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Which Was The First Car?

“Which was the first car?” this is one of the many questions that many car enthusiasts ask. Automotive history reveals that there are several instances of wind driven vehicles designed by Indians as we have in the Great Epics and in Europe by the Italians.

The first wind driven vehicle was recorded in 1335 which was devised by Guido da Vigevano. Later, Leonardo da Vinci designed a clock-work driven tricycle with tiller steering and a differential mechanism between the rear wheels. Again, we have records of a Catholic priest named Father Ferdinand Verbiest to have built a steam powered automobile for the Chinese Emperor, Chien Lung, in about 1678.

Thomas Newcomen built the first steam engine in 1712 and this was possibly a model vehicle powered by a spinning wheel with jets on the periphery. The first automobile to move with its own power to be record was designed by Nicholas Joseph Cugnot and constructed by M. Brezin in 1769. A replica of this vehicle is on display at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, in Paris.

The development of the internal combustion engine had to wait until a fuel was available to combust internally. A Frenchman named Etienne Lenoir patented the first practical gas engine in Paris in 1860 and drove a car based on the design from Paris to Joinville in 1862. His one-half horse power engine had a bore of 5 inches and a 24 inch stroke. It was big and heavy and turned 100 rpm. Lenoir claimed to have run the car on benzene and his drawings show an electric spark ignition.

In 1862, Alphonse Bear de Rochas figured out how to compress fuel in the same cylinder in which it was to burn, which is the way we still do it. This process of bringing fuel into the cylinder, compressing it, combusting the compressed mixture, then exhausting it is know as the Otto cycle, or four cycle engine.

Siegfried Marcus built a car in 1868 and showed one at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. It had about 3/4 horse power at 500 rpm. It ran on crude wooden wheels with iron rims and stopped by pressing wooden blocks against the iron rims, but it had a clutch, a differential and a magneto ignition. One of the four cars which Marcus built is in the Vienna Technical Museum and can still be driven under its own power.

In 1876, Nokolaus Otto patented the Otto cycle engine, which de Rochas had neglected to do so, and this later became the basis for Daimler and Benz breaking the Otto patent by claiming prior art from de Rochas.

In August 1888, William Steinway talked to Daimler about US manufacturing right and by September had a deal. By 1891 the Daimler Motor Company, owned by Steinway, was producing petrol engines for tramway cars, carriages, quadricycles, fire engines and boats.

In 1871, Dr. J. W. Carhart, professor of physics at Wisconsin State University, and the J. I. Case Company built a working steam car. Gottlieb Daimler presented the four-wheeled "wire-wheel car" at the 1889 Paris World Exposition.

By 1890 Ransom E. Olds had built his second steam powered car. In 1893, a car was built by Charles and Frank Duryea which was the first gasoline powered car in America. This car had a friction transmission, spray carburetor and low tension ignition.

Henry Ford had an engine running by 1893 but it was 1896 before he built his first car. By the end of the year Ford had sold his first car, which he called a Quadracycle, for $200 and used the money to build another one. With the financial backing of the Mayor of Detroit and other wealthy Detroiters, Ford formed the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899. A few prototypes were built but no production cars were ever made by this company. He could not sale a car until 1903 when he formed the Ford Motors Company.

Oldsmobile founded by Ransom E. Olds was the first mass producer of gasoline powered automobiles in the United States, even though Duryea was the first auto manufacturer with its thirteen cars.

Ransom Olds can be credited to have produced a small number of electric cars around the turn of the century. Little is known about them and none survive. In 1899 and 1900, electric cars outsold all other type of cars and the most popular electric was the Columbia built by Colonel Albert Augustus Pope.

European designs of that time were much advanced compared to those of America. Gottlieb Daimler's German engines powered the automobile industries of Britain and France.

The Rolls Royce Silver Ghost of 1906 was a six cylinder car that stayed in production until 1925. It represented the best engineering and technology available at the time and these cars still run smoothly and silently today. This period marked the end of the beginning of the automobile.

Steam power was widely used in the 1880's and 1890's on the farms of America. The smaller, less expensive automobile, with an internal combustion engine provided a new avenue of interest that was much more personal than the steam engine with its team of attendants.

After a century of the automobile, we can begin to assess the effects of long term transport by internal combustion. Nearly every aspect of our lives has developed around this technology. Only now, are we seeing new digital communications technologies, of the internet and beyond, that may eventually displace some of the functions of the automobile.