The first car in history

2024 Author: Erin Ralphs | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-19 11:42

Without a doubt, the car is one of the most useful human inventions, but not all motorists know who invented the first car in the world and in what year.

Back in 1672, a Flemish missionary in China, Ferdinand Verbiest, designed a steam engine. He could set in motion a toy car that the inventor presented to the Chinese emperor. And although this car could not carry passengers, it went down in history as the first car with a steam engine.

And already in 1769 a new self-propelled vehicle was created. Its author was the Frenchman Nicolas Cugno, who went down in history as the first inventor of self-propelled transport. The first car was at the same time the prototype of both a steam locomotive and a self-propelled carriage. The designer called his brainchild a "fiery cart", since it was originally supposed to be used to transport artillery shells.

Interestingly, Cugno's trolley was powered by steam and had one wheel with one drive in the front.

The first car had the power of justtwo horsepower, however, despite such, to put it mildly, unimpressive performance, it accelerated to five kilometers per hour. At the same time, this self-propelled vehicle had a carrying capacity of as much as five tons.

The first car to have an internal combustion engine was the Motorwagen, designed by Karl Benz. It was patented at the beginning of 1886, and almost a year later it was seen at an exhibition in Paris. However, it would be wrong to call it full-fledged: it was very reminiscent of a tricycle with a power unit that transmits traction to the rear wheels. The first car accelerated to fifteen kilometers and had a water-cooled engine.

She could take on board two passengers. The package included a non-standard steering wheel lever, which was somewhat difficult to control.

Motorwagen was produced for seven years, and during this period twenty-five cars were sold.

The very first gasoline-powered car borrowed a lot from other modes of transport, such as the steam car, horse-drawn carriage, bicycle, carriage, but it had one significant distinguishing feature - a gasoline engine, very economical and compact.

It was created by the Austrian Siegfried Markus, who once had the idea of using gasoline as a fuel when he accidentally set fire to air masses with a high content of gasoline vapors. Using the power of the explosion and creating the world's first gasoline-powered engine,Siegfried installed it on a banal wagon, and ten years later he designed a more advanced modification of the car.

However, despite the fact that the iron friend of man has a very rich history, it is generally accepted that the first car was the brainchild of German engineers Benz and Daimler. It took them two decades to create an engine suitable for transporting passengers and cargo. It was Benz who invented the carburetor, and he is also credited with the authorship of the idea of the clutch mechanism.

Daimler and Benz set up production of cars, and in eight years they managed to sell 69 cars, including four-wheeled Velos with two-cylinder engines and pneumatic tires.