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Karl Benz's "Velo" model (1894) - entered into an early automobile race
World map of passenger cars per 1000 people.
An automobile or motor car is a wheeled motor vehicle for transporting passengers; which also carries its own engine
or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are
designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight
people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed
principally for the transport of people rather than goods.[1] However, the term is far from precise because there are many types of vehicles that do similar tasks.
Automobile comes via the French language, from the Greek language by combining auto [self] with mobilis [moving]; meaning a vehicle that moves itself, rather than being pulled or pushed by a separate animal or another vehicle. The alternative name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum [wheeled vehicle], or the Middle English word carre [cart] (from Old North French), and karros; a Gallic wagon.[2][3]
As of 2002, there were 590 million passenger cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people).[4]
History
-
Although Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical
vehicle or automobile in about 1769 by adapting an existing horse-drawn
vehicle, this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's
three-wheeler ever ran or was stable. Others claim Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China,
built the first steam-powered vehicle around 1672 which was of small
scale and designed as a toy for the Chinese Emperor that was unable to
carry a driver or a passenger, but quite possibly, was the first
working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile')[5][6]. What is not in doubt is that Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil
road locomotive in 1801, believed by many to be the first demonstration
of a steam-powered road vehicle although it was unable to maintain
sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of
little practical use.
In Russia in the 1780s Ivan Kulibin started working on a human-pedalled carriage with s steam engine. He finished working on it in 1791. Some of its features included a flywheel, brake, gear box, and bearing,
which are also the features of a modern automobile. His design had
three wheels. Unfortunately, like for many of his inventions, the
government failed to see the potential market and it was not developed
further.[7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal combustion engine, in 1806, which was fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen
and used it to develop the world's first vehicle, albeit rudimentary,
to be powered by such an engine. The design was not very successful, as
was the case with those of Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir who each produced vehicles (adapted carriages, carts, or boats) powered by clumsy internal combustion engines.[12]
In November 1881 French inventor Gustave Trouvé
demonstrated a working three-wheeled automobile that was powered by
electricity. This was at the International Exhibition of Electricity in
Paris.[13]
Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile.[12]
An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885 and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883. It was an integral
design, without the adaptation of other existing components and
including several new technological elements to create a new concept.
This is what made it worthy of a patent. He began to sell his
production vehicles in 1888.
A photograph of the original
Benz Patent Motorwagon, first built in 1885 and awarded the patent for the concept
In 1879 Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, which had
been designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the
internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle.
His first Motorwagon was built in 1885 and he was awarded the patent for its invention as of his application on January 29, 1886. Benz began promotion of the vehicle on July 3, 1886
and approximately 25 Benz vehicles were sold between 1888 and 1893,
when his first four-wheeler was introduced along with a model intended
for affordability. They also were powered with four-stroke engines of
his own design. Emile Roger of France,
already producing Benz engines under license, now added the Benz
automobile to his line of products. Because France was more open to the
early automobiles, initially more were built and sold in France through
Roger than Benz sold in Germany.
In 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal-combustion flat engine, called a boxermotor
in German. During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was
the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in
1899 and because of its size, Benz & Cie., became a joint-stock company.
Daimler and Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (Daimler Motor Company, DMG) in Cannstatt in 1890 and under the brand name, Daimler,
sold their first automobile in 1892, which was a horse-drawn stagecoach
built by another manufacturer, that they retrofitted with an engine of
their design. By 1895 about 30 vehicles had been built by Daimler and
Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann, where
they set up shop after falling out with their backers. Benz and the
Maybach and Daimler team seem to have been unaware of each other's
early work. They never worked together because by the time of the
merger of the two companies, Daimler and Maybach were no longer part of
DMG.
Daimler died in 1900 and later that year, Maybach designed an engine named Daimler-Mercedes, that was placed in a specially-ordered model built to specifications set by Emil Jellinek.
This was a production of a small number of vehicles for Jellinek to
race and market in his country. Two years later, in 1902, a new model
DMG automobile was produced and the model was named Mercedes after the
Maybach engine which generated 35 hp. Maybach quit DMG shortly
thereafter and opened a business of his own. Rights to the Daimler brand name were sold to other manufacturers.
Karl Benz proposed co-operation between DMG and Benz & Cie. when
economic conditions began to deteriorate in Germany following the First World War,
but the directors of DMG refused to consider it initially. Negotiations
between the two companies resumed several years later when these
conditions worsened and, in 1924 they signed an Agreement of Mutual Interest,
valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design,
production, purchasing, and sales and they advertised or marketed their
automobile models jointly—although keeping their respective brands.
On June 28, 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the Daimler-Benz company, baptizing all of its automobiles Mercedes Benz as a brand honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the Maybach design later referred to as the 1902 Mercedes-35hp,
along with the Benz name. Karl Benz remained a member of the board of
directors of Daimler-Benz until his death in 1929 and at times, his two
sons participated in the management of the company as well.
In 1890, Emile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines and so laid the foundation of the automobile industry in France.
The first design for an American automobile with a gasoline internal combustion engine was drawn in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York,
who applied for a patent for an automobile in 1879, but the patent
application expired because the vehicle was never built and proved to
work (a requirement for a patent). After a delay of sixteen years and a
series of attachments to his application, on November 5, 1895, Selden
was granted a United States patent (U.S. Patent 549,160 ) for a two-stroke automobile engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of automobiles in the United States. His patent was challenged by Henry Ford and others, and overturned in 1911.
In Britain there had been several attempts to build steam cars with varying degrees of success with Thomas Rickett even attempting a production run in 1860.[14] Santler
from Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as
having made the first petrol-powered car in the country in 1894[15] followed by Frederick William Lanchester in 1895 but these were both one-offs.[15] The first production vehicles in Great Britain came from the Daimler Motor Company, a company founded by Harry J. Lawson
in 1896 after purchasing the right to use the name of the engines.
Lawson's company made its first automobiles in 1897 and they bore the
name Daimler.[15]
In 1892, German engineer Rudolf Diesel was granted a patent for a "New Rational Combustion Engine". In 1897 he built the first Diesel Engine.[12]
Steam-, electric-, and gasoline-powered vehicles competed for decades,
with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the
1910s.
Although various pistonless rotary engine designs have attempted to compete with the conventional piston and crankshaft design, only Mazda's version of the Wankel engine has had more than very limited success.
Production
The large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was debuted by Ransom Olds at his Oldsmobile factory in 1902. This concept was greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1914.
As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in fifteen minute
intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing production by
seven to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes
after), while using less manpower.[16] It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colors available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926. This is the source of Ford's apocryphal remark, "any color as long as it's black".[16] In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.[16]
Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to
a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically
reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high
efficiency is called "Fordism,"
and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the
assembly line also coincided with the economic rise of the United
States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with
very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other
countries were using less productive methods.
In the automotive industry,
its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide seeing the
founding of Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923,
Ford Germany 1925; in 1921, Citroen
was the first native European manufacturer to adopt the production
method. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going
broke; by 1930, 250 companies which did not, had disappeared.[16]
Development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to the
hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the world's
attention. Key developments included electric ignition and the electric self-starter (both by Charles Kettering, for the Cadillac Motor Company in 1910-1911), independent suspension, and four-wheel brakes.
Ford Model T, 1927, regarded as the first affordable American automobile
Since the 1920s, nearly all cars have been mass-produced to meet
market needs, so marketing plans often have heavily influenced
automobile design. It was Alfred P. Sloan
who established the idea of different makes of cars produced by one
company, so buyers could "move up" as their fortunes improved.
Reflecting the rapid pace of change, makes shared parts with one
another so larger production volume resulted in lower costs for each
price range. For example, in the 1930s, LaSalles, sold by Cadillac, used cheaper mechanical parts made by Oldsmobile; in the 1950s, Chevrolet shared hood, doors, roof, and windows with Pontiac; by the 1990s, corporate drivetrains and shared platforms (with interchangeable brakes,
suspension, and other parts) were common. Even so, only major makers
could afford high costs, and even companies with decades of production,
such as Apperson, Cole, Dorris, Haynes, or Premier, could not manage: of some two hundred American car makers in existence in 1920, only 43 survived in 1930, and with the Great Depression, by 1940, only 17 of those were left.
Classical
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