History of the Automobile, Part IV

*1924 Stanley Steamer currently on display at the Northeast Classic Car Museum.

The mission of the Northeast Classic Car Museum consists of educating the public on different aspects of the automobile and its history throughout the years. This is the 4th in a series of 5, originally published in the Norwich Evening Sun in 2006.

As early as 1600, the Dutch, no strangers to wind power, had built a wind-powered, sail mounted carriage. These carriages were reported to hold several passengers and move at speeds as high as twenty miles per hour. While the Dutch dreamed in terms of the wind, others were thinking of other means of propulsion. In the 1700s, a vehicle was built that was powered by an engine based on the workings of a clock. What the inventors neglected to calculate, however, was that any clock that was capable of moving a vehicle with passengers would have to outweigh the load it was carrying.

Inventors in England, France, Germany and other countries worked on the idea of a compressed-air engine, but they were unable to find the solution to self-propulsion by this means. However, in their efforts, they contributed significant individual elements to the picture; elements like valves, pistons, cylinders, and connecting rods, and an emerging idea of how each of these elements related to each other. The first invention that can truly and logically be called an “automobile” was a heavy, three-wheeled, steam-driven, clumsy vehicle built in 1769. This mechanism was slow, ponderous, and only moved by fits and starts. In tests, it carried four passengers at a slow pace – a little over two miles per hour – and had to stop every twenty minutes to build a fresh head of steam.

The first electric-powered road vehicle was built around 1839 and was, along with others built within the next several years, generally unsuccessful. The steam-powered engine had to wait for a boiler to build up pressure and was very noisy. The concept of an electrical engine that could start immediately and run quietly was very attractive, but there were disadvantages. In 1880, there was a general improvement in the development of longer-lasting batteries. There still existed, however, excessive weight and bulk of the batteries and the need for frequent charging.

In the American car world at the turn of the century, “steamers” and electric cars gained their most sustained measure of success. There were approximately 1,681 steam-powered automobiles and 1,575 electrically-powered ones. Only 936 of the cars relied on a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. But, as the number of car drivers grew, they noticed that steam cars took 20 to 45 minutes to heat up and raise enough pressure to start, while the internal combustion engine started almost immediately. The electric cars started promptly, too, but they were expensive, slow and could only go about one-third as far as an internal combustion car before the battery ran down.

Eventually twenty different companies would produce electric cars and in the peak of their popularity, nearly 35,000 were operating on American roads. “Steamers” were actually more popular with more than 100 American plants producing them. The most famous was manufactured by the Stanley brothers in Newton, Massachusetts. In 1906, a Stanley Steamer was clocked at 127.6 miles per hour. In spite of this, these cars, along with the electrics, were only living on borrowed time. Steam, electricity, and gasoline-powered autos competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. In the early 1900s a system was developed that specified front-engine, rear-wheel drive internal combustion cars with a sliding gear transmission. Development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to a huge number of small manufacturers all competing to gain the world’s attention.

After World War II, integrated fenders and fully-closed bodies began to dominate sales, with the new sedan body style even incorporating a trunk at the rear for storage. Most of the technology used in automobiles had been invented, although it was often re-invented again at a later date. Throughout the 1950s, engine power and vehicle speeds rose, designs became more integrated and artful, and cars spread across the world. In America, performance was the hot sell of the 1960s, with the gas turbine and the turbocharger being a hot sell. Some particularly notable advances in modern times were the wide spread of front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive, the addition of the V6 engine configuration, and the presence of fuel injection. The 1970s saw rapidly rising fuel efficiency and engine output. Once the automobile emissions concerns of the 1970s were conquered with computerized engine management systems, power began to rise rapidly.

New technologies and fuels are following in the wake of those early experiments, and some – like hydrogen – may prove more fantastic that we had ever dreamed.

Article written by Audrey Robinson and Richard Ellinwood of the NECCM Education Committee. Reprinted courtesy of The Evening Sun, Norwich, NY.