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The history of the automobil

With the invention of the wheel in 4000 BC, man’s journey on the road of mechanized transport had begun. Since then he continually sought to devise an automated, labor saving machine to replace the horse. Innumerable attempts reached conclusion in the early 1760s with the building of the first steam driven tractor by a French Captain, Nicolas Jacob Cugnot.

It was however left to Karl Benz and Gottlieb Damlier to produce the first vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine in 1885. It was then that the petrol engine was introduced, which made the car a practical and safe proposition. The cars in this period were more like the cars on our roads today. With cars came the era of speed.

Cadillac V16 1930-1937 Ford V8 1932-1953 Porsche 356 1950-1965 Mercedes-Benz 300SL 1954-1957
Cadillac V16 1930-1937 | Ford V8 1932-1953 | Porsche 356 1950-1965 | Mercedes-Benz 300SL 1954-1957

BMW 507 1956-1959 | Jaguar E-type 1961-1975 | VW Beetle 1938-2003 | Ford Mustang 1964-1968

The first ever land-speed record was established about a 100 years back, in 1898. Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat of France drove an electric car (in Acheres near Paris) at a speed of 39.24 miles per hour. This flagged off the era of ‘wheels racing’, which lasted till 1964, after which jet and rocket -propelled vehicles were allowed.

Then onwards, it has been one big journey...on the roads.

The birth of the car as we know it today occurred over a period of years. It was only in 1885 that the first real car rolled down on to the streets. The earlier attempts, though successful, were steam powered road-vehicles.

The first self-propelled car was built by Nicolas Cugnot in 1769 which could attain speeds of upto 6 kms/hour. In 1771 he again designed another steam-driven engine which ran so fast that it rammed into a wall, recording the world’s first accident.

In 1807 Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed the first internal combustion engine. This was subsequently used by him to develop the world’s first vehicle to run on such an engine, one that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to generate energy.

This spawned the birth of a number of designs based on the internal combustion engine in the early nineteenth century with little or no degree of commercial success. In 1860 thereafter, Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir built the first successful two-stroke gas driven engine. In 1862 he again built an experimental vehicle driven by his gas-engine, which ran at a speed of 3 kms/hour. These cars became popular and by 1865 could be frequently espied on the roads.

The next major leap forward occurred in 1885 when the four stroke engine was devised. Gottileb Damlier and Nicolas Otto worked together on the mission till they fell apart. Daimler created his own engines which he used both for cars and for the first four wheel horseless carriage. In the meanwhile, unknown to them, Karl Benz, was in the process of creating his own advanced tri-cycle which proved to be the first true car. This car first saw the light of the day in 1886.

The season of experiments continued across the seas in the United States where Henry Ford began work on a horseless carriage in 1890. He went several steps forward and in 1896, completed his first car, the Quadricycle in 1896. This was an automobile powered by a two cylinder gasoline engine. The Ford Motor Company was launched in 1903 and in 1908 he catapulted his vehicle, Model T Ford to the pinnacle of fame. Continuing with his innovations, he produced this model on a moving assembly line, thus introducing the modern mass production techniques of the automobile industry.

The modern car, therefore comes from a long list of venerated ancestors, and its lineage will, hopefully grow longer as we progress!

The history of the automobil