HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF FIRST CARS

It was the year 1885 when the first car rolled down the streets .it took several years , works and developmental attempts to reach this landmark . earlier attempts at steam powered road vehicles were successful, giving people the idea that cars as we know them today have existed for a lot longer than they have.

The first steam-powered vehicle was designed by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot and constructed by M. Brezin in 1769 and could attain speeds of up to 6 km/hour.

In 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by French engineer and mechanic, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725 - 1804). Cugnot used a steam engine to power his vehicle, built under his instructions at the Paris Arsenal by mechanic Brezin. It was used by the French Army to haul artillery at a whopping speed of 2 1/2 mph on only three wheels. The vehicle had to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to build up steam power. The steam engine and boiler were separate from the rest of the vehicle and placed in the front. The following year (1770), Cugnot built a steam-powered tricycle that carried four passengers which could attain speeds of up to 6 km/hour. , he designed another, much faster steam-driven engine, which was so fast that it rammed into a wall, recording the world's first car accident

In 1771, Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, recording the world's first car accident and making Cugnot the first person to get into a motor vehicle accident. This was the beginning of bad luck for the inventor. After one of Cugnot's patrons died and the other was exiled, the money for Cugnot's road vehicle experiments ended.

These early steam-powered vehicles were so heavy that they were only practical on a perfectly flat surface as strong as iron. However impractical as these cars may have been, the design for these vehicles were the basis for the first self-propelled vehicles and ultimately the basis for the design of the car we know today.

The next step towards the development of the car was the invention of the internal combustion engine. Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed the first internal combustion engine in 1807, using a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to generate energy. Several designs were developed for a car to run on the internal combustion engine during the early 19 th century, but with little to no degree of commercial success due to the fact that there was no known fuel that could be safely internally combusted.

In 1860, Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir, a Frenchman, built the first successful two-stroke gas driven engine.     This Belgian-born engineer, invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete an historic fifty-mile road trip which ran at a speed of 3 kms/hour and drove it from Paris to Joinville.

his cars became popular and by 1865 could be frequently seen on the roads. Unfortunately, Lenoir died broke before he could ever make any money or even enjoy his invention.

By 1860, the gasoline engine had been invented in Europe and in 1885, Karl Benz had introduced the first gasoline powered automobile. His car ran on 3 wheels and looked like a very big tricycle that had no pedals and could hold two people. In America, the first gasoline-powered auto to grace the rough horse and buggy roads was in 1891. The man to build this car was John W. Lambert. When one man saw this contraption coming down the road for the first time, he thought to himself “where in heaven’s name is the horse?” The idea of the “horseless carriage” caught on quickly.

In September of 1893, after several small changes to Lenoir's design, the first gasoline powered car,  which had a one-cylinder engine with a three-speed transmission. built by brothers Charles and Frank Duryear, was ready for road trials. The first run on public roads was made on September 21, 1893 in Springfield, MA. The first run of their car went about 7.5 miles per hour and they were able to get it to go 200 feet until a mound of dirt in the road got in its way and stopped it! This was a far cry from the distance that Benz was able to get his car to go (about 65 miles).

The Duryea brothers did not give up. In fact, they considered their 200 feet ride a huge success. Frank Duryea built the next car by himself. After two years of fine-tuning the car, the Duryea brothers gathered enough interest from investors to start the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. In 1896, they built 13 almost identical models of the Duryea Motor Wagon. Although this sounds like a very small number of cars to produce, it was actually a significant number because it was the first time anyone ever tried to mass produce automobiles. Unfortunately, this mass production company didn’t last long. At a cost of $1,000 to $2,000 a car, the average American couldn’t afford a Duryea Motor Wagon. After 13 were built, the brothers sold their company.

The Duryea brothers paved the way for men like Henry Ford to mass produce and sell automobiles at a price that everyone could afford.

. When most people think of the first cars on the road, they think Henry Ford, but it was not until 1896 that one of Henry Ford's cars could be seen on the road. He sold his first car, which he called the Quadracycle, for  used the money to build another car. 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 and it was dissolved in January 1901. Ford would not offer a car for sale again until 1903.

The development of the automobile changed the face of small-town America. As time passed, cars became less of luxury and more of a necessity. However, after a century of automobiles, we are finally realizing the long-term effects of transport by internal combustion and are looking for alternative forms of fuel and transportation.