Until comparatively recent times the historian of the self-propelled vehicle, who was so much in evidence seventy-five years ago, had not reappeared. Even now his work is generally of a desultory character, voluminous, but largely ephemeral. It is widely scattered, not easily accessible and already considerably forgotten from day to day. Especially of the men of the last half century, who have made the present-day automobile possible and are now contributing to its greater future, the following pages present much that has never been brought together in this form. It is both history and the material for history.
It is believed that these sketches will be found peculiarly interesting and permanently valuable. Individually they are clear presentations of the achievements of some of the most distinguished engineers and inventors of the last hundred years. Collectively they present a complete story of the inception and gradual development of the automobile from the first clumsy steam wagons of Cugnot, Trevithick, Evans and others to the perfected carriage of to-day.
The chapter on The Origin and Development of the Automobile is a careful study and review of the conditions that attended the attempts to install the first common road steam carriages, the tentative experimenting with bicycles, tricycles and other vehicles in the middle of the last century and the renaissance of the last two decades. Several of the illustrations are from old and rare prints, and others are from photographs.
It is not possible to set down here all the authorities that have been consulted in the preparation of this work. Special acknowledgment, however, must be made to The Engineering Magazine for permission to use text and photographs, and to J. G. Pangborn for permission to use a great deal of interesting information regarding the early steam inventors contained in his work, The World’s Railway, and to reproduce portrait sketches of Trevithick, Murdoch, and Read, from the same valuable volume.
Lyman Horace Weeks.
New York, January, 1905.