What Was The
First Car?
- A Quick History of the Automobile for Young
People
by William W.
Bottorff
Several Itialians recorded designs for wind
driven vehicles. The first was Guido da Vigevano in
1335. It was a windmill type drive to gears and
thus to wheels. Vaturio designed a similar vehicle
which was also never built. Later Leonardo da Vinci
designed a clockwork driven tricycle with tiller
steering and a differential mechanism between the
rear wheels.
A Catholic priest named Father Ferdinand
Verbiest has been said to have built a steam
powered vehicle for the Chinese Emporer Chien Lung
in about 1678. There is no information about the
vehicle, only the event. Since James Watt didn't
invent the steam engine until 1705 we can quess
that this was possibly a model vehicle powered by a
mechanism like Hero's steam engine, a spining wheel
with jets on the periphery.
The first vehicle to move under its own power
for which there is a record was designed by
Nicholas Joseph Cugnot and constructed by M. Brezin
in 1769. A replica of this vehicle is on display at
the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers,
in Paris. I believe that the Smithsonian Museum in
Washington D. C. also has a large (half size ?)
scale model. A second unit was built in 1770 which
weighed 8000 pounds and had a top speed on 2 miles
per hour and on the cobble stone streets of Paris
this was probably as fast as anyone wanted to go
it. The picture shows the first model on its first
drive around Paris were it hit and knocked down a
stone wall. It also had a tendency to tip over
frontwards unless it was conterweighted with a
canon in the rear. the purpose of the vehicle was
to haul canons around town.
The early steam powered vehicles were so heavy
that they were only practical on a perfectly flat
surface as strong as iron. A road thus made out of
iron rails became the norm for the next hundred and
twenty five years. The vehicles got bigger and
heavier and more powerful and as such they were
eventually capable of pulling a train of many cars
filled with freight and passengers.
 As
the picture at the right shows, many attempts were
being made in England by the 1830's to develop a
practical vehicle that didn't need rails. A series
of accidents and propaganda from the established
railroads caused a flurry of restrictive
legislation to be passed and the development of the
automobile bypassed England. Several commercial
vehicles were built but they were more like trains
without tracks.
The development of the internal combustion
engine had to wait until a fuel was available to
combust internally. Gunpowder was tried but didn't
work out. Gunpowder carburetors are still hard to
find. The first gas really did use gas. They used
coal gas generated by heating coal in a pressure
vessel or boiler. A frenchman named Etienne Lenoir
patented the first pratical gas engine in Paris in
1860 and drove a car based on the design from Paris
to Joinville in 1862. His one-half horse power
engine had a bore of 5 inches and a 24 inch stroke.
It was big and heavy and turned 100 rpm. Lenoir
died broke in 1900.
Lenoir had a seperate mechanism to compress the
gas before combustion. In 1862, Alphonse Bear de
Rochas figured out how to compress the gas in the
same cylinder in which it was to burn, which is the
way we still do it. This process of bringing the
gas into the cylinder, compressing it, combusting
the compressed mixture, then exhausting it is know
as the Otto cycle, or four cycle engine. Lenoir
claimed to have run the car on benzine and his
drawings show an electric spark ignition. If so,
then his vehicle was the first to run on petroleum
based fuel, or petrol, or what we call gas, short
for gasoline.
Siegfried Marcus, of Mecklenburg, built a can in
1868 and showed one at the Vienna Exhibition of
1873. His later car was called the
Strassenwagen had about 3/4 horse
power at 500 rpm. It ran on crude wooden wheels
with iron rims and stopped by pressing wooden
blocks against the iron rims, but it had a clutch,
a differential and a magneto ignition. One of the
four cars which Marcus built is in the Vienna
Technical Museum and can still be driven under its
own power.
In 1876, Nokolaus Otto patented the Otto cycle
engine, de Rochas had neglected to do so, and this
later became the basis for Daimler and Benz
breaking the Otto patent by claiming prior art from
de Rochas.
 The
picture to the left, taken in 1885, is of Gottllieb
Daimler's workshop in Bad Cannstatt where he built
the wooden motorcycle shown. Daimler's son Paul
rode this motorcycle from Cannstatt to
Unterturkheim and back on November 10, 1885.
Daimler used a hot tube ignition system to get his
engine speed up to 1000 rpm
The previous August, Karl Benz had already
driven his light, tubular framed tricycle around
the Neckar valley, only 60 miles from where Daimler
lived and worked. They never met. Frau Berta Benz
took Karl's car one night and made the first long
car trip to see her mother, traveling 62 miles from
Mannheim to Pforzheim in 1888.
Also in August 1888, William Steinway, owner of
Steinway & Sons piano factory, talked to
Daimler about US manufacturing right and by
September had a deal. By 1891 the Daimler Motor
Company, owned by Steinway, was producing petrol
engines for tramway cars, carriages, quadricycles,
fire engines and boats in a plant in Hartford,
CT.
Steam cars had been built in America since
before the Civil War but the early one were like
miniture locomotives. In 1871, Dr. J. W. Carhart,
professor of physics at Wisconsin State University,
and the J. I. Case Company built a working steam
car. It was practical enough to inspice the State
of Wisconsin to offer a $10,000 prize to the winner
of a 200 mile race in 1878.>
The 200 mile race had seven entries, or which
two showed up for the race. One car was sponsored
by the city of Green Bay and the other by the city
of Oshkosh. The Green Bay car was the fastest but
broke down and the Oshkosh car finished with an
average speed of 6 mph.
 From
this time until the end of the century, nearly
every community in America had a mad scientist
working on a steam car. Many old news papers tell
stories about the trials and failures of these
would be inventors.
By 1890 Ransom E. Olds had built his second
steam powered car, pictured at left. One was sold
to a buyer in India, but the ship it was on was
lost at sea.
 Running
by February, 1893 and ready for road trials by
September, 1893 the car built by Charles and Frank
Duryea, brothers, was the first gasoline powered
car in America. The first run on public roads was
made on September 21, 1893 in Springfield, MA. They
had purchased a used horse drawn buggy for $70 and
installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine.
The car (buggy) had a friction transmission, spray
carburetor and low tension ignition. It must not
have run very well because Frank didn't drive it
again until November 10 when it was reported by the
Springfield Morning Union newspaper.
This car was put into storage in 1894 and stayed
there until 1920 when it was rescued by Inglis M.
Uppercu and presented to the United States National
Museum.
 Henry
Ford had an engine running by 1893 but it was 1896
before he built his first car. By the end of the
year Ford had sold his first car, which he called a
Quadracycle, for $200 and used the money to build
another one. With the financial backing of the
Mayor of Detroit, William C. Maybury 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. It was disolved in January 1901. Ford
would not offer a car for sale until 1903.
 The
first closed circuit automobile race held at
Narragansett Park, Rhode Island, in September 1896.
All four cars to the left are Duryeas, on the right
is a Morris & Salom Electrobat. Thirteen
Duryeas of the same design were produced in 1896,
making it the first production car.
 At
left is pictured the factory with produced the 13
Duryeas. In 1898 the brothers went their seperate
ways and the Duryea Motor Wagon Company was closed.
Charles, who was born in 1861 and was eight years
older than Frank had taken advantage of Frank in
publicity and patents. Frank went out on his own
and eventually joined with Stevens Arms and Tool
Company to form the Stevens-Duryea Company which
was sold to Westinghouse in 1915. Charles tried to
produce some of his own hare-brained ideas with
various companies until 1916. Thereafter he limited
himself to writing technical book and articles. He
died in 1938. Frank got a half a million dollars
for the Westinghouse deal and lived in comfort
until his death in 1967, just seven months from his
98th birthday.
 In
this engraving Ransom Eli Olds is at the tiller of
his first petrol powered car. Riding beside him is
Frank G. Clark, who built the body and in the back
are their wives. This car was running by 1896 but
production of the Olds Motor Vehicle Company of
Detroit did not begin until 1899. After an early
failure with luxury vehicles they established the
first really successful production with the classic
Curved Dash Oldsmobile.
 The
Curved Dash Oldsmobile had a single cylinder
engine, tiller steering and chain drive. It sold
for $650. In 1901 600 were sold and the next years
were 1902 - 2,500, 1903 - 4,000, 1904 - 5,000. In
August 1904 Ransom Olds left the company to form
Reo (for Ransom Eli Olds). Ransom E. Olds was
the first mass producer of gasoline powered
automobiles in the United States, even though
Duryea was the first auto manufacturer with their
13 cars.
 Ransom
Olds produced a small number of electric cars
around the turn of the century. Little is known
about them and none survive. The picture ar left is
the only known picture of one of these rare cars.
It was taken at was taken at
Belle Island Park, Michigan. In 1899 and 1900,
electrics outsold all other type of cars and the
most popular electric was the Columbia built by
Colonel Albert Augustus Pope, owner of American
Bicycle Company.
an interesting
footnote to the Olds electric.
 J.
A. Koosen and H. Lawson in a 1895 Lutzmann. This is
typical of American design in the mid 1890's. It
was truly a horseless carriage. Tiller steering,
engine under the floorboards, very high center of
gravity, not designed for road travel. Imagine
climbing into one of these and trying to drive
across town and around a few corners. Kind of
scary, huh?
 This
Daimler of 1899 was owned by Lionel Rothcheld. The
european design is much advanced of the American
designs of the same time. Gottlieb Daimler took
part in the London-to-Brighton run in 1896 but died
in 1900 at the age of 66 without ever meeting Benz.
His German engines powered the automobile
industries of Britian and France.
 The
1908 Haynes in the back ground shows the rapid
development of the petrol powered car when compared
to the 1894 model in the forground. Consider the
present difference between a 1998 Tarus and the 14
year old 1984 Tarus. Some difference. Old man
Haynes claimed to have build the 1894 car in 1893
but had no proof.
 The
Rolls Royce Silver Ghost of 1906 was a six cylinder
car that stayed in production until 1925. It
represented the best engineering and technology
available at the time and these cars still run
smoothly and silently today. This period marked the
end of the beginning of the automobile.
How The Car Changed The County,
Town by Town
 In
1903, in Winfield, Kansas Mr. H. T. Trice is seen
standing in from of the first car in town. Acutally
it was more like a truck and was used to haul
customers out to see land. The railroads brought
potential customers to town and Mr. Trice picked
them up at the depot and took them out to his new
developements.
 Steam
power was widely used in the 1880's and 1890's on
the farms of America. Cowley County had its share
of these behemoths and had a large group of people
with the ability to use, and the skill to fix and
repair them. The smaller, less expensive
automobile, with an internal combustion engine
provided a new avenue of interest that was much
more personal than the steam engine with its team
of attendents.
 Mr.
Martin Baden of Winfield, Kansas and his new
eight-cylinder Cadillac roadster. This car was
especially built for Mr. Baden, and was equipped
with all modern appliances. Driving an automobile
required a high degree to technical dexterity,
mechanical skill, special clothing including hat,
gloves, duster coat, goggles and boots. Tires were
notoriously unreliable and changing one was an
excruciating experience. Fuel was a problem, since
gasoline was in short supply. Mr. Baden became
interested enough to become a self-taught geologist
and eventually discover major oil deposits in
Cowley County, Kansas, and surrounding area.
The drivers of the day were an adventurous lot,
going out in every kind of weather, unprotected by
an enclosed body, or even a convertible top.
Everyone in town knew who owned what car and the
cars were soon to become each individuals token of
identity. Notice the guy at the far right fixing
his flat time. The dirt roads were a challange in
any weather. By 1910 Winfield paved the downtown
streets with brick, horses were no longer welcome.
The mule drawn trolleys were upgraded to electric
streetcars.
 By
1915 racing had become a passion all over the
United States. A typical local race track was at
the Cowley County Fairgounds in Winfield, Kansas.
The local obsession with horse racing, started by
the earliest settlers in 1870, turned to the new
technology of auto racing. Local farm boys who were
familiar with motors and equipment used their
talents on cars and motorcycles to go faster than
anyone in the county.
 The
horse racing facilities were quickly converted to
the new, faster, more dangerous, and thus more
exciting, motor racing.
Eventually the automobile change the face of
small town America. The town gentry bought cars,
albiet fashoned to match their station in life. In
Winfield, Kansas, Main Street went from a gathering
place for people and horses and wagons to a parking
place for the ubiquitous automobile. The Trolley
Cars were displaced to make room for more cars. The
brick streets were covered with asphalt to provide
a smoother ride for the automobile. The old fire
maps of Winfield show the inexorable spread of the
automobile and all of the supporting businesses.
Filling stations, auto dealers, battery stations,
oil depots all grew and expanded to displace to
older technologies of the day. R. B. Sandfords
Winfield Carriage Works appears on the firemap of
Block 127 in 1918. But on the same spot on Block
127 in 1925 it has been replaced by a Battery
Station and an Auto Storage facility.
 Midway
through the century, cars had become a central
feature of life for young people. The cars owned by
the students of Winfield High School in the fifties
are typical of every where in America at that time.
It was mobility, status, challenge, and social
freedom. It certainly hurt our football team at the
time. A typical excuse for not playing on the
football team was that a student had to work to
earn money to pay for their car. When asked why
they needed a car, the answer was invariably: to
get to work!
After a century of the automobile, we can begin
to assess the effects of long term transport by
internal combustion. Nearly every aspect of our
lives has developed around this technology. Only
now, are we seeing new digital communications
technologies, of the internet and beyond, that may
eventually displace some of the functions of the
automobile and replace our current problems with a
new set that you, our grandchildren, will be
charged with solving. Ask your grandparents about
their first car. I'm sure you will get to hear a
great story.
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