The Grease Monkey Behind

Automobiles
Mercedes, ford, Audi, Peugeot and many other brands we see and drive everyday are part
of our life and something we can’t live without it, but who is the man behind cars, who is
the man we should thank for this mighty invention??
Many of cars industries started from over a hundred years like Karl Benz and the
magnificent Mercedes but who is the one who brought up this idea to the world, some
said it was Karl Benz, and other claim its centuries earlier… Let’s discover him.
The word automobile comes, via the French automobile, from the Ancient Greek word
αὐτός (autós, self) and the Latin mobilis (movable); meaning a vehicle that moves itself,
rather than being pulled or pushed by a separate animal or another vehicle. The
alternative name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum
(wheeled vehicle), or the Middle English word carre (cart) (from Old North French), or
Karros (a Gallic wagon).
In the beginning automobiles was not built like what we see now, it was much more
different and some failed to build a real car and other successfully did the job, so let’s
take a journey between countries and see everyone’s experiment.
China
Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered
vehicle around 1672 which was of small scale and designed as a toy for the Chinese
Emperor, that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger, but quite possibly, was the first
working steam-powered vehicle.
Switzerland
François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal combustion engine,
in 1806, which was fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and used it to develop
the world's first vehicle, albeit rudimentary, to be powered by such an engine. The design
was not very successful, as was the case with others, such as Samuel Brown and Samuel
Morey, who each produced vehicles (usually adapted carriages or carts) powered by
clumsy internal combustion engines.
France
In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working three-
wheeled automobile that was powered by electricity. This was at the International
Exhibition of Electricity in Paris.
In 1890, Émile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with
Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the automobile industry in France.
Great Britain
In Britain, there had been several attempts to build steam cars with varying degrees of
success, with Thomas Rickett even attempting a production run in 1860. Santler from
Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as having made the first
petrol-powered car in the country in 1894 followed by Frederick William Lanchester in
1895, but these were both one-offs. The first production vehicles in Great Britain came
from the Daimler Motor Company, a company founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896, after
purchasing the right to use the name of the engines. Lawson's company made its first
automobiles in 1897, and they bore the name Daimler.
United States of America
Running by February, 1893 and ready for road trials by September, 1893 the car built by
Charles and Frank Duryea, brothers, was the first gasoline powered car in America. The
first run on public roads was made on September 21, 1893 in Springfield, MA. They had
purchased a used horse drawn buggy for $70 and installed a 4 HP, single cylinder
gasoline engine. The car (buggy) had a friction transmission, spray carburetor and low
tension ignition. It must not have run very well because Frank didn't drive it again until
November 10 when it was reported by the Springfield Morning Union newspaper. This
car was put into storage in 1894 and stayed there until 1920 when it was rescued by Inglis
M. Uppercu and presented to the United States National Museum.
Henry Ford had an engine running by 1893, but it was 1896 before he built his first car.
By the end of the year Ford had sold his first car, which he called a Quadracycle, for
$200 and used the money to build another one. With the financial backing of the Mayor
of Detroit, William C. Maybury and other wealthy Detroiters, Ford formed the Detroit
Automobile Company in 1899. A few prototypes were built but no production cars were
ever made by this company. It was dissolved in January 1901. Ford would not offer a car
for sale until 1903.
Germany
Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm
Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time,
Karl Benz generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile.
Daimler and Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (Daimler Motor Company,
DMG) in Cannstatt in 1890, and under the brand name, Daimler, sold their first
automobile in 1892, which was a horse-drawn stagecoach built by another manufacturer,
that they retrofitted with an engine of their design. By 1895 about 30 vehicles had been
built by Daimler and Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann,
where they set up shop after disputes with their backers. Benz and the Maybach and the
Daimler team seem to have been unaware of each other's early work. They never worked
together because, by the time of the merger of the two companies, Daimler and Maybach
were no longer part of DMG.
Karl Benz, the Father of the Modern Automobiles
An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in
Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and granted a patent in January of the
following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was
founded in 1883. It was an integral design, without the adaptation of other existing
components, and included several new technological elements to create a new concept.
This is what made it worthy of a patent. He began to sell his production vehicles in 1888.
In 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal-combustion flat engine, called a
boxer motor in German. During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the
largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899 and, because
of its size, Benz & Cie., became a joint-stock company.
Karl Benz proposed co-operation between DMG and Benz & Cie. when economic
conditions began to deteriorate in Germany following the First World War, but the
directors of DMG refused to consider it initially. Negotiations between the two
companies resumed several years later when these conditions worsened and, in 1924 they
signed an Agreement of Mutual Interest, valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises
standardized design, production, purchasing, and sales and they advertised or marketed
their automobile models jointly, although keeping their respective brands.
So after a long fight with circumstances Karl Benz & Henry Ford were the only survivors
and they led the way of the automobiles industry in the world, but all of these great men
were following the footsteps of one man, this man is the one who invented cars, this man
is Nicolas Joseph Cugnot.
In 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by
French engineer and mechanic, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725 - 1804). Cugnot used a
steam engine to power his vehicle, built under his instructions at the Paris Arsenal by
mechanic Brezin. It was used by the French Army to haul artillery at a whopping speed
of 2 1/2 mph on only three wheels. The vehicle had to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to
build up steam power. The steam engine and boiler were separate from the rest of the
vehicle and placed in the front. The following year (1770), Cugnot built a steam-powered
tricycle that carried four passengers.

In 1771, Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, making Cugnot the first
person to get into a motor vehicle accident. This was the beginning of bad luck for the
inventor. After one of Cugnot's patrons died and the other was exiled, the money for
Cugnot's road vehicle experiments ended.

So after a long journey, we finally came to the one last fact, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot
is the man behind automobiles invention and we all owe this great man a thank for
what he offered to us and the bless we have now because of his great efforts,
Thank You Mr. Nicolas Joseph Cugnot.