The locomotive worked wonders in travel and in carrying loads, yet men were not satisfied with it. We never are satisfied with our means of transportation. No matter how comfortably or cheaply or fast we may travel we always want something better. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the great cities of the world were becoming over-crowded. The people could not be carried from one part of a city to another without great discomfort. The street cars drawn by horses could not carry the crowds and the elevated steam cars were not satisfactory. Wits were set to work to relieve the situation and about thirty years ago the electric car (Fig. 5) was invented. Without horse or locomotive this quick-moving car not only successfully handles the crowds which move about the city but it also relieves over-crowding by enabling thousands to reach conveniently and cheaply their suburban homes. It also does the work of the steam car and carries passengers long distances from city to city.
FIG. 6.—A HORSELESS CARRIAGE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
A late development in carriage making is seen in the automobile. As far back as the sixteenth century a horseless carriage was invented (Fig. 6) and was operated on the streets of a German city. But here the power was furnished by human muscle. The first real automobile (Fig. 7) was invented in 1801, by the man who invented the first successful locomotive. Trevithick's road locomotive—for that is what an automobile really is—did not work well because the roads upon which he tried it were in very bad condition. Inventors after Trevithick for a long time paid but little attention to the road locomotive; they bestowed their best thought upon the locomotive that was to be run upon rails—the railroad locomotive. In recent years, however, they have been working on the so-called automobile and they have already given us a horseless carriage that can run on a railless road at a rate as great as that of the fastest railroad locomotives. To what extent is this newest of carriages likely to be used? It is already driving out the horse. Will it also drive out the electric car and the railroad locomotive? Are we coming to the time when the railroad will be no more and when all travel and all hauling of freight will be done by carriages and wagons without horses on roads without rails? The answers to these questions can of course only be guessed.
FIG. 9.—SOME UNSUCCESSFUL FLYING MACHINES OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
The last and latest form of the carriage is seen in the flying-machine, the automobile of the air. In all ages men have watched with envy the movements of birds and have dreamed of flying-machines, but only in modern times has man dared to take wings and glide in bird-like fashion through the air. The first actual flying by a human being was done by a Frenchman named Bresnier, who, in 1675, constructed a machine similar to that shown in the right hand picture at the top of Figure 9. Bresnier worked his wings with his feet and hands. Once he jumped from a second story window and flew over the roof of a cottage. From the days of Bresnier on to the present time man has taxed his wits to the utmost to conquer the air, and in his efforts to do this he has invented almost every conceivable kind of machine. About the middle of the nineteenth century inventors began to apply steam to the flying-machine, and it is said that in 1842 a man named Philips was able, by the aid of revolving fans driven by steam, to elevate a machine to a considerable distance and fly across two fields. In 1896 Professor Langley, with a flying-machine driven by a small steam-engine, made three flights of about three-fourths of a mile each over the Potomac River, near Washington. This was the first time a flying-machine was propelled a long distance by its own power; it was the first aerial automobile. But the aerial steam carriage was never a success; the steam engine was too heavy. In the early years of the twentieth century inventors began to use the light gasoline engine to drive their flying-machines and then real progress in the art of flying began, and so great has been that progress that the automobiles of the air are becoming rivals of those on the land.
