How Did The Automobile First Come About?

By Ron Black McCarthy

The majority of the Earths population have come to rely on motor vehicles as their main method of transport and as they are such a common modern convenience, it is difficult to imagine life without them. The motor vehicle came to prominence in the 20th century but its origins came about before that, so who was the very first to take the horses off the carriage and make a self-propelled vehicle?

Ferdinand Verbiest is said to have made the very first construct that could reasonably be named an automobile in around 1672. It was a very small vehicle, incapable of carrying a driver or passenger, however it did move on its own through the power of steam. Verbiest built the small toy-like vehicle as a present for the Chinese Emperor of the time.

Following this came several different versions of self-propelled mechanical and crude internal combustion engines. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot was the first to have one of these to his name in 1769, however there was speculation as to whether or not Cugnots machine ever worked properly.

1806 saw the invention of the first internal combustion engine by the hand of Franois Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor and was powered by a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. The design was not particularly successful. It was, obviously, a comparatively basic engine and although, strictly speaking it was functional, it was not particularly efficient and most certainly did not accommodate a comfortable ride.

The man who is usually accredited with the invention of the modern automobile is Karl Benz, although there were others working on it at around the same time such as Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus. Benz completed his first Motorwagen in 1885 and was granted a patent for it in early 1886. He then began promoting the vehicles in order to try and sell them to the wealthy and between 1888 and 1893 he had sold 25 vehicles.

DMG (Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft / Daimler Motor Company) was founded in 1890 by Daimler and Maybach and under the brand name Daimler, sold their first vehicle in 1892, which was simply a horse-drawn carriage, with an engine of their own design fitted into it. By around 1895 they had built around 30 vehicles, yet they, and Benz, seemed to be unaware of each others early work.

Right towards the end of the 1900s the crankshaft and piston engine came about and throughout the 20th century developed into the sophisticated piece of technology we know it as today. Mergers between DMG and Benz in later years bore the Daimler-Benz company and the Mercedes-Benz automobile range. - 21396

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