AS "AMERICAN"(UNITED STATES OF THE AMERICAS) AS APPLE PIE, THE AUTOMOBILE., THE HAMBURGER, AND THE HOT-DOG.

A Little -bit of Historical Trivia

Where did the Automobile Come From?

How About Apple-pie, the Hamburger, the Hot-dog?
 Where did They Originate?

            No one person or country can be blamed or credited for the invention of the automobile that you are driving today. It was developed bit by bit from the ideas, imagination, fantasy, and tinkering of hundreds of individuals through hundreds of years. Thomas Russell Ybarra, in the last century, wrote of the automobile as being a Roman invention. Martini was a 14th century Italian painter, who had been trained in engineering, he designed a man-propelled carriage, mounted on four wheels; which he called the "automobile" from the Greek word "auto"(self) and the Latin word Mobils" (moving). Car on the other hand comes from the ancient Celtic word "cirrus" meaning cart and wagon. Leonardo Da Vinci, also conceived (as he did the helicopter) of an armor-plated war vehicle, the propulsion system of which is much like that of Martinis. While, some claim, these particular concepts did not contribute anything of value, these vehicles do closely resemble the ones depicted in the popular Flintstones cartoon. The important thing for Canadians to learn and remember is the automobile is not some recent idea that popped up in the 19th-century or even the 14th. The car, like the culinary arts is a creation that has charmed imagination and inventiveness before man was able to conceive how to make them go. It is definitely not an American invention and they have no more claim to it than do we. Why then does Canada, with the greatest mineral and material wealth in the world continue to give that wealth away, almost for free to countries like Japan (with almost no natural recourses) or the U.S.A. and not manufacture its own automobile?

            As early as 1600, the Dutch, no strangers to wind energy, had built a wind-powered sail-mounted (which the U.S A much later tried to copy with the unsuccessful prairie schooner) carriage. The Dutch developed one with small wind mills (remind you of a modern turbine) built in and gears, to all four wheels, which could reach speeds as high as twenty miles an hour.  These and its predecessor were probably the first land vehicles to move under, other than that of animal or human muscle.

            In the 1700s, a Frenchman, Jacques Vaucanson, built a vehicle which was powered by a motor based on the workings of a clock. What he neglected to calculate was that any clock, which was capable of moving such a vehicle with passengers (we still have the equivalent used in such things as children’s toys) would have to out weigh the load it was carrying and winding it wasn't worth the effort.

            Inventors in England, France, Germany, and other countries worked on the idea of a compressed air engine, but at the time were unable to find the solution to self-propulsion in this means. These efforts contributed elements like valves, pistons, cylinders and connecting rods, and an emerging idea of how each of these elements related to the other.

            The first invention that can truly and logically be called an automobile (by today's concept) was a heavy, three-wheeled, steam-driven, clumsy vehicle built in 1769 by Captain Nicolas- Joseph Cugnot, a French Army engineer. Cugnot was actually born in Switzerland, but the French--like the Americans- don't want to hear about it. This contraption has been preserved and it can still be seen in the Paris museum, where it is displayed with proper national pride.

            Thomas Slavery, an English engineer, gave the world its first steam engine in 1698- not James Watt as often claimed. Watts’s great improvement of the Thomas Newcomen steam engine was not developed until 1769, during which time James Watt was working for the University of Glasgow.

            Sir Isaac Newton in 1680, conceived of the idea of a carriage propelled by a rearward directed jet of steam. It didn't amount to much at the time, but this concept lead to the inventions of rearward directed engines to provide the thrust for the German rocket bombs of World War 2, jet planes and rockets to explore space.

            The first electric powered automobile was built in Scotland about 1839 by Robert Anderson and electric cabs appeared on the streets of London in the late 1800s--kind of makes you realize just how primitive we in North America were and in many ways, still are--and on April 29, 1899 in France, an electric car reached speeds of sixty miles per hour.

            Eventually a U. S. car the Stanley Steamer, but not until 1906, was clocked at 127.6 miles per hour.

            Internal-combustion automobiles did not just burst forth on the scenes all of a sudden either.

·   1860- Etienne Lenoir, Paris, patenting his invention of an internal combustion engine powered by coal gas (which Canada and other countries are again trying to develop).

            1864- First carburetor and magneto, Vienna Austria, Sigfried Marcus.

1833 - Carl Fredrich Benz and Gottlach Wilhelm Daimler, Germany designed and built the FIRST commercially successful cars, both had internal combustion engines.

            Again, eventually the Americans came on the scene

·   1892-93 first successful American car, a copy of a European model (isn't this, what they now criticize countries like Japan, China and Korea for doing, and is it not the main factor that lead up to Japan entering the second world war?).

·   1898 - Henry Ford built his first car-it was condemned a public nuisance.

·   1903 Henry Ford founded the ford Motor Company

Model A sold for $250.00 - Model B $ 2,000.00 - Model K 1906, $2,800 big heavy with a top speed of 60 mph. it sold for $2,000 more than the Cadillac, Edison Motors, and was another Ford Mistake, Helping to establish General Electric and subsidiaries as the largest companies in the world.

·   1909-13 Ford built his model T-1914- First auto assembly line, while not an original concept; the only real American automotive development.

©Al (Alex-Alexander) D. Girvan