Gilbert Suarez, age 11, of Tucson, Arizona, for his question:
Who found out how to build an automobile?
For ages wagons and carts were pulled by animals, and even in ancient days many inventors dreamed of gadgets to run vehicles by mechanical means. But these early dreamers got nowhere. A workable automobile had to wait until mankind had graduated to the practical Machine Age.
The modern automobile is a comfortable carriage run by an internal combustion engine powered by gasoline fuel. There are a lot of factors in this mechanical organization and early inventors did not arrive at them all at once. Between the 1760's and the 1860's, an amazing parade of jalopies were invented, tested and improved. The object of an automobile, of course, is to run a vehicle by mechanical means. In this sense, all the early models could be called automobiles or motor cars, even though they did not perform or look like a modern auto.
The idea of an internal combustion engine was outlined ages ago and discarded for want of suitable fuel. In the 18th century, steam eras the fashionable fuel and steam engines were designed to perform all sorts of jobs. A French army captain named Nicolas Cugnot thought of using a steam engine to haul cannons and other heavy artillery. He built a flat bottomed vehicle with two large wheels behind and a smaller one in front. His engine was a huge metal tank of water heated by a coalburning furnace. It was attached in the front of the vehicle. Its steam power was piped to gears to turn the wheels and the driver sat up front on a box seat and turned a steering wheel.
This creation startled the world in the year 1770. Every ten minutes or so, it had to stop for the engine to build up more steam and at top speed it could make three miles an hour. But Cugnot's mechanical vehicle worked and most historians credit him with being the first to find out how to build an automobile. His crude model inspired others to improve it, but for the next century the engines were powered by steam.
In the early 1800's, several English inventors designed more comfortable passen¬ger carriages and better steam engines. A four wheeler appeared in 1801 and a six¬ wheeler startled the world with a speed of 15 miles per hour. Then England passed a law to discourage auto inventors. However, Americans and other Europeans carried on the improvements. In 1863, Joseph Lenoir of France tested the first carriage run by an internal combustion engine. It had one cylinder fueled by coal oil and its speed was three miles per hour. In 1890, William Morrison of Des Moines created a diet, fumeless electric auto. Its speed was 20 miles per hour but its batteries needed recharging every 50 miles. Until the internal combustion engine was improved and fueled by gasoline, steam engines seemed the best. And the best of them was our Stanley Steamer that took to the road in 1897 and remained popular until the 1920's.
The early autos were rare and very unpopular among, people used to horse dram vehicles. In 1865, England passed the Locomotives Act to discourage them. This law set a speed limit of four miles per hour on the open road and two miles per hour on city streets. What's more, an auto driver was required to employ a man to walk ahead of his car, waving a red flag to warn of the approaching menace. True, the old steamers were noisy, smoky and often they spit out hot coals. But eventually progress prevailed and after 30 years, the so called Red Flag Law was repealed.