The virtues of the horseless vehicle early penetrated to India. Many English manufacturers sent carriages there. Some time in 1868, a steam carriage, with two steam cylinders, each three inches in diameter, and with six-inch stroke, was made by Armstrong, of Rawilpindee, Punjab. A separate stop valve was fitted to each cylinder. The boiler was fifteen inches in diameter and three feet high, and worked steam pressure of one hundred pounds per square inch. Twelve miles an hour on the level, and six miles an hour up grade of one in twenty, were made. The driving wheels were three feet in diameter.
Pierre Ravel
Ravel, of France, planned in 1868 a steam vehicle, and about 1870 completed the construction of one at the barracks at Saint-Owen. Then came the declaration of war with Prussia, and the barracks, being within the zone of fortification, the vehicle was lost or destroyed. There is no certainty that it was ever unearthed after peace was declared.
L. T. Pyott
Before 1876, a motor vehicle was invented by L. T. Pyott, who was then a foreman with the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. The carriage, which could carry seven persons at the rate of twenty miles an hour, cost about two thousand two hundred dollars, and weighed nearly two tons. It was shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but was not allowed to run on the streets.
A. Richter
An engineer and mechanician of Neider-Bielan, Oberlaneitz, Germany, Richter secured in 1877 a patent for a vehicle that was propelled by a motor consisting of a stack or battery of elliptic springs horizontally disposed, which were compressed by a charge of powerful powder exploded in what was practically a cannon. The subsequent expansion transmitted the driving effort to the wheels by a rack of gears. The success of this vehicle is not generally known.
Raffard
In 1881, Raffard, a French engineer, made a tricycle and a tram-car that is said to have been the first electric automobile which ran satisfactorily.
Charles Jeanteaud