From The First Cars In History To 1860


The evolution of cars down the ages has always been an interesting topic and has been filled with many startling facts. Although it is commonly believed that the first steam powered vehicle was built by Nicolas Cugnot in 1769, this is sometimes disputed by others, who put forward another theory that the first steam powered car was built as early as 1672 by Ferdinand Verbiest, a jesuit missionary in China. But very little information is available regarding this.

The vehicle built by Nicolas Joseph Cugnot in 1769, was used as a military tractor briefly by the French Army, to haul their heavy artillery. But its cumbersome body along with its instability resulted in it being shelved soon. Later on, another Frenchman, Onesiphore Pecqueur tried to improve Cugnot’s vehicle without much success.

Puffing Devil


In 1801 Richard Trevithick developed his ‘Puffing Devil’, a steam powered vehicle that had a firebox enclosed in the boiler. Though unsuccessful, this development led to the creation of the ‘London Steam Carriage’, which was quite popular in London for a few years, after which it gradually disappeared. Steam carriage services again resurfaced in England in the 1830s but by then the laws, especially the Turnpike Act, required that they pay a heavy toll, which led to an obvious downfall of such means of transportation. England was monopolized by horse traction for a long time, till railway trunk routes were set up in the 1840s and 1850s.

Issac de Rivaz Inventions And His Part In The Car History


1807 saw another fantastic invention when a Swiss man, Issac de Rivaz who was responsible for designing several steam powered cars towards the late eighteenth century, designed a gas driven internal combustion engine, which generated energy by making use of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. He also developed a new car by making use of this engine and thus it became the very first car in the world to run on an internal combustion engine. This model was later reworked to develop a more sophisticated car that had a length of six meters and it weighed nearly 1000 kg.

First Successful Two Stroke Internal Combustion Car


This historic invention initiated many similar automobile creations, especially in the early nineteenth century, but it is also to be noted that very few out of these inventions, witnessed any considerable success. It took until 1860 for another historical event in this field when Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir, an enterprising Belgian, built the first two stroke gas driven engine successfully, thus making available a practical power unit for automobiles.

How Did The First Internal Combustion Engine Car Work


Lenoir’s invention made use of coal gas that was ignited inside a tube named the cylinder by means of a spark from a Ruhmkorff induction coil. The gas was drawn into the cylinder by the piston, and was ignited half way through the stroke, resulting in an impulsion to complete the stroke. The piston was returned to its original position by the crank and the burnt gas was expelled.

Top Speed Of 3km/h


This invention became very popular with the masses, and had a speed of 3 km per hour! Before long, a firm called Gautier started commercially manufacturing these engines in their factory, for use in vehicles.