A body of enterprising Manchester merchants, in the year 1754, put on the road a “flying coach,” which, according to their special advertisement, would, “however incredible it may appear, actually, barring accidents, arrive in London in four and a half days after leaving Manchester.” According to the Lord Chancellor of the time such swift travelling was considered dangerous as well as wonderful—the condition of the roads might well make it so—and also injurious to health. “I was gravely advised,” he says, “to stay a day in York on my journey between Edinburgh and London, as several passengers who had gone through without stopping had died of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion.”
As the coach took a fortnight to pass from the Scotch to the English capital, at an average pace of between three and four miles an hour, it is probable that the Chancellor’s advisers would be very seriously indisposed by the mere sight of a motor-car whirling along in its attendant cloud of dust, could they be resuscitated for the purpose. And we, on the other hand, should prefer to get out and walk to “flying” at the safe speed of their mail coaches.
By kind permission of The Speedwell Motor Co.
M. Serpollet on the “Easter Egg,” which at Nice covered a kilometre in the record time of 29-4/5 secs. (over 75 miles per hour). This car is run with steam.
The improvement of highroads, and road-making generally, accelerated the rate of posting. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century an average of ten or even twelve miles an hour was maintained on the Bath Road. But that pace was considered inadequate when the era of the “iron horse” commenced, and the decay of stage-driving followed hard upon the growth of railways. What should have been the natural successor of the stage-coach was driven from the road by ill-advised legislation, which gave the railroads a monopoly of swift transport, which has but lately been removed.
The history of the steam-coach, steam-carriage, automobile, motor-car—to give it its successive names—is in a manner unique, showing as it does, instead of steady development of a practical means of locomotion, a sudden and decisive check to an invention worthy of far better treatment than it received. The compiler of even a short survey of the automobile’s career is obliged to divide his account into two main portions, linked together by a few solitary engineering achievements.
The first period (1800-1836), will, without any desire to arrogate for England more than her due or to belittle the efforts of any other nations, be termed the English period, since in it England took the lead, and produced by far the greatest number of steam-carriages. The second (1870 to the present day) may, with equal justice, be styled the Continental period, as witnessing the great developments made in automobilism by French, German, Belgian, and American engineers: England, for reasons that will be presently noticed, being until quite recently too heavily handicapped to take a part in the advance.
Historical.—It is impossible to discover who made the first self-moving carriage. In the sixteenth century one Johann Haustach, a Nuremberg watchmaker, produced a vehicle that derived its motive power from coiled springs, and was in fact a large edition of our modern clockwork toys. About the same time the Dutch, and among them especially one Simon Stevin, fitted carriages with sails, and there are records of a steam-carriage as early as the same century.
But the first practical, and at least semi-successful, automobile driven by internal force was undoubtedly that of a Frenchman, Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, who justly merits the title of father of automobilism. His machine, which is to-day one of the most treasured exhibits in the Paris Museum of Arts and Crafts, consisted of a large carriage, having in front a pivoted platform bearing the machinery, and resting on a solid wheel, which propelled as well as steered the vehicle. The boiler, of stout riveted copper plates, had below it an enclosed furnace, from which the flames passed upwards through the water through a funnel. A couple of cylinders, provided with a simple reversing gear, worked a ratchet that communicated motion to the driving-wheel. This carriage did not travel beyond a very slow walking pace, and Cugnot therefore added certain improvements, after which (1770) it reached the still very moderate speed of four miles an hour, and distinguished itself by charging and knocking down a wall, a feat that is said to have for a time deterred engineers from developing a seemingly dangerous mode of progression.
Ten years later Dallery built a steam car, and ran it in the streets of Amiens—we are not told with what success; and before any further advance had been made with the automobile the French Revolution put a stop to all inventions of a peaceful character among our neighbours.