History of the automobile | Who invented the first car and when was it made

Who invented the world's first car?

Who invented the first car and when was it made?

Who invented the first car? The generally accepted answer is Karl Benz of Germany, and it's one that those who work at the company that grew out of his name, Mercedes-Benz, will never tire of telling you.

Standing at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, though, seeing the world's first car is both awe-inspiring and awe-inspiring. Indeed, the term used at the time, "horseless car", seems more appropriate, yet it is Benz's car, patented in 1886, that is credited with being the first car built, although other road vehicles preceded his work by many years. .

Why is this, and does Benz deserve credit for making the world's oldest car?

The first car added fuel to the fire of controversy

It could certainly be argued that an absurdly talented genius, known to his friends as Leo, beat Benz to design the first automobile hundreds of years ago.

Among the great Leonardo da Vinci's many incredible inventions was the design of the world's first self-driving car (no horses required).

His ingenious contraption, hand-painted in 1495, was spring-powered and required a wound before setting off, but it was highly complex and entirely feasible.

A team at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence used da Vinci's detailed plans to build a full-scale model, and sure enough, "Leonardo's automobile" actually worked.

More incredibly, the ancient design featured the world's first steering column and a rack and pinion gear system, the way we still drive our vehicles today.

Although, to be fair, Leonardo probably couldn't have built his idea for a prototype - almost impossible with the tools available to him at the time - or run it around town. He even forgot to include seats.

And, when it comes to the most common modern automobiles we know today, his automobile was missing something important that Benz could boast; The first internal-combustion engine, and thus the first petrol car.

It was the use of that fuel, and the design of that engine, that ultimately won the race to build the world's first horseless car, and why the Germans get the credit, even though a Frenchman named Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first car. , self-propelled road vehicle, originally a tractor with three wheels for use by the military in 1769. Yes, it could only go 4 km/h and wasn't really a car, but the main reason it fell from household name status was that its contraption ran on steam, making it look like an overland train.

Remember, the Automobile Club de France still credits Cugnot as the creator of the first car. French Trace.

Similarly, Robert Anderson has been disqualified from building the world's first car, because his self-driving car built in Scotland in the 1830s was an "electric car", not one with an internal-combustion engine.

Of course, it is important to note that Karl Benz was not the first person to come up with the engine. As early as 1680, a Dutch physicist named Christian Huygens came up with the idea of an internal-combustion engine, and it's probably a good thing he didn't actually build it, because his plan was to power it with gunpowder.

Even Karl Benz had help, a colleague known to Mercedes-Benz (or otherwise known as Daimler Benz) fans, Gottlieb Daimler, who in 1885 designed the world's first modern engine with a single, vertical cylinder and petrol injection. through a carburetor. He even attached it to a carriage, called a Rittwagen ("riding carriage"). His engine was similar to the single-cylinder, two-stroke gasoline engine that would power the car patented by Karl Benz the following year.

Benz, a mechanical engineer, takes most of the credit for creating the world's first ICE-powered automobile, largely because he filed a patent for such a thing, which he received on January 29, 1886.

To give old Karl his due, he also patented his own spark plug, gear system, throttle design and a radiator.

Although the original Benz patent motorwagon was a three-wheeled vehicle that looked exactly like a horse-drawn carriage of the time, with a single front wheel instead of a horse (and two really heavy, yet sharp wheels at the back), Benz soon developed a proper, four-wheeled one by 1891. was made The car was designed.

At the turn of the century, the company he founded - Benz & Cie - was the world's largest car manufacturer.

Where from there?

When the first car was invented is a matter of debate, as is the definition. Of course, Gottlieb Daimler has his claim to that title, as he not only brought out that first basic engine in 1889, but then came up with a much-refined version featuring a V-shaped, four-stroke, two-cylinder. engine, which is much closer to the design still used today than the single-cylinder unit of Benz the Patent Motorwagon.

In 1927, Daimler and Benz merged to form the Daimler Group, which would one day become Mercedes-Benz.

In 1889 the French, Panhard and Levasseur were also credited, and then in 1891 Peugeot became the world's first proper car manufacturer, meaning they didn't just mess around with prototypes, they actually built and sold whole motor cars.

The Germans soon caught up and surpassed them, sure, but still, it's a pretty convincing claim that you rarely hear the Peugeot beat.

The first mass-produced car, in the modern sense, was the 1901 Curved Dash Oldsmobile, built in Detroit by Ransom Eli Olds, who came up with the idea of the car assembly line and started the Motor City.

It is the much more famous Henry Ford who is usually credited with the first assembly line and mass production of the car in 1908 with his famous Model T.

What he created was a much improved and larger version of the assembly line based on the conveyor belt, which greatly reduced both production costs and construction time for motor vehicles, soon making Ford the world's largest car manufacturer.

By 1917, a staggering 15 million Model Ts had been produced, and our modern fascination with motor cars was well and truly underway.

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