It appears that in 1879 an American, Mr. George B. Selden, applied for a patent designed to cover the use of the internal combustion engine as a motor for road vehicles. Owing to technical complications the patent was not actually issued until the year 1895. Meantime at least as early as 1885 Herr Daimler in Germany had used the gasoline motor for the practical propulsion of a tricycle; and not long after that date the right to use his patents had been acquired in France by Messrs. Panhard and Levassor. These men soon applied the Daimler motor to four-wheeled vehicles of various types, and almost at a bound the automobile as we know it was developed. Early in the '90's the custom of having annual road races was introduced, and before the century had closed the automobile was everywhere a familiar object on the roads of Europe and America.
While the introduction of the automobile is thus a comparatively recent event, it should be known that the idea of using mechanical power to propel a road vehicle is by no means peculiar to our generation. Practical working automobiles were constructed long before any person now living was born. The very first person to construct such a vehicle was probably the Frenchman, Cugnot, who manufactured a steam-driven wagon, using the old Newcomen type of engine, in the very year—by a curious coincidence—in which James Watt took out his first patent for a perfected steam engine; that is to say, in the year 1769.
Cugnot's automobile was a heavy four-wheeled affair intended for military service. It actually progressed along the road at the rate of three or four miles an hour. But the problem of carrying fuel and water had not been solved, and either for that reason or because the authorities in charge lacked imagination and did not regard the device as offering advantages over traction by horses, nothing came of Cugnot's effort except the scientific demonstration that the idea of a self-propelled vehicle was not merely the dream of a visionary. A second automobile truck of similar design, made by Cugnot a year or two later, may be seen to this day in the Museum of Arts and Measures in Paris.
A few years later—namely in 1785—an Englishman, William Murdoch by name, whose interest in steam engines is evidenced by the fact that he was in the employ of Bolton and Watt, manufactured a small tricycle driven by a Watt engine. This vehicle, running under its own power, developed a good degree of speed; and had not Murdoch's employers forbidden him to continue his experiments, the practical automobile might perhaps have gained popularity an entire century earlier than it did.
THE EXTREMES OF AUTOMOBILE DEVELOPMENT.
At the left, William Murdock's automobile of about the year 1781. Murdock made several experimental models which worked successfully, but strangely enough Bolton and Watt, his employers, discouraged his efforts and induced him ultimately to abandon the invention, which nevertheless had demonstrated the possibility of propelling a vehicle by steam power. At the right, the original model of Richard Trevethick's road locomotive, constructed in 1797. The success of this model led Trevethick to construct a steam carriage which was successfully tried on the roads in England in 1801. The small picture in the upper corner shows the modern craft that is the outgrowth of these crude vehicles—the winning automobile in the Vanderbilt race on Long Island in 1909.
As the case stands, however, the automobile of Murdoch failed as signally as had that of Cugnot to gain general recognition. But it is quite possible that a knowledge of the device had come to the attention of another Englishman, Richard Trevithick by name, who was at once a practical experimenter of great skill and a man of fertile imagination. Trevithick, himself the inventor of a high-pressure steam engine, adjusted his engine to a large road vehicle, and in the year 1804 exhibited this automobile on the roads of Cornwall, and subsequently in London, where it would probably have made its way had not the inventor been an extremely erratic genius, who presently shut up his coach and turned his attention to another form of vehicle. This, it will be observed, was full twenty-five years before that memorable date on which Stephenson launched his famous Rocket. Nothing came of Trevithick's experiment at the moment, beyond the demonstration of a principle—which indeed was much; but it was not long before various other inventors took up the idea, and as early as 1824 a number of automobiles, some of them weighing as much as three or four tons, were in successful operation on the highways of England. Some of these even gave regular passenger service, and attained the unprecedented speed of twelve or fourteen miles an hour. All this, it will be observed, was before the first locomotive running on rails had attracted any attention. Stephenson had indeed begun his experiments, but up to this time they had been confined exclusively to tramways in connection with collieries.
In the year 1829 Stephenson made his famous demonstrations with the Rocket, a locomotive running on rails, which attained a speed of thirty miles an hour, contrary to all the predictions of the wiseacres, who had declared the inventor a lunatic for hoping to attain even ten miles. We have already noted that the railway on which the test was made was not built with the expectation of utilizing steam power, that being regarded as a dreamer's vision. Lord Darlington prevented the construction of the road for a time because it chanced to run near his fox covers; and legislative permission was finally secured only with the proviso that the railway was to avoid the region of the preserves. Stephenson with difficulty secured permission to make an experiment on the railway with his engine, in competition with other would-be inventors; and it was his unexpected success that turned the scale in favor of steam power. But even the startling success of the Rocket did not make a great impression upon the British public, the incident being given but slight notice in the periodicals of the day, and no mention being made of it in the Annual Register.
All this is of interest as showing the attitude of a conservative public toward the steam locomotive running on a railway, and as partially explaining the antagonism to self-propelled road vehicles which found, most unfortunately, an exponent in no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington, then prime minister. The opinion and attitude of the duke were made evident in 1829, in connection with a steam automobile invented by a Mr. Gurney, which was capable of running on an ordinary road at a rate of at least ten miles an hour. The duke was old, and age had strengthened his inherent conservatism. He lent a ready ear to the claims—largely instigated, no doubt, by persons interested in horse traffic—that the automobile on an ordinary road was a menace to public safety, and no doubt his influence had a large share in helping on the unfavorable public opinion and the adverse legislation which were presently to block the further progress of the motor car.