Brief history of automobile

Brief history of automobile industry in india. Brief history of automobile technology. Origin of automobile. Brief history of cars. What is the history of a car. Brief history of automobile industry. History brief
the rise of the automobile.

The very first self-powered road vehicles were powered by steam engines, and by that definition, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot of France built the first automobile in 1769 — recognized by the British Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Club de France as being the first. So why do so many history books say that the automobile was invented by either
Gottlieb Daimler or Karl Benz? It is because both Daimler and Benz invented highly successful and practical gasoline-powered vehicles that ushered in the age of modern automobiles. Daimler and Benz invented cars that looked and worked like the cars we use today. However, it is unfair to say that either man invented "the" automobile. An internal
combustion engine is an engine that uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder — the piston's movement turns a crankshaft that then turns the car wheels via a chain or a drive shaft. The different types of fuel commonly used for car combustion engines are gasoline (or petrol), diesel, and kerosene. A brief outline of the
history of the internal combustion engine includes the following highlights: 1680 - Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens designed (but never built) an internal combustion engine that was to be fueled with gunpowder.1807 - Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for
fuel. Rivaz designed a car for his engine — the first internal combustion powered automobile. However, his was a very unsuccessful design.1824 - English engineer, Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London.1858 - Belgian-born engineer, Jean Joseph
Étienne Lenoir invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete a historic fifty-mile road trip. 1862 - Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a
French civil engineer, patented but did not build a four-stroke engine (French patent #52,593, January 16, 1862).1864 - Austrian engineer, Siegfried Marcus, built a one-cylinder engine with a crude carburetor and attached his engine to a cart for a rocky 500-foot drive. Several years later, Marcus designed a vehicle that briefly ran at 10 mph, which a
few historians have considered as the forerunner of the modern automobile by being the world's first gasoline-powered vehicle (however, read conflicting notes below).1873 - George Brayton, an American engineer, developed an unsuccessful two-stroke kerosene engine (it used two external pumping cylinders). However, it was considered the
first safe and practical oil engine.1866 - German engineers, Eugen Langen, and Nicolaus August Otto improved on Lenoir's and de Rochas' designs and invented a more efficient gas engine.1876 - Nicolaus August Otto invented and later patented a successful four-stroke engine, known as the "Otto cycle".1876 - The first successful two-stroke engine
was invented by Sir Dougald Clerk.1883 - French engineer, Edouard Delamare-Debouteville, built a single-cylinder four-stroke engine that ran on stove gas. It is not certain if he did indeed build a car, however, Delamare-Debouteville's designs were very advanced for the time — ahead of both Daimler and Benz in some ways at least on paper.1885 -
Gottlieb Daimler invented what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine — with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor (patented in 1887). Daimler first built a two-wheeled vehicle the "Reitwagen" (Riding Carriage) with this engine and a year later built the world's first four-wheeled motor
vehicle.1886 - On January 29, Karl Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.1889 - Daimler built an improved four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two V-slant cylinders.1890 - Wilhelm Maybach built the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine. Engine design and car design were integral activities, almost all of
the engine designers mentioned above also designed cars, and a few went on to become major manufacturers of automobiles. All of these inventors and more made notable improvements in the evolution of the internal combustion vehicles. One of the most important landmarks in engine design comes from Nicolaus August Otto who in 1876 invented
an effective gas motor engine. Otto built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine called the "Otto Cycle Engine," and as soon as he had completed his engine, he built it into a motorcycle.

Otto's contributions were very historically significant, it was his four-stroke engine that was universally adopted for all liquid-fueled automobiles going forward. In 1885, German mechanical engineer, Karl Benz designed and built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine.

On January 29, 1886, Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.
It was a three-wheeler; Benz built his first four-wheeled car in 1891. Benz & Cie., the company started by the inventor, became the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles by 1900.
Benz was the first inventor to integrate an internal combustion engine with a chassis - designing both together. In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler (together with his design partner Wilhelm Maybach) took Otto's internal combustion engine a step further and patented what is generally recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine. Daimler's
connection to Otto was a direct one; Daimler worked as technical director of Deutz Gasmotorenfabrik, which Nikolaus Otto co-owned in 1872. There is some controversy as to who built the first motorcycle, Otto or Daimler. The 1885 Daimler-Maybach engine was small, lightweight, fast, used a gasoline-injected carburetor, and had a vertical cylinder.
The size, speed, and efficiency of the engine allowed for a revolution in car design. On March 8, 1886, Daimler took a stagecoach and adapted it to hold his engine, thereby designing the world's first four-wheeled automobile. Daimler is considered the first inventor to have invented a practical internal-combustion engine. In 1889, Daimler invented a
V-slanted two cylinder, four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves. Just like Otto's 1876 engine, Daimler's new engine set the basis for all car engines going forward. Also in 1889, Daimler and Maybach built their first automobile from the ground up, they did not adapt another purpose vehicle as they had always been done previously. The new
Daimler automobile had a four-speed transmission and obtained speeds of 10 mph. Daimler founded the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1890 to manufacture his designs.
Eleven years later, Wilhelm Maybach designed the Mercedes automobile.
If Siegfried Marcus built his second car in 1875 and it was as claimed, it would have been the first vehicle powered by a four-cycle engine and the first to use gasoline as a fuel, the first having a carburetor for a gasoline engine and the first having a magneto ignition. However, the only existing evidence indicates that the vehicle was built circa
1888/89 — too late to be first. By the early 1900s, gasoline cars started to outsell all other types of motor vehicles. The market was growing for economical automobiles and the need for industrial production was pressing.
The first car manufacturers in the world were French: Panhard & Levassor (1889) and Peugeot (1891). By car manufacturer we mean builders of entire motor vehicles for sale and not just engine inventors who experimented with car design to test their engines — Daimler and Benz began as the latter before becoming full car manufacturers and made
their early money by licensing their patents and selling their engines to car manufacturers. Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor were partners in a woodworking machinery business when they decided to become car manufacturers. They built their first car in 1890 using a Daimler engine. Edouard Sarazin, who held the license rights to the Daimler
patent for France, commissioned the team.

(Licensing a patent means that you pay a fee and then you have the right to build and use someone's invention for profit — in this case, Sarazin had the right to build and sell Daimler engines in France.) The partners not only manufactured cars, but they also made improvements to the automotive body design. Panhard-Levassor made vehicles with a
pedal-operated clutch, a chain transmission leading to a change-speed gearbox, and a front radiator. Levassor was the first designer to move the engine to the front of the car and use a rear-wheel-drive layout. This design was known as the Systeme Panhard and quickly became the standard for all cars because it gave a better balance and improved
steering. Panhard and Levassor are also credited with the invention of the modern transmission — installed in their 1895 Panhard. Panhard and Levassor also shared the licensing rights to Daimler motors with Armand Peugeot. A Peugeot car went on to win the first car race held in France, which gained Peugeot publicity and boosted car sales.
Ironically, the "Paris to Marseille" race of 1897 resulted in a fatal auto accident, killing Emile Levassor.
Early on, French manufacturers did not standardize car models — each car was different from the other. The first standardized car was the 1894 Benz Velo. One hundred and thirty-four identical Velos were manufactured in 1895. America's first gasoline-powered commercial car manufacturers were Charles and Frank Duryea. The brothers were
bicycle makers who became interested in gasoline engines and automobiles and built their first motor vehicle in 1893, in Springfield, Massachusetts. By 1896, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company had sold thirteen models of the Duryea, an expensive limousine, which remained in production into the 1920s. The first automobile to be mass produced in
the United States was the 1901 Curved Dash Oldsmobile, built by the American car manufacturer Ransome Eli Olds (1864-1950). Olds invented the basic concept of the assembly line and started the Detroit area automobile industry. He first began making steam and gasoline engines with his father, Pliny Fisk Olds, in Lansing, Michigan in 1885. Olds
designed his first steam-powered car in 1887. In 1899, with a growing experience of gasoline engines, Olds moved to Detroit to start the Olds Motor Works, and produce low-priced cars. He produced 425 "Curved Dash Olds" in 1901, and was America's leading auto manufacturer from 1901 to 1904. American car manufacturer, Henry Ford (1863-
1947) invented an improved assembly line and installed the first conveyor belt-based assembly line in his car factory in Ford's Highland Park, Michigan plant, around 1913-14.

The assembly line reduced production costs for cars by reducing assembly time. Ford's famous Model T was assembled in ninety-three minutes. Ford made his first car, called the "Quadricycle," in June 1896. However, success came after he formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903. This was the third car manufacturing company formed to produce
the cars he designed. He introduced the Model T in 1908 and it was a success. After installing the moving assembly lines in his factory in 1913, Ford became the world's biggest car manufacturer. By 1927, 15 million Model Ts had been manufactured. Another victory won by Henry Ford was a patent battle with George B. Selden. Selden, who had
never built an automobile, held a patent on a "road engine", on that basis Selden was paid royalties by all American car manufacturers. Ford overturned Selden's patent and opened the American car market for the building of inexpensive cars. The 1901 Mercedes, designed by Wilhelm Maybach for Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, deserves credit for
being the first modern motorcar in all essentials. Its thirty-five-horsepower engine weighed only fourteen pounds per horsepower, and it achieved a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour. By 1909, with the most integrated automobile factory in Europe, Daimler employed some seventeen hundred workers to produce fewer than a thousand cars per
year.Nothing illustrates the superiority of European design better than the sharp contrast between this first Mercedes model and Ransom E. Olds‘ 1901-1906 one-cylinder, three-horsepower, tiller-steered, curved-dash Oldsmobile, which was merely a motorized horse buggy. But the Olds sold for only $650, putting it within reach of middle-class
Americans, and the 1904 Olds output of 5,508 units surpassed any car production previously accomplished. The central problem of automotive technology over the first decade of the twentieth century would be reconciling the advanced design of the 1901 Mercedes with the moderate price and low operating expenses of the Olds. This would be
overwhelmingly an American achievement.Henry Ford and William Durant Bicycle mechanics J. Frank and Charles Duryea of Springfield, Massachusetts, had designed the first successful American gasoline automobile in 1893, then won the first American car race in 1895, and went on to make the first sale of an American-made gasoline car the next
year. Thirty American manufacturers produced 2,500 motor vehicles in 1899, and some 485 companies entered the business in the next decade. In 1908 Henry Ford introduced the Model T and William Durant founded General Motors.The new firms operated in an unprecedented seller’s market for an expensive consumer goods item. With its vast
land area and a hinterland of scattered and isolated settlements, the United States had a far greater need for automotive transportation than the nations of Europe. Great demand was ensured, too, by a significantly higher per capita income and more equitable income distribution than European countries.Model T Given the American manufacturing
tradition, it was also inevitable that cars would be produced in larger volume at lower prices than in Europe. The absence of tariff barriers between the states encouraged sales over a wide geographic area. Cheap raw materials and a chronic shortage of skilled labor early encouraged the mechanization of industrial processes in the United States. This
in turn required the standardization of products and resulted in the volume production of such commodities as firearms, sewing machines, bicycles, and many other items. In 1913, the United States produced some 485,000 of the world total of 606,124 motor vehicles.The Ford Motor Company greatly outpaced its competitors in reconciling state-of-
the-art design with moderate price. Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal called the four-cylinder, fifteen-horsepower, $600 Ford Model N (1906-1907) “the very first instance of a low-cost motorcar driven by a gas engine having cylinders enough to give the shaft a turning impulse in each shaft turn which is well built and offered in large numbers.”
Deluged with orders, Ford installed improved production equipment and after 1906 was able to make deliveries of a hundred cars a day.Encouraged by the success of the Model N, Henry Ford was determined to build an even better “car for the great multitude.” The four-cylinder, twenty-horsepower Model T, first offered in October 1908, sold for
$825.
Its two-speed planetary transmission made it easy to drive, and features such as its detachable cylinder head made it easy to repair. Its high chassis was designed to clear the bumps in rural roads. Vanadium steel made the Model T a lighter and tougher car, and new methods of casting parts (especially block casting of the engine) helped keep the
price down.Committed to large-volume production of the Model T, Ford innovated modern mass production techniques at his new Highland Park, Michigan, plant, which opened in 1910 (although he did not introduce the moving assembly line until 1913-1914). The Model T runabout sold for $575 in 1912, less than the average annual wage in the
United States. By the time the Model T was withdrawn from production in 1927, its price had been reduced to $290 for the coupe, 15 million units had been sold, and mass personal “automobility” had become a reality.Automotive Industry Growing Pains Ford’s mass production techniques were quickly adopted by other American automobile
manufacturers. (European automakers did not begin to use them until the 1930s.) The heavier outlays of capital and larger volume of sales that this necessitated ended the era of easy entry and free-wheeling competition among many small producers in the American industry. The number of active automobile manufacturers dropped from 253 in 1908
to only 44 in 1929, with about 80 percent of the industry’s output accounted for by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, formed from Maxwell in 1925 by Walter P. Chrysler.
Most of the remaining independents were wiped out in the Great Depression, with Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, and Packard hanging on only to collapse in the post-World War II period.The Model T was intended to be “a farmer’s car” that served the transportation needs of a nation of farmers. Its popularity was bound to wane as the country urbanized
and as rural regions got out of the mud with passage of the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act and the 1921 Federal Highway Act. Moreover, the Model T remained basically unchanged long after it was technologically obsolete.
Model T owners began to trade up to larger, faster, smoother riding, more stylish cars. The demand for basic transportation the Model T had met tended increasingly in the 1920s to be filled from the backlog of used cars piling up in dealers’ lots as the market became saturated.Car Sales Stall By 1927 replacement demand for new cars was exceeding
demand from first-time owners and multiple-car purchasers combined. Given the incomes of the day, automakers could no longer count on an expanding market. Installment sales had been initiated by the makers of moderately priced cars in 1916 to compete with the Model T, and by 1925 about three-quarters of all new cars were bought “on time”
through credit. Although a few expensive items, such as pianos and sewing machines, had been sold on time before 1920, it was installment sales of automobiles during the twenties that established the purchasing of expensive consumer goods on credit as a middle-class habit and a mainstay of the American economy.GM Introduces ‘Planned
Obsolescence’ Market saturation coincided with technological stagnation: In both product and production technology, innovation was becoming incremental rather than dramatic. The basic differences that distinguish post-World War II models from the Model T were in place by the late 1920s—the self-starter, the closed all-steel body, the high-
compression engine, hydraulic brakes, syncromesh transmission and low-pressure balloon tires. The remaining innovations—the automatic transmission and drop-frame construction—came in the 1930s. Moreover, with some exceptions, cars were made much the same way in the early 1950s as they had been in the 1920s.To meet the challenges of
market saturation and technological stagnation, General Motors under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., in the 1920s and 1930s innovated planned obsolescence of product and put a new emphasis on styling, exemplified in the largely cosmetic annual model change—a planned triennial major restyling to coincide with the economics of die life and
with annual minor face-liftings in between. The goal was to make consumers dissatisfied enough to trade in and presumably up to a more expensive new model long before the useful life of their present cars had ended. Sloan’s philosophy was that “the primary object of the corporation … was to make money, not just to make motorcars.” He believed
that it was necessary only that GM’s cars be “equal in design to the best of our competitors … it was not necessary to lead in design or to run the risk of untried experiments.” Thus engineering was subordinated to the dictates of stylists and cost-cutting accountants. General Motors became the archetype of a rational corporation run by a
technostructure.As Sloanism replaced Fordism as the predominant market strategy in the industry, Ford lost the sales lead in the lucrative low-priced field to Chevrolet in 1927 and 1928.
By 1936 GM claimed 43 percent of the U.S. market; Ford with 22 percent had fallen to third place behind Chrysler with 25 percent. Although automobile sales collapsed during the Great Depression, Sloan could boast of GM that “in no year did the corporation fail to earn a profit.” (GM retained industry leadership until 1986 when Ford surpassed it in
profits.)World War II and the Auto Industry The automobile industry had played a critical role in producing military vehicles and war matériel in the First World War. During World War II, in addition to turning out several million military vehicles, American automobile manufacturers made some seventy-five essential military items, most of them
unrelated to the motor vehicle. These materials had a total value of $29 billion, one-fifth of the nation’s war production.Because the manufacture of vehicles for the civilian market ceased in 1942 and tires and gasoline were severely rationed, motor vehicle travel fell dramatically during the war years. Cars that had been nursed through the Depression
long after they were ready to be junked were patched up further, ensuring great pent-up demand for new cars at the war’s end.Detroit’s Big Three carried Sloanism to its illogical conclusion in the postwar period. Models and options proliferated, and every year cars became longer and heavier, more powerful, more gadget-bedecked, more expensive
to purchase and to operate, following the truism that large cars are more profitable to sell than small ones. Rise of Japanese Automakers Engineering in the postwar era was subordinated to the questionable aesthetics of nonfunctional styling at the expense of economy and safety. And quality deteriorated to the point that by the mid-1960s American-
made cars were being delivered to retail buyers with an average of twenty-four defects a unit, many of them safety-related. Moreover, the higher unit profits that Detroit made on gas-guzzling “road cruisers” were made at the social costs of increased air pollution and a drain on dwindling world oil reserves.The era of the annually restyled road cruiser
ended with the imposition of federal standards of automotive safety (1966), emission of pollutants (1965 and 1970), and energy consumption (1975); with escalating gasoline prices following the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979; and especially with the mounting penetration of both the U.S. and world markets first by the German Volkswagen “Bug” (a
modern Model T) and then by Japanese fuel-efficient, functionally designed, well-built small cars.After peaking at a record 12.87 million units in 1978, sales of American-made cars fell to 6.95 million in 1982, as imports increased their share of the U.S. market from 17.7 percent to 27.9 percent. In 1980 Japan became the world’s leading auto producer,
a position it continues to hold.U.S. Carmakers Retool In response, the American automobile industry in the 1980s underwent a massive organizational restructuring and technological renaissance.
Managerial revolutions and cutbacks in plant capacity and personnel at GM, Ford and Chrysler resulted in leaner, tougher firms with lower break-even points, enabling them to maintain profits with lower volumes in increasingly saturated, competitive markets. Manufacturing quality and programs of employee motivation and involvement were given
high priority. The industry in 1980 undertook a five-year, $80 billion program of plant modernization and retooling. Functional aerodynamic design replaced styling in Detroit studios, as the annual cosmetic change was abandoned. Cars became smaller, more fuel-efficient, less polluting and much safer. Product and production were being increasingly
rationalized in a process of integrating computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing.Legacy of the U.S. Auto Industry The automobile has been a key force for change in twentieth-century America. During the 1920s the industry became the backbone of a new consumer goods-oriented society. By the mid-1920s it ranked first in value of
product, and in 1982 it provided one out of every six jobs in the United States. In the 1920s the automobile became the lifeblood of the petroleum industry, one of the chief customers of the steel industry, and the biggest consumer of many other industrial products. The technologies of these ancillary industries, particularly steel and petroleum, were
revolutionized by its demands. The automobile stimulated participation in outdoor recreation and spurred the growth of tourism and tourism-related industries, such as service stations, roadside restaurants and motels. The construction of streets and highways, one of the largest items of government expenditure, peaked when the Interstate Highway
Act of 1956 inaugurated the largest public works program in history.The automobile ended rural isolation and brought urban amenities—most important, better medical care and schools—to rural America (while paradoxically the farm tractor made the traditional family farm obsolete). The modern city with its surrounding industrial and residential
suburbs is a product of the automobile and trucking. The automobile changed the architecture of the typical American dwelling, altered the conception and composition of the urban neighborhood, and freed homemakers from the narrow confines of the home. No other historical force has so revolutionized the way Americans work, live, and play.In
1980, 87.2 percent of American households owned one or more motor vehicles, 51.5 percent owned more than one, and fully 95 percent of domestic car sales were for replacement. Americans have become truly auto-dependent. But though automobile ownership is virtually universal, the motor vehicle no longer acts as a progressive force for change.
New forces—the electronic media, the laser, the computer, and the robot probably foremost among them—are charting the future. A period of American history that can appropriately be called the Automobile Age is melding into a new Age of Electronics.The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright
© 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved.