the frame material
of choice.
Transmissions and throttle controls were widely
adopted, allowing a variety of cruising speeds, though vehicles generally still
had discrete speed settings, rather than the infinitely variable system
familiar in cars of later eras. Safety glass also made its debut, patented
by John Wood in England in 1905. (It would
not become standard equipment until 1926, on a Rickenbacker. 1912
All-steel components of the BSA 13.9 body, upholstery above
Between 1907 and 1912 in the United
States, the high-wheel motor buggy (resembling the horse buggy of
before 1900) was in its heyday, with over seventy-five makers including
Holsman (Chicago), IHC (Chicago), and Sears (which sold via catalog);
the high-wheeler would be killed by the Model T. In 1912, Hupp (in
the United States, supplied by Hale & Irwin) and BSA (in
the UK) pioneered the use of all-steel bodies, joined in 1914 by Dodge (who produced Model T
bodies). While it would be another two decades before all-steel bodies
would be standard, the change would mean improved supplies of superior-quality
wood for furniture makers.
Some examples of cars of the period
included:
1907
In Japan, the Hatsudoki Seizo Co. Ltd. is formed, which was later renamed in
1951 as Daihatsu Kōgyō
Kabushiki-gaisha.
Also in April 1907, the aforementioned Komanosuke Uchiyama produced the Takuri,
the first entirely Japanese-made gasoline engine car.
1908–1927 Ford Model T — the most widely
produced and available 4-seater car of the era. It used a planetary transmission, and had a pedal-based
control system. Ford T was proclaimed as the most influential car of the 20th
century in the international Car of the Century awards.
1909
Morgan Runabout – a very popular cyclecar, cyclecars were sold
in far greater quantities than 4-seater cars in this period
1910 Mercer Raceabout — regarded as one
of the first sports cars, the Raceabout
expressed the exuberance of the driving public, as did the similarly
conceived American Underslung and Hispano-Suiza
Alphonso.
1910–1920 Bugatti Type 13 — a notable racing and touring model
with advanced engineering and design. Similar models were
the Types 15, 17, 22, and 23.
1914–1917,
the Kaishinsha Motor Works operated by Masujiro Hashimoto in Tokyo, while
importing, assembling and selling British cars, also manufactured seven units
of a two-cylinder, 10-horsepower “all-Japanese” car called Dattogo. Kaishinsha
was the first automobile manufacturing business in Japan.
1917
Japanese company Mitsubishi builds the Mitsubishi Model A, all hand built in
limited numbers for Japanese executives.
Vintage era: 1919 Ford Model T Coupe,
1926 Bugatti Type 35, 1929 Austin Seven
The vintage era lasted from the end of
World War I (1918), through to the Wall Street Crash at the end of 1929. During this
period the front-engined car came to dominate with
closed bodies and standardized controls becoming
the norm. In 1919, 90% of cars sold were open; by 1929, 90% were
closed. Development of the internal combustion
engine
continued at a rapid pace, with multi-valve and overhead camshaft engines
produced at the high end, and V8, V12,
and even V16 engines conceived for the ultra-rich.
Also in 1919, hydraulic brakes were
invented by Malcolm Loughead (co-founder of Lockheed); they were adopted by Duesenberg for
their 1921 Model A. Three years later, Hermann Rieseler of Vulcan Motor invented the first automatic
transmission, which had
two speed planetary gear-box, torque converter,
and lockup clutch; it never entered production. (Its
like would only become an available option in 1940.)
Just at the end of the vintage
era, tempered glass (now standard equipment in side
windows) was invented in France. In this era the revolutionary pontoon design of cars without fully
articulated fenders, running boards and
other non-compact ledge elements was introduced in small series but mass
production of such cars was started much later (after WWII).
American auto companies in the 1920s
expected they would soon sell six million cars a year, but did not do so until
1955. Numerous companies disappeared. Between 1922 and 1925, the number of
U.S. passenger car builders decreased from 175 to 70. H. A. Tarantous, managing
editor of MoToR Member Society of Automotive Engineers, in a New York Times article
from 1925, suggested many were unable to raise production and cope with falling
prices (due to assembly line production), especially for low-priced cars. The
new pyroxylin-based
paints, eight cylinder engine, four wheel brakes, and balloon tires as the
biggest trends for 1925.
Examples of period vehicles:
1922–1939 Austin 7 — one of the most
widely copied vehicles ever, serving as a template for cars around the world,
from BMW to Nissan.
1922–1931 Lancia Lambda — very advanced
car for the time, first car to feature a load-bearing monocoque and
1924–1929 Bugatti Type 35 — one of the most
successful racing cars of all time, with over 1,000 victories in five years.
1925–1928 Hanomag 2 / 10 PS — early example
of ponton styling.
1927–1931 Ford
Model A (1927-1931) —
after keeping the brass era Model T in production for
too long, Ford broke from the past by restarting its model series with the 1927
Model A. More than 4 million were produced, making it the best-selling model of
the era. The Ford Model A was a prototype for the beginning of Soviet mass car
production (GAZ A).
1930 Cadillac V-16 — developed at
the height of the vintage era, the V16-powered Cadillac would join Bugatti's Royale as the most
legendary ultra-luxury cars of the era.
The pre-war part of the classic era
began with the Great Depression in
1930, and ended with the recovery after World War II, commonly placed at 1946.
It was in this period that integrated fenders and
fully closed bodies began to dominate sales, with the
new saloon/sedan body style even incorporating
a trunk or boot at the rear for storage. The old
open-top runabouts, phaetons,
and touring cars were largely phased out by the end
of the classic era as wings, running boards, and headlights were
gradually integrated with the body of the car.
By the 1930s, most of the mechanical
technology used in today's automobiles had been invented, although some things
were later "re-invented", and credited to someone else. For
example, front-wheel drive was re-introduced by André Citroën with
the launch of the Traction Avant in 1934, though it had appeared
several years earlier in road cars made by Alvis and Cord,
and in racing cars by Miller (and may have appeared as early as 1897). In the
same vein, independent suspension was originally conceived by
Amédée Bollée in 1873, but not put in production
until appearing on the low-volume Mercedes-Benz 380 in 1933, which prodded American
makers to use it more widely. In 1930, the number of auto manufacturers declined sharply as the industry
consolidated and matured, thanks in part to the effects of the Great Depression.
Exemplary pre-war automobiles:
1932–1939 Alvis Speed 20 — the first with
all-synchromesh gearbox.
1932–1948 Ford V-8 (Model B) — introduction of
the flathead V8 in mainstream
vehicles
1934–1938 Tatra 77 —
first serial-produced car with aerodynamic design
1934–1940 Bugatti Type 57 — a singular
refined automobile for the wealthy
1934–1956 Citroën Traction
Avant —
the first mass-produced front-wheel drive car, built
with monocoque
chassis
1936–1955 MG T series — sports cars
1938–2003 Volkswagen Beetle — a design that
was produced for over 60 years with over 20 million units assembled in several
counties
1936–1939 Rolls-Royce Phantom
III — V12 engine
Comments
My
parents bought a 1946 Plymouth and drove it until 1958. It became my high school
car. The blue paint had faded, so I painted it dark green and I drove it until
1961. I named it the green latrine and
it became famous in its own right.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment