It was in 1895 that the patent was issued, and in 1900 Selden disposed of it to the Electric Vehicle Company of New Jersey.
In the meantime, the development of electric motor vehicles had begun, and in 1885, Benz, a German, built the first road vehicle to be run by the internal-combustion, hydro-carbon motor. It was a tricycle, and its motor was single-cylindered, four-cycled, after the type of an engine developed in 1876, in Germany, by Otto, and water cooled. It had electric ignition and a mechanical carburetor. Benz secured a patent in 1886 on his invention and it ran successfully, making ten miles an hour. Benz was limited to the use of certain streets in Mannheim, Germany, for running his machine, out of deference to the tendency to nerves of horses and their drivers or riders. This tricycle by Benz was the forerunner of the Benz automobile. This is one of the most successful and popular cars in Germany—and before the war, in all Europe. The first automobile imported into the United States was a Benz car brought to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Up to 1917 the Benz car was an entrant in most automobile speed contests.
While Benz was perfecting the gasoline motor in its attachment to the tricycle, Gottlieb Daimler, another German, was producing, in 1885, the motor-cycle. Daimler had devoted himself sedulously to the problem of reducing the weight and increasing the power of the gas engine, in order to adapt it to high efficiency road vehicles. He invented the hot tube ignition to take the place of ignition by flame. By regulation of the heat of the tube, the compressed charge of hydro-carbon vapor could be fired automatically at a specific point in the cycle. Through the increased speed thus produced the size and weight of the motor could be reduced.
The Daimler motor was a big step in advance, as was proved by the supremacy which the German and French automobile makers at once attained. The French secured rights to the Daimler motor and operated under them with such success that from 1889 to 1894, before the United States had really waked up to motor car making, they were beginning to put out gasoline automobiles successfully.
America Builds Steam and Electric Cars.
At this time, we, in this country, were following the steam and storage battery fetishes. The first steam car in the United States that might be called modern was built by S. H. Roper of Massachusetts, in 1889. In 1900, steam car building in America gave promise of disputing the gasoline car records then being made in France, but by 1905 the gasoline car manufacturers had taken the cue from the European gasoline successes, and this form of motor came to the front.
Contemporaneously with the activities in steam car building in the United States, was the pioneer electric car construction era.
The first electric automobile was built in 1891, and made its first exhibition appearance in the streets of Chicago in September, 1892. The builder of this, the first electric driven vehicle, was William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa. It was bought by J. B. McDonald, president of the American Battery Company, Chicago. Description of the street scenes attending the showing of this car bring home to us the extent to which an automobile was a novelty so short a time ago, comparatively, as 1892. “Ever since its arrival,” said the Western Electrician of September 17, 1892, “it has attracted the greatest attention. The sight of a well loaded carriage moving along the streets at a spanking pace, with no horses in front, and apparently with nothing on board to give it motion, was one that has been too much, even for the wide-awake Chicagoan. In passing through the business section, way had to be cleared by the police for the passage of the carriage.”
To think that this description fits a scene enacted during the period of the present generation! Eighty-eight years before in Philadelphia, Oliver Evans’ steam propelled wagon, bearing in triumph a flatboat surmounted by an engine, moved along Market Street with no horses in front, and was a sight that was too much for the Philadelphian.
The world “do move,” but very slowly, and this 88-year span of time is practically the measure of the period consumed by automobile development to the point where a motor carriage would really run, and keep on running.