the invention of the car changed the world essay

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Few inventions have had as profound an impact on the world as the car. It was an invention that has not only change the way people lived, it’s influenced business and the economy in ways no one could have foreseen when Henry Ford put together a mass production operation for his Model T. Some would even say that Americana culture wouldn’t exist without cars. The Model-T started it all

Of course, there have also been a few drawbacks to the creation of the automobile. Buckle up for a informative, entertaining look at how the car changed the world.

Cars Helped Revolutionized Production

Henry Ford is known as the godfather of the American car industry, even though Carl Benz invented the first vehicle in 1879. He may not have invented the vehicle, but he did revolutionize how they’re manufactured, which made cars affordable enough for people outside of the upper class. The assembly line made cars affordable

Ford perfected step-by-step assembly line production by using standardized, interchangeable parts. He then trained employees in only one or two steps so that each person could work as quickly and efficiently as possible. But then Ford took it one step further by using the first ever moving assembly line for large-scale manufacturing. It’s a production model that’s been adopted in countless other industries, allowing for mass production that cuts cost. Without the Model T, manufacturing may not be what it is today.

Cars Dramatically Changed the Economy

It’s an understatement to say automaking has changed the economy. Today, over 4.25 million people work directly within the automotive industry. Not only has car manufacturing become one of the largest industries in the world, it’s also been the driving force behind the growth in the oil and gas industry. Of course, over the years horse breeders and buggy makers have taken a hit.

Cars Enabled People to Travel and Relocate More Readily

The most obvious change for everyday people was that cars gave them a way to get around quickly. Suddenly, people had a new mode of transportation that could get them more places, which meant leisure travel became something common folk could afford.

Where people live has also been influenced by the automobile. Up until the early 1900s, few people lived more than a few miles from where they grew up. It was a matter of choice and logistics. Before cars were invented moving just a short distance away meant hours of buggy travel on rough roads. The rise of suburban areas also wouldn’t have been possible without the automobile. We also got traffic out of the deal

The trend to moving further away really took off after President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs created thousands of miles of roadway across the U.S. Once people could easily get from sea to shining sea more people started to relocate. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is now third in the world for the number of residents who move per year. As we’ve seen in recent years, many people are more than willing to pack up and relocate for work.

Death and Injury - The Downside to Driving

In life, you have to take the bad with the good. Cars have given people freedom, income and convenience, but vehicle accidents are also a leading cause of death. Across the globe 1.3 million people are killed in car accidents every year and another 20-50 million are injured. It's actually one of the reasons drivers education and traffic school were invented.

Unfortunately, young teen drivers are among the most likely to be involved in an accident that leads to death or injury. Got to buckle up!

The Politics of Driving

Because vehicle manufacturing is such a huge industry and affects safety, politics and government regulation are inescapable. Teen drivers know this all too well. Getting a driver’s license now requires a learner’s permit period, drivers ed courses and other stipulations along with the road rules everyone must follow. Did someone say drivers ed? Get your license on-the-go with Aceable.

But road regulations aren’t the only political consideration when it comes to cars. Plenty of economic decisions focus on automaking. One of the most notable political interventions in the auto industry was the bailout of 2009. The U.S. government decided to help several U.S. automakers stay financially stable through the recession, largely because they are American institutions that employ thousands of people.

Environmental Concerns and Further Invention

Environmentalists aren’t the biggest fans of most cars. Their beef isn’t with the cars themselves but the fuel that provides power and harmful byproducts. According to the EPA’s estimates, transportation (mostly passenger vehicles) is responsible for 27% of greenhouse gas emissions .

But environmental concerns have led to the creation of the latest car technology. The production of hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) are steadily increasing by the day as demand for cleaner cars rises. This (and government regulations) has prompted car manufacturers to rethink engines, fueling systems and the overall design of vehicles.

Tesla is among the most prominent companies at the forefront of the clean car movement. The company has proven that all-electric vehicles can be powerful and stylish as well as energy efficient. Of course, Toyota and Leonardo DiCaprio also helped establish the hybrid industry with the Prius. Electric cars are a good alternative for enviromentalists

The Future of Vehicles and What It May Mean for American Society

Now that all-electric vehicles are old news, car engineers are turning their attention to new groundbreaking transportation technology. Industry insiders are extremely excited about the concept of driverless vehicles. Automated cars could save lives

Remember those death and injury stats you read a few minutes ago? Automakers are hoping that driverless vehicles will help alleviate the problem. Since virtually all accidents are due to driver error, the rational is computer systems will be able to make better, quicker decisions. There are already a number of driverless vehicles being tested, but only time will tell if backseat drivers will be the way of the future.

Need to get your license until self-driving cars are actually a reality? Check out Aceable get to get your license fast.

Krista Doyle

How the Automobile Changed the World, for Better or Worse

New MoMA exhibition explores artists’ responses to the beauty, brutality and environmental devastation of cars and car culture

Nora McGreevy

Correspondent

In the early 20th century, cars roared into society and revolutionized modern life. Automobiles and their attendant culture molded labor practices , the fight for civil rights , cities, the arts, social life and the environment in radical—and dangerous—ways.

Artists who observed these changes responded with a range of emotions, from fervent admiration to horror. Now, “ Automania ”—a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City—takes readers on a ride through some of these responses, from an Andy Warhol silkscreen to Robert Frank photographs and a car hood painted by Judy Chicago.

As Lawrence Ulrich reports for the New York Times , the show takes its title from “ Automania 2000 ,” an Oscar-nominated 1963 short animated by married British artists Joy Batchelor and John Halas . In the film, which art enthusiasts can watch online , a consumer craze for automobiles leads scientists to develop “40-foot supercars” that house families consigned to eating petroleum-based foods and ceaselessly watching television. Eventually, the crush of vehicles clogs roads, and the cars themselves spin out of control.

The bulk of the exhibition takes place on MoMA’s third floor. But viewers can also wander downstairs to the outdoor sculpture garden and peer into the windows of several exceptional car designs. Per a statement , nine cars from the museum’s permanent collection are stationed throughout the show, including a famed mint-green “ Beetle ” and a rare Cisitalia 202 , a cherry-red 1946 racing car that owes it curved, seamless appearance to Italian workers who hammered its metal frame by hand.

Brett Berk of Vanity Fair notes that MoMA was among the first museums to treat cars as design objects, hosting the exhibition “ 8 Automobiles ” in 1951. In the show’s catalog , then-curator Arthur Drexler made the (intentionally) provocative claim that automobiles were a kind of “hollow, rolling sculpture,” according to the Times .

Some artists found themselves enamored with the form and power of these new machines. In Italian futurist Giacomo Balla’s Speeding Automobile (1912), shards of white, black, red and green seem to explode out of the canvas in an abstract composition evocative of the energy of a race car.

Other artists reckoned with cars’ deadly potential. Today, crash injuries are estimated to be the eighth leading cause of death for people of all ages around the world. Pop artist Andy Warhol probed the routine horror of fatal crashes and their coverage in the media in Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times (1963), which reproduced the same newspaper image of a deadly collision on an enormous 9- by 14-foot canvas, as Peter Saenger reports for the Wall Street Journal .

Beyond the immediate bodily harm posed by vehicles, artists have also reckoned with their vast environmental cost. In a series of photocollages from the late 1960s, Venezuelan architect Jorge Rigamonti captured the dystopian industrial landscape of his home country, which is one of the biggest exporters of oil in the world. Pollutants also appear in an 1898 lithograph by French post-Impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which shows a male motorist speeding ahead, spewing a cloud of thick smoke over a nearby woman and dog.

Visitors unable to explore the exhibition in person can listen to online audio tours adapted for both adults and children . In one recording, Chicago—the groundbreaking artist who created The Dinner Party (1979) and ushered in a new wave of American feminist art —explains that her work in the exhibition, Flight Hood , was inspired by her time as the only woman in a 250-person auto body school. In 2011, she painted this car hood with a “nascent butterfly” form that references her first husband, who died in an automobile crash.

Cars and car culture have long been tied to Western notions of manliness and rugged individuality . By using a piece of metal so often associated with masculinity as her canvas, Chicago subverted expectations.

“This work is based on a series of paintings that my painting instructors hated,” she recalls in the clip. “… I understood, intuitively, that this imagery that my male painting teachers had rejected because it was so female centered, that there was something subversive about mounting it on the most masculine of forms—a car hood.”

Lead curator Juliet Kinchin , who organized the exhibition with Paul Galloway and Andrew Gardner, also sought to emphasize women’s contributions to the male-dominated auto design industry. Relevant artifacts include textile artist Anni Albers’ upholstery materials and designer Lilly Reich’s 1930 sketches for a folding car seat .

“Women have actually been featured in these stories from the beginning,” Kinchin tells Vanity Fair . “That was something we wanted to tease out.”

All told, Galloway says that he hopes the exhibition pushes museumgoers to reconsider their relationships with their vehicles.

“This is absolutely a moment when we’re rethinking our history with things that we used to love and cherish,” he tells Vanity Fair , “and acknowledging that some of those things maybe were poisonous, or bad ideas, or death traps.”

“ Automania ” is on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City through January 2, 2022.

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Nora McGreevy | | READ MORE

Nora McGreevy is a former daily correspondent for Smithsonian . She is also a freelance journalist based in Chicago whose work has appeared in Wired , Washingtonian , the Boston Globe , South Bend Tribune , the New York Times and more.

The History of Cars

The Evolution of the Automobile Goes All the Way Back to the 1600s

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Internal Combustion Engine: The Heart of the Automobile

The importance of nicolaus otto, gottlieb daimler, rene panhard and emile levassor, charles and frank duryea, ransom eli olds.

The history of cars is more complicated than you would think, and the timeline stretches back to the late 1600s when a Dutch physicist designed the very first internal combustion engine. It wasn't until almost 100 years later that the very first self-powered road vehicles debuted powered by steam engines. Nicolas Joseph Cugnot of France built what is said to be the  first automobile  in 1769. While his invention is recognized by the British Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Club de France as being the first, many history books say that the automobile was invented by either Gottlieb Daimler or Karl Benz . This is because both Daimler and Benz invented highly successful and practical gasoline-powered vehicles that ushered in the age of modern automobiles. They invented cars that looked and worked like the cars we use today.

From a Dutchman's dream to Henry Ford's assembly lines, this is the history of cars.

An internal combustion engine is an engine that uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder; the piston's movement turns a crankshaft that then turns the car wheels via a chain or a drive shaft. The different types of fuel commonly used for car combustion engines are gasoline (or petrol), diesel, and kerosene.

A brief outline of the history of the internal combustion engine includes the following highlights:

• 1680  - Dutch physicist, Christiaan Huygens designed (but never built) an internal combustion engine that was to be fueled with gunpowder.
• 1807  - Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Rivaz designed a car for his engine—the first internal combustion powered automobile. However, his was a very unsuccessful design.
• 1824  - English engineer Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London.
• 1858  - Belgian-born engineer Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete a historic fifty-mile road trip. 
• 1862  - Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a French civil engineer, patented but did not build a four-stroke engine (French patent #52,593, January 16, 1862).
• 1864  - Austrian engineer Siegfried Marcus built a one-cylinder engine with a crude carburetor and attached his engine to a cart for a rocky 500-foot drive. Several years later, Marcus designed a vehicle that briefly ran at 10 mph, which a few historians have considered as the forerunner of the modern automobile by being the world's first gasoline-powered vehicle (however, read conflicting notes below).
• 1873  - George Brayton, an American engineer, developed an unsuccessful two-stroke kerosene engine (it used two external pumping cylinders). However, it was considered the first safe and practical oil engine.
• 1866  - German engineers, Eugen Langen, and Nicolaus August Otto improved on Lenoir's and de Rochas' designs and invented a more efficient gas engine.
• 1876  - Nicolaus August Otto invented and later patented a successful four-stroke engine, known as the "Otto cycle".
• 1876  - The first successful two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dugald Clerk.
• 1883 -  French engineer Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville built a single-cylinder four-stroke engine that ran on stove gas. It is not certain if he did indeed build a car, however, Delamare-Deboutteville's designs were very advanced for the time — ahead of both Daimler and Benz in some ways, at least on paper.
• 1885  - Gottlieb Daimler invented what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine — with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor (patented in 1887). Daimler first built a two-wheeled vehicle the "Reitwagen" (Riding Carriage) with this engine and a year later built the world's first four-wheeled motor vehicle.
• 1886  - On January 29, Karl Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.
• 1889  - Daimler built an improved four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two V-slant cylinders.
• 1890  - Wilhelm Maybach built the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.

Engine design and car design were integral activities, almost all of the engine designers mentioned above also designed cars, and a few went on to become major manufacturers of automobiles. All of these inventors and more made notable improvements in the evolution of the internal combustion vehicles.

One of the most important landmarks in engine design and in the history of cars comes from Nicolaus August Otto who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine. Otto built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine called the "Otto Cycle Engine," and as soon as he had completed his engine, he built it into a motorcycle. Otto's contributions were very historically significant, it was his four-stroke engine that was universally adopted for all liquid-fueled automobiles going forward.

In 1885, German mechanical engineer Karl Benz designed and built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine. On January 29, 1886, Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car. It was a three-wheeler; Benz built his first four-wheeled car in 1891. Benz & Cie., the company started by the inventor, became the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles by 1900. Benz was the first inventor to integrate an internal combustion engine with a chassis - designing both together.

In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler (together with his design partner Wilhelm Maybach) took Otto's internal combustion engine a step further and patented what is generally recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine. Daimler's connection to Otto was a direct one; Daimler worked as technical director of Deutz Gasmotorenfabrik, which Nikolaus Otto co-owned in 1872. There is some controversy as to who built the first motorcycle , Otto or Daimler.

The 1885 Daimler-Maybach engine was small, lightweight, fast, used a gasoline-injected carburetor, and had a vertical cylinder. The size, speed, and efficiency of the engine allowed for a revolution in car design. On March 8, 1886, Daimler took a stagecoach and adapted it to hold his engine, thereby designing the world's first four-wheeled automobile .  Daimler is considered the first inventor to have invented a practical internal-combustion engine.

In 1889, Daimler invented a V-slanted two cylinder, four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves. Just like Otto's 1876 engine, Daimler's new engine set the basis for all car engines going forward. Also in 1889, Daimler and Maybach built their first automobile from the ground up, they did not adapt another purpose vehicle as they had always been done previously. The new Daimler automobile had a four-speed transmission and obtained speeds of 10 mph.

Daimler founded the Daimler Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1890 to manufacture his designs. Eleven years later, Wilhelm Maybach designed the Mercedes automobile.

If Siegfried Marcus built his second car in 1875 and it was as claimed, it would have been the first vehicle powered by a four-cycle engine and the first to use gasoline as a fuel, the first having a carburetor for a gasoline engine and the first having a magneto ignition. However, the only existing evidence indicates that the vehicle was built circa 1888/89—too late to be first.

By the early 1900s, gasoline cars started to outsell all other types of motor vehicles. The market was growing for economical automobiles and the need for industrial production was pressing.

The first car manufacturers in the world were French: Panhard & Levassor (1889) and Peugeot (1891). By car manufacturer we mean builders of entire motor vehicles for sale and not just engine inventors who experimented with car design to test their engines; Daimler and Benz began as the latter before becoming full car manufacturers and made their early money by licensing their patents and selling their engines to car manufacturers.

Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor were partners in a woodworking machinery business when they decided to become car manufacturers. They built their first car in 1890 using a Daimler engine. Edouard Sarazin, who held the license rights to the Daimler patent for France, commissioned the team. (Licensing a patent means that you pay a fee and then you have the right to build and use someone's invention for profit; in this case, Sarazin had the right to build and sell Daimler engines in France.) The partners not only manufactured cars, but they also made improvements to the automotive body design.

Panhard-Levassor made vehicles with a pedal-operated clutch, a chain transmission leading to a change-speed gearbox, and a front radiator. Levassor was the first designer to move the engine to the front of the car and use a rear-wheel-drive layout. This design was known as the Systeme Panhard and quickly became the standard for all cars because it gave a better balance and improved steering. Panhard and Levassor are also credited with the invention of the modern transmission — installed in their 1895 Panhard.

Panhard and Levassor also shared the licensing rights to Daimler motors with Armand Peugeot. A Peugeot car went on to win the first car race held in France, which gained Peugeot publicity and boosted car sales. Ironically, the "Paris to Marseille" race of 1897 resulted in a fatal auto accident, killing Emile Levassor.

Early on, French manufacturers did not standardize car models; each car was different from the other. The first standardized car was the 1894 Benz Velo. One hundred and thirty-four identical Velos were manufactured in 1895.

America's first gasoline-powered commercial car manufacturers were Charles and Frank Duryea . The brothers were bicycle makers who became interested in gasoline engines and automobiles and built their first motor vehicle in 1893, in Springfield, Massachusetts. By 1896, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company had sold thirteen models of the Duryea, an expensive limousine, which remained in production into the 1920s.

The first automobile to be mass produced in the United States was the 1901 Curved Dash Oldsmobile, built by the American car manufacturer Ransom Eli Olds (1864-1950). Olds invented the basic concept of the assembly line and started the Detroit area automobile industry. He first began making steam and gasoline engines with his father, Pliny Fiske Olds, in Lansing, Michigan in 1885. Olds designed his first steam-powered car in 1887. In 1899, with a growing experience of gasoline engines, Olds moved to Detroit to start the Olds Motor Works, and produce low-priced cars. He produced 425 "Curved Dash Olds" in 1901, and was America's leading auto manufacturer from 1901 to 1904.

American car manufacturer, Henry Ford (1863-1947) invented an improved assembly line and installed the first conveyor belt-based assembly line in his car factory in Ford's Highland Park, Michigan plant, around 1913-14. The assembly line reduced production costs for cars by reducing assembly time. Ford's famous Model T was assembled in ninety-three minutes. Ford made his first car, called the "Quadricycle," in June 1896. However, success came after he formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903. This was the third car manufacturing company formed to produce the cars he designed. He introduced the Model T in 1908 and it was a success. After installing the moving assembly lines in his factory in 1913, Ford became the world's biggest car manufacturer. By 1927, 15 million Model Ts had been manufactured.

Another victory won by Henry Ford was a patent battle  with George B. Selden. Selden, who had never built an automobile, held a patent on a "road engine", on that basis Selden was paid royalties by all American car manufacturers. Ford overturned Selden's patent and opened the American car market for the building of inexpensive cars.

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History of cars

by Chris Woodford . Last updated: August 11, 2022.

C ars are amazing! And one of the most amazing things about them is that no-one invented them—no single person, that is. There was no scribbling on the back of an envelope, no lightning flash of inspiration, and no-one ran down the street crying "Eureka". All the different parts—the engine, the wheels, the gears, and all the fiddly bits like the windscreen wipers—somehow came together, very gradually, over a period of about five and a half thousand years. How did it happen? Let's take a closer look!

Photo: Museums like Wheels of Yesteryear, pictured here, teach us that the history of cars has evolved through shifts in fashion and culture and as well as improvements in technology. Photograph courtesy of Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress , Prints and Photographs Division.

Beasts of burden

It all began with the horse. Or the camel. Or perhaps even the dog. No-one really knows which animal prehistoric humans picked on first. People tended to stay put, living more locally than they do now. If they needed to move things about, they had to float them down rivers or drag them by sledge. All that started to change when humans realized the animals around them had raw power they could tap and tame. These "beasts of burden" were the first engines .

By about 5000BCE, there were sledges and there were animal "engines"—so the obvious thing to do was hitch them together. The Native Americans were masters at this. They invented the travois : a strong, A-shaped wooden frame, sometimes covered with animal skin, that a horse could drag behind it like a cart without wheels. First used thousands of years ago, the travois was still scraping along well into the 19th century.

The next big step was to add wheels and turn sledges into carts. The wheel , which first appeared around 3500 BCE , was one of the last great inventions of prehistoric times. No-one knows exactly how wheels were invented. A group of prehistoric people may have been rolling a heavy load along on tree trunks one day when they suddenly realized they could chop the logs like salami and make the slices into wheels. However it was invented, the wheel was a massive advance: it meant people and animals could pull heavier loads further and faster.

Huge and heavy, the first solid wheels were difficult to carve and more square than round. When someone had the bright idea of building lighter, rounder wheels from separate wooden spokes, lumbering carts became swift, sleek chariots . The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all used chariots to expand their empires. They were a bit like horse-drawn tanks.

Earlier civilizations made small steps by trial and error. The ancient Greeks (the first real scientists) took giant leaps. Greek philosophers (thinkers) realized that a wheel mounted on an axle can magnify a pushing or pulling force. So people now understood the science of wheels for the first time. The Greeks also gave us gears : pairs of wheels with teeth around the edge that lock and turn together to increase power or speed.

Carts and chariots were a big advance on legs—but they were useless for going cross country. That's why ancient Middle Eastern people and Mediterraneans, who lived in open grassy areas and deserts, developed chariots faster than Europeans and Asians stuck among the forests and scrub. The Romans were the first to realize that a car is only as good as the road it travels on. So they linked up their empire with a huge highway network. Roman roads were cutting-edge technology. They had a soft base underneath to drain away water and a harder top made from a patchwork of tight-fitting rocks.

The Greeks gave us gears, the Romans gave us roads—but when it came to engines, the world was still stuck with horsepower. And things stayed that way for hundreds of years through a time known as the Dark Ages, the early part of the Middle Ages, when science and knowledge advanced little in the western world.

Things finally started getting interesting again toward the end of the Middle Ages. In 1335, Dutchman Guido von Vigevano drew sketches of a "Windwagen". It had the three key parts of a modern car: an engine (spinning windmill sails), a set of wheels, and gears to transfer power between them. During the Renaissance (the explosion of culture and science that began in the 15th century), Italian inventor Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) scribbled some designs for a clockwork car. Like a giant watch , it was supposed to be powered by springs that would drive the wheels through a system of interlocking gears. Even though there was little mileage in either of these ideas, the self-powered car was slowly coming together and the days of the horse seemed numbered.

Chariots of fire

The next major development came in 1712 when "the very ingenious Mr Thomas Newcomen " (as his friends called him) built a massive machine for pumping rainwater out of coal mines. It was based around a huge 2-m (7-ft) high metal cylinder with a piston inside that could move up and down like the plunger in a bicycle pump. Every so often, steam from a boiler (a sort of gigantic coal-fired kettle) squirted into the space in the cylinder underneath the piston. Then cold water was squirted in to make the steam condense, creating a partial vacuum directly under the piston. Since the air pressure in the space above the piston was now greater than that in the space beneath it, the piston moved down. When the vacuum was released, the piston rose back up again. The rising and falling piston operated a pump that slowly sucked the water from the mine.

Machines like this were originally called fire engines—they were, after all, powered by burning coal—though they soon became known as steam engines when people realized that controlling steam was the key to making them work more efficiently. One of those people was a Scotsman named James Watt (1736–1819). In 1764, Watt redesigned Newcomen's engine so it was both a fraction the size and more powerful. Where Newcomen's piston had simply tipped a beam up and down, Watt's turned wheels and gears. Large Watt engines soon found their way into factories, where they became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution and people did away with horses for operating pumps and other machines. Coal seemed to be the fuel of the future.

Steam engines were still too big and heavy to use in vehicles, but that didn't stop people trying. In 1769, Frenchman Nicholas Joseph Cugnot (1725–1804) used steam-engine technology to make a lumbering, three-wheeled tractor for pulling heavy army cannons. Many people consider this the world's first car, but it was incredibly primitive by today's standards. With a top speed of just 5 km/h (3mph), you would have thought it posed little danger. But the "fardier à vapeur" (steam wagon) was heavy and hard to steer and, just two years later, the first ever car had the first ever car crash when Cugnot rammed it through a brick wall. He was given a speeding ticket and thrown in jail.

Steam engines were soon finding their way into other heavy vehicles. In the early 1800s, Cornishman Richard Trevithick (1771–1833) started building steam carriages with wobbly 3-m (10-ft) diameter wheels. Around this time, Trevithick's American counterpart Oliver Evans (1755–1819) built an ambitious steam-powered river digger called the Oruktor Amphibolos that could drive on either land or water. Belching fire and smoke like a dragon, it caused a sensation as it chugged down the Philadelphia streets in 1804, though it was mostly a publicity stunt and never a truly credible steam vehicle. [1]

Artwork: The Oruktor Amphibolos, built by Oliver Evans, could drive along on four wheels or steam down the river using its rear-mounted paddle. Note how the steam engine at the front uses a pulley to power both the front and rear axles, making this a very early example of four-wheel drive. Artwork from The Mechanic magazine, July 1834, courtesy of US Library of Congress .

Both Trevithick and Evans ultimately switched their attention to making steam trains, but another Cornish inventor, Goldsworthy Gurney (1793–1875), was convinced the idea of steam road vehicles still had legs. Quite literally. He designed an early steam carriage that would gallop along on rickety pins, just like a horse. When Gurney realized wheels could do the job much better, he built impressive steam buses and ran a service between London and Bath. Ultimately he was driven out of business by horse-powered stage coaches, which were faster and cheaper. John Scott Russell (1808–1882) also had to close a promising steam-coach business when one of his buses exploded on 29 July 1834, killing four passengers. It was the world's first fatal car accident. Horses everywhere breathed a huge sigh of relief: they'd be around for many years yet. Or so they thought, until a clever bunch of scientists showed up.

Artwork: Goldsworthy Gurney's steam carriage, as illustrated in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction , Volume 10, No. 287, 1827: "The vehicle resembles the ordinary stage-coaches, but is rather larger and higher. Coke or charcoal are to form the fuel, by which means smoke will be avoided; the flues will be above the level of the seated passenger, and it is calculated that the motion of the carriage will always disperse the heated rarefied air from the flues."

Ingenious Engineers

A car is like a cart with a built-in horse—a horse-less carriage that doesn't eat grass, wear shoes, or leave a steaming pile of muck wherever it goes. The engineers who set out to make the first cars had a big problem on their hands: how to squeeze the power of a galloping horse into a small, reliable engine .

This tricky problem taxed the best minds of the day. The experiments with steam had been the first attempt to solve it, but though coal-powered steam engines were excellent for pulling trains, they weren't so good in cars. Apart from the clunking great engine itself, you had to carry a mini-mountain of coal and a tank full of water. Some ingenious Europeans starting searching for better fuels and more compact engines. They were a mixture of "thinkers" and "doers".

Photo: Early cars were literally "horseless carriages": wooden carriages powered by simple internal combustion engines. This one is typical. Dating from 1898, it's suspended at a jaunty angle from the ceiling of Think Tank, the museum of science in Birmingham, England.

Christiaan Huygens

The engineers were inspired by brilliant Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), who had the laser-like mind of Isaac Newton and the inventing ability of Leonardo da Vinci. He made many astronomical discoveries, invented the mathematics of probability, made the first pendulum clock , invented a musical keyboard, and discovered that light travels like a wave. In the late 17th century, Huygens had an idea for an engine that made power by exploding gunpowder in a tube. Unfortunately, he was way ahead of his time: engineering wasn't yet good enough for him actually to build this machine. If it had been, the world might have had cars almost 200 years earlier!

Sadi Carnot

Photo: Nicolas Sadi Carnot, aged 17.

Next up was a French army engineer called Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832), who wrote the original book of car science, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire , in 1824. It was the first proper explanation of how engines worked , why they made power, and how you could make them even more effective. Carnot's ideas are now considered brilliant, but they were published over 100 years after the first steam engines had already been built. What was use was science when it came a century after the inventions it tried to explain? Actually, a great deal! It was Carnot who inspired Rudolf Diesel to invent his engine, for example, and his theory of how engines work remains the centerpiece of thermodynamics (the scientific study of heat).

Joseph Étienne Lenoir

Huygens' idea to capture the power of a small explosion was what the "doers" seized on. A French-Belgian engineer called Joseph Étienne Lenoir (1822–1900) was tinkering with electricity in the 1850s when he took the next step. In those days, street lamps were naked flames fed by gas pipes. Lenoir wondered what would happen if he could ignite some of this street-lamp gas in a metal tin using an electric spark. His "spark plug" (as we now call it) would make the gas explode with a thump of power that could push a piston. If he could repeat this process again and again, he could drive a machine. The "gas engines" Lenoir built made as much power as 1.5 horses and were soon being built by the dozen. In 1863, Lenoir fixed one of them to a three-wheeled cart and built a very crude car. It made an 18-km (9-mile) journey in 11 hours—four times longer than it would have taken to walk.

Nikolaus August Otto

Lenoir died a miserable pauper because his engines, though revolutionary, were soon obsolete. Gas was a cleaner fuel than coal, but it wasn't practical—there was even a risk it would explode and kill people. Gasoline (a liquid fuel) proved to be a better bet, as German Nikolaus Otto (1832–1891) discovered. Otto was no scientific thinker—far from it: he was a traveling grocery salesman who taught himself engineering. During the 1860s, he tinkered with various engine designs and, in 1876, finally came up with a really efficient gasoline engine, which worked by methodically repeating the same four steps (or "strokes") over and over again. Virtually every car engine has worked the same way ever since.

Karl and Bertha Benz

German engineer Karl Benz (1844–1929) studied Otto's work and determined to do better. After building a simpler gasoline engine of his own, he fixed it to a three-wheeled carriage and made the world's first practical gas-powered car in 1885. No-one took much notice—until Benz's feisty wife Bertha and their two young sons "borrowed" the car one day without asking and set off for a 100-km (65-mile) journey to see grandma. They bought fuel at drug stores (chemist's shops), because gas stations had yet to be invented, and the boys had to get out every so often to push the car up hills. Bertha even had to stop a couple of times to make repairs with her hair pin and garter belt. News of this intrepid early test-drive caught the public's imagination; Benz couldn't have dreamed up a better publicity stunt if he'd tried. He took his wife's advice and added gears for uphill driving. Soon he was developing successful four-wheel cars and, by the start of the 20th century, was the world's leading car maker.

Artwork: Thanks to his wife's test drive, Karl Benz added gears to his car to make it easier to drive up hills. Here's a drawing from a patent he filed showing how they worked: the gasoline engine (blue) powers a piston (pink) and flywheel (green), which drives the gears (red) that power the large rear wheels (brown). Artwork from US Patent 386,798: Driving gear for velocipedes by Karl Benz, courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office.

Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach

Benz soon found himself up against Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846–1929), who worked for Nikolaus Otto, until Otto and Daimler fell out. Setting up their own firm, Daimler and Maybach experimented with a giant gasoline engine nicknamed the Grandfather Clock (because it was tall and upright). After shrinking it down to size, they bolted it to a wooden bicycle and made the world's first motorbike. By 1889, they were building cars. Ten years later, the Daimler company named a car "Mercedes" in honor of Mercedes Jellinek, the daughter of one of their customers and dealers, Emil Jellinek (1853–1918). The Daimler and Benz companies were rivals until the 1920s, when they merged to make Daimler-Benz and began selling cars under the name Mercedes-Benz.

Rudolf Diesel

Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913) was both a thinker and a doer. Confined to hospital after an accident, he spent months poring over books and papers by people like Carnot and Otto. He soon came to the conclusion that he could build a far better engine than the puny gasoline machines Benz and Daimler had designed and knocked up a prototype, an enormous 3-m (10-ft) high machine, in the early 1890s. This first diesel engine made twice as much power as a similar steam engine and, even more remarkably, could run on practically any fuel at all—even oil made from peanuts and vegetables. Diesel, in other words, was a pioneer of biofuels long before people had a name for them.

Diesel was convinced of his genius and certain his engine would change the world, but he never lived to see the success he'd earned. In September 1913, while traveling from Germany to England on the mail ship SS Dresden , he fell overboard and drowned. Some people think he was murdered by German or French secret agents to stop him selling the secrets of his engines to the English in the run up to World War I, which broke out the following year.

Photo: Karl Benz's car. Photo courtesy of The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America, US Library of Congress .

Charles Goodyear

While inventors like Diesel were developing engines in a careful scientific way, a hapless American called Charles Goodyear (1800–1860) found the secret of making car tires completely by accident. After learning about rubber , he convinced himself he could make his fortune by turning it into useful objects like waterproof shoes. All attempts ended in disaster and his life became a catalog of misery and misfortune. His shoes melted in the summer heat, six of his 12 children died in infancy, and his family had to live in grinding poverty eating fish from the river. But Goodyear was determined. When debts landed him in jail, he simply asked his wife to bring him a rolling pin and some rubber and he carried on inventing in his cell. He finally made his big breakthrough when he accidentally dropped a piece of rubber on a hot stove. It cooked and shriveled into a hard black mass that Goodyear immediately spotted as the thing he'd wanted all along. This is how he developed the tough black rubber we use in tires today by a cooking process now known as vulcanization.

The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford

“ It was not at all my idea to make cars in any such petty fashion. ” Henry Ford, My Life and Work, 1922

By the start of the 20th century, gasoline-engined cars were fast, reliable, and exciting. They were also stupidly expensive. In 1893, Karl Benz's simple, Viktoria car had a price tag of £9000 (about £50,000 today) and hardly anyone could afford one—he sold just 45. Car makers stuck with big, expensive cars, so customers stuck with their horses and carts. Then a bold American engineer called Henry Ford (1863–1947) came along and decided things had to be different.

The rise of Henry Ford

Ford was no scientist, but he'd been repairing watches and tinkering with machines since he was a boy. Never afraid of rolling up his sleeves, he loved machinery and understood it instinctively. His first car was little more than a four-wheel motorbike that he called the Quadricycle. When he took it on the streets of Detroit in 1896, horses bolted in all directions.

Ford must have been delighted: he had no time for horses. Aged 14, he'd been thrown from the saddle of a colt, caught his foot in the stirrups, and dragged home along the ground. A few years later, he'd been seriously injured when his bolting horse and cart tried to smash through a fence. Now was the time to settle those scores.

Photo: Henry Ford was inspired to build his first car after he saw a steam-powered tractor (traction engine) like this one. He realized straight away that engine-powered vehicles were the future.

Ford loved machines and hated horses, so he hatched a simple plan: he'd make the simplest possible "horseless carriage" and he'd make it in such enormous quantities, in only one color, that he could sell it cheaply to a huge number of people. It took him 12 years to get things right. In fact, he made eight different models (named A, B, C, F, N, R, S, and K) before he finally came up with a winner, the Model T, launched in 1908—a car everyone could afford. Around 15 million Model T Fords were eventually sold and a delighted (and very rich) Henry Ford scribbled in his notebook: "The horse is DONE".

How the horse was "done"

From horse to car in six steps and about 5000 years...

The Assembly Line

Normally things get more expensive over time—but Ford's pint-sized miracle car, the Model T, dropped in price from $850 when it was launched in 1908 to just $260 in 1925. The secret was mass-production: making the car from simple, easy-to-fit parts in huge quantities. Other car makers used small groups of mechanics to build entire cars very slowly. By 1913, Ford was building cars at his new Highland Park factory in a completely different way using a moving "assembly line". Model Ts were gradually assembled on a conveyor that inched past a series of workers. Each mechanic was trained to do only one job and worked briefly on each car as it passed by. Then the vehicle moved on, someone else did another bit, and the whole car magically came together. The first year Ford used his assembly line, production of the Model T leaped from 82,000 to 189,000. By 1923, Ford's giant River Rouge factory was making 2 million cars a year.

Photo: A Ford Model T. Photo courtesy of Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive US Library of Congress .

River Rouge

Photo: Inside one of the many River Rouge buildings in 1941. Photo (believed to be in the public domain) by Alfred T. Palmer, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information courtesy of US Library of Congress .

River Rouge Facts

• 93 separate buildings.
• 81,000 people employed.
• 120 miles of assembly line conveyors.
• 100 miles of private railroad track and 16 trains.
• Total size: 2000 acres (an area the size of 1000 British soccer pitches or 1500 American football fields).
• 15,767,708 square feet of factory floors and 3500 mops used each month to keep them clean.
• Total cost: $268,991,592.07—equivalent to about £1.5 billion today!

The fall of Henry Ford

Photo: Henry Ford in later life. Photo by courtesy of US Library of Congress .

Henry Ford was a big success and a people's hero: no-one did more to put cars within reach of ordinary people. But he made big mistakes too, probably because he was a mess of contradictions.

Stuck in the past? Ford looked to the future—he grew soybeans to make plastic parts for cars and experimented with biofuels years before almost anyone else. He famously wrote "History is more or less bunk". But, as he grew older, he set up his own museum, packed it full of nostalgic exhibits, and spent increasing amounts of time there daydreaming of a lost era. He even had visitors driven round on horses and carts.

Nostalgic? His assembly-line methods were widely copied and quickly transformed the United States from a clean and green farm-based nation into a dirty, smoky factory-based one. Yet the more industrialized things became, the more Ford yearned for the rural world he was helping to destroy.

Stubborn? The Model-T Ford was a huge success, but Ford refused to update it: "There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it." But other car makers began introducing a new model every year and the Ford Motor Company lost its lead. In 1927, Ford grudgingly abandoned the Model-T and closed down his factories for six months while they converted to making new models.

Arrogant? Ford had strong opinions and never shrank from expressing them. He ran for the US senate, but lost, and even seriously thought of standing for President. Though a brilliant mechanic, he had no qualifications to speak about world affairs.

Racist? Ford bought a newspaper and got into big trouble writing offensive articles about Jewish people. But he was one of the first industrialists to employ black people and treat them fairly.

Pacifist? When World War I broke out, this committed pacifist hired a huge ocean liner and sailed it round the world trying to make peace—earning nothing but ridicule. But during World War II, he turned his factory over to making thousands of bombers.

Spent Force

Photo: The radiator of a Ford Edsel, one of Henry Ford's huge commercial flops. Photo courtesy of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive US Library of Congress .

Ford built his company up from nothing and was determined to keep control. Despite making his son Edsel president in 1919, Ford still made all the big decisions. He belittled Edsel and cruelly undermined his authority. Once, when Edsel ordered new coal ovens for the steel plant at River Rouge, Ford waited till they'd been built before ordering them to be demolished. Though Ford humiliated Edsel, he was devastated when his son died from cancer in 1943, aged only 49. The sparkle vanished from his eyes and he hurtled towards senility. He briefly became president of the Ford Motor Company once more, but couldn't remember what he was supposed to be doing or why. By now, Ford was unquestionably the world's greatest industrialist: he'd made a personal fortune of over $1 billion. But he was deteriorating into what his doctor described as "a pleasant vegetable" and died after a massive stroke in 1947, aged 83.

Chariots thrived in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle-East. Steam-power was a product of 18th-century Britain. In the 19th century, French and German engineers built the first gasoline cars. At the start of the 20th century Henry Ford, an American, made simple cars people could afford. Ever since then, the miracle of the motor car has spread around the world... and changed the face of our planet.

People's wagon: 1940s: Germany

German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) gave Henry Ford a medal for making cars affordable. Inspired by the Model-T Ford, Hitler asked German auto-maker Dr Ferdinard Porsche to develop a simple people's car or "Volks Wagen" called the KDF (Kraft durch Freude or Strength through Joy). Renamed the Beetle, it sold over 20 million worldwide and was one of the most popular cars of the 20th century.

Photo: An unusual two-tone VW Beetle restored to its original glory.

Status symbols: 1950s–1960s: America

Ford wanted to keep cars simple to keep them cheap. But his "any color so long as it's black" message fell out of favor: people wanted comfort and style. In the 1930s, cars became sleek, glamorous, and "streamlined"; inside, they boasted luxuries like automatic gears and window defrosters. The end of World War II brought cars inspired by planes. Swaggering "gas guzzlers" were given tail fins like jet fighters—and burned almost as much fuel!

Photo: The aircraft-inspired tail lights and fins on a mid-century Cadillac. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith courtesy of The Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress , Prints and Photographs Division.

Paving the way: 1930s–1950s: Europe and America

Many countries launched huge roadbuilding schemes in the mid-20th century. Hitler helped to pioneer Germany's high-speed Autobahns in the 1930s, while his Italian pal Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) greatly expanded the Italian network of autostrade . Britain didn't start building motorways until the 1950s, when America also reorganized its major roads into a simple numbered network called the Interstate Highway System.

Cuban Classics: 1950s: Cuba

Cuba has been cut-off from the United States since the Cuban revolution of 1959, so many Cubans still drive round in classic cars from the late 1950s. It's hard to buy new cars or spares for old ones!

Photo: A row of classic American cars in Havana, Cuba. Photograph courtesy of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress , Prints and Photographs Division.

Trabi trials (1950s–1980s): East Germany

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, eastern Europeans zipped around in 3 million ugly little cars called Trabants (or "Trabis"). They were cheap and cheerful—even cool in some ways, with recycled plastic body parts that lasted nearly 30 years. But their engines chugged like mowers and smoke belched from their exhausts. When communism collapsed, people drove their Trabants to the scrap heap at top speed. Only to find the plastic bits couldn't be recycled.

Big Sheik Out: 1970s: Middle East

In 1973, oil-rich states in the Middle East began to restrict exports—turning off the tap that supplied the world with oil. There were sharp hikes in fuel prices and queues of cars snaking from gas stations were a familiar sight.

Sugar cars: 1970s– : Brazil

When the 1973 oil crisis hit home, the Brazilian government launched a major project to run the country's cars on ethanol made from sugar beet. Almost 30,000 filling stations in Brazil now sell ethanol, which supplies a fifth of the country's fuel.

First robot carmaker: 1961: Ewing, New Jersey, USA

Henry Ford pioneered automation, but General Motors took it a quantum leap further in 1961. That's when the first-ever car-making robot started building car bodies at the GM plant in Ewing New Jersey.

Big in Japan: 1970s–1980s: Japan

American and European car firms dominated car production till the 1970s. Then Japanese upstarts such as Nissan, Honda, Mazda, and Toyota began to undercut them by exporting cheaply made cars to the West. For a time, countries like the United States and Britain fought off these imports. So the Japanese went further and began exporting their factories instead. Honda became the first Japanese maker to open plants in the United States and Canada in the early 1980s.

Compete or cooperate? California, USA: 2000s–

Car makers used to compete; now they cooperate. In the world of "globalization", big companies and their brands operate beyond national borders. New cars are expensive to design so makers in different countries work together to reduce costs. A Renault made in France might use exactly the same chassis, engine, or bodywork as a Nissan made in Japan. Another example of globalization is when a car plant in one country builds vehicles for more than one maker. Toyota and General Motors jointly run a plant like this in Fremont, California making parts for Toyotas, Pontiacs, and Chevrolets.

Car-making memories: UK: 2000s–

Britain's car industry once employed over a million people and was the world's second-biggest producer after the United States. Today, the only big car plants left in Britain are run by Japanese firms and the once great names of British motoring—Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin—are foreign-owned too.

Dream cars: China: 2000–

Not so long ago, the Chinese were famously bike crazy: there were twice as many cycles in China as people in the United States. Back in 2000, almost four in ten of Beijing's commuters cycled to work; today, that figure is closer to one in ten. For the last few years, most car makers have been eagerly turning their eyes to China, and it's easy to see why. The world's fastest-growing car market is seeing sales increases of something like 80 per cent a year. But the Chinese aren't just making cars for themselves. According to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers , US car production declined by almost a half between 1999 and 2017; in China, it increased something like 40 times. That's partly due to higher rates of car ownership in Asia, but it's also because China is making cars for the rest of the world. The country's biggest car maker, Shanghai Automotive, has formed powerful alliances with big western firms including Fiat, General Motors, and Volkswagen.

Self-driving cars: California: 2000–

Who knows if we'll even be driving cars in the future? Companies like Google are now busily developing cars with onboard sensors (like radar and lidar ) that can navigate their way around the world while the people inside sit back and enjoy the view. Part robot, part computer, part old-fashioned automobile, these hybrid machines are likely to prove far safer and much more environmentally friendly than cars driven by careless, fallible humans.

Electric cars: 2010s–

Despite what you might think, electric vehicles are actually older than gasoline-driven ones, but it's taken well over a century for them to catch on properly. Are the days of petrol and diesel finally numbered? Find out more in our main article about electric cars .

Photo: Crazy for cars... or plain car crazy? The Berwyn car spindle, Berwyn, Illinois was a 50-foot spike with eight cars impaled on it. Photograph courtesy of Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress , Prints and Photographs Division.

• There's roughly one car for every eight people on the planet. (Over a billion cars worldwide at the moment with the total expected to exceed two billion by 2040.)
• A quarter of the world's cars are in America.
• Almost 100 million new cars roll off the world's production lines each year.
• A typical American spends on average 13 days a year (assuming 365 days of 52 minutes a day ) driving to or from work.
• The ski village of Zermatt in Switzerland has banned combustion-engines . Only emergency vehicles can use them. All other vehicles have to be electric.
• Although Japan dominated car production until recently, Chinese firms now make more cars than any other country (around 30 million a year). China accounts for about a third of the entire world's production.
• America has about 6.4 million km (4.1 million miles) of highways —enough to go from Earth to the Moon 16 times.

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• Axles and wheels
• Car engines
• Electric cars
• Inventors and inventions

Car Museums

• Beaulieu National Motor Museum : A famous car museum in the south of England.
• Classic Car Museum : Handy for visitors on the East Coast of the United States, this museum is Located in Norwich, NY.
• Gilmore Car Museum : A museum in the American Midwest (in Lansing, Michigan).
• Haynes International Motor Museum : Another big car museum in England's West Country.
• Petersen Automotive Museum : Motor museum in Los Angeles, California.
• Wheels of Yesteryear : The museum where our top photo was taken, at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Books for older readers

• The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts. Vintage, 2006. A fascinating and very readable account of Ford's life and achievements.
• The Car—a History of the Automobile by Jonathan Glancey. Carlton, 2008. A photographic history of cars and their social impact.
• Car: The Definitive Visual History of the Automobile . Dorling Kindersley, 2022. A coffee table look at car history, including huge closeup photos of classic car engines and the stories of great car marques (brands).
• Classic American Cars by Quentin Willson. DK, 1997. An illustrated look at some of the greatest US cars of all time.

Books for younger readers

• Car Crazy by Carron Brown. Dorling Kindersley, 2012/2014. A wide-ranging but fairly basic look at the world of cars, for ages 7–10.
• Car Science by Richard Hammond. Dorling Kindersley, 2008. A great introduction to the science that powers cars—including, engines, gears, hydraulics, and aerodynamics. Ages 9–12.
• Eyewitness Car by Richard Sutton. Dorling Kindersley, 2005. A general introduction to car science, technology, and history for ages 9–12 (and perhaps a bit beyond).
• How Cars Work by Tom Newton. Black Apple Press, 1999. Each page of this illustrated book explains one major part of a car. Good for teenagers and adults.
• Time for Kids: Henry Ford by Dina El Nabli. HarperCollins, 2008. A readable, well-illustrated, 50-page biography for younger readers aged 7–9.
• Cars of the World by J.D. Scheel. Methuen, 1963/1971. A lovely illustrated history that's well worth tracking down in secondhand book stores. Each chapter charts the development of cars in a different country, ranging (alphabetically) from Austria to the United States.

References ↑    Evans' vehicle ran for several days around the streets of Philadelphia and he collected a voluntary donation of 25 cents from spectators. Even so, Kathleen Simonton fairly describes it as "more of a publicity stunt than a breathrough in steam-powered vehicles..." See Journal of the Franklin Institute , July 1886, p.10 and "Amphibious Steam Vehicle" by Kathleen Simonton in Technical Innovation in American History: An Encyclopedia of Science and Technology , ABC-Clio, 2019, Volume 1, p.80. Please do NOT copy our articles onto blogs and other websites Articles from this website are registered at the US Copyright Office. Copying or otherwise using registered works without permission, removing this or other copyright notices, and/or infringing related rights could make you liable to severe civil or criminal penalties. Text copyright © Chris Woodford 2009, 2022. All rights reserved. Full copyright notice and terms of use . Follow us

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The Evolution of the Automobile & Its Effects on Society Essay

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Introduction

Background information: the evolution, effects of the automobile evolution on the society.

Bibliography

Evolution is an inevitable process in most things that we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Most aspects undergo the evolution process for the purpose of better performance through incorporation of new features and elements that are desired by people as needs change day by day.

An automobile can be defined as a motor vehicle or vessel that is powered for transportation especially of passengers. A lot of importance is attached to it due to the help it offers to a majority of people particularly in terms of convenience.

The automobile is one concept that has undergone considerable evolution with many positive changes being witnessed and each evolution stage being associated with some improvements from prior stage. There are also negative impacts. This piece of work will give an exhaustive discussion of the evolution of the automobile and the effects it has had on the society.

Coming up with the automobile did not take a single day nor did it involve a single individual. The evolution of the automobile has taken a relatively long period for it to be at the state in which it is today.

The history of automobile can be traced back in the late 18 th century or early 19 th century. This is connected to the engineering and technological advancements that were witnessed in Europe during this time. During this period, the European engineers started inventing and bringing into action vehicles that were powered by a motor.

It was later that other sources of power were invented for instance steam, combustion and electricity and the motors developed therefore took different forms depending on the source of power. This caused some form of confusion and by the beginning of the 20 th century; it was still not clear the type of engine that was appropriate to power the automobile [1] .

In the beginning, an electric vehicle was the most common automobile. However, with the invention of a battery, a battery-powered car became popular mainly because it was in a position to move with greater speed and go over a long distance as compared to an electric car. For this reason, the electric cars stopped being produced past the first decade of the 20 th century.

The steam-powered automobile was also popular and was used even in the 1920’s. The problems associated with this type of automobile are cost of construction as well as maintenance. It was also deemed dangerous since it presented a high probability of explosion of the boiler.

The steam driven engine for that reason did not become popular. With the passage of time, the steam and electric automobiles were out done by the combustion engine driven cars, as they were deemed more reliable. The popularity of the combustion engine can be traced when it was opted for by the early American automobile founders such as Henry Ford.

After the trials and comparison of the automobiles, it was now time to produce automotives for commercial purposes. This started towards the end of the 19 th century (1890), in France. Commercial automobile production in the United States started in the beginning of the 20 th century and it was equal to what was produced in Europe. Engineering and handicraft strategies were utilized in the making of the automobiles.

Initially, different parts from different suppliers were brought together in a plant and assembled to make a vehicle. Various automobile making firms were established but their number went on decreasing as time went by in various countries including Japan, Europe, and the United States of America due to varying reasons, for instance, poor management, and lack of resources.

The three horsepower and curved dash Oldsmobile was the first automobile to be produced in large scale. Various automobile making firms were established between the year 1904 to the year 1908 in the United States of America and they engaged in very competitive business and one of the notable firms include the Ford Motor Company.

Initially, automobiles were associated with the wealthy people but their popularity spread to the public with time. With the increase in popularity, the automobiles became relatively cheaper and hence people of the middle class could afford them. This was enabled by cheap pricing of the cars and provision of incentives to employees such that they would afford the cars without straining.

The popularity of the automobile has been on the increase all through from their invention to present day. The automobile has become a necessity and it is deemed as a tool that makes life interesting and easy especially through enhancing movements of both people and goods from one place to another an aspect that was very difficult during the earlier days.

However, the economic status has been a factor that has influenced the popularity of the automobiles in that when the status are favourable, the popularity and use increases while it decreases in times of recession and inflation.

Practical examples include increase in popularity after the First World War and during the Second World War and a decrease at the time of great depression, which was characterized by increased unemployment rate [2] .

Successful automobile manufacturing companies were known through their specific trademark, which could be deduced from their design, speed, as well as service provided.

It is evident that there have been many changes in the automobile industry in an effort to come up with the best automobile in terms of features as well as safety. Various people have been involved in the evolution process each playing a significant role in bringing about ideas to make better automobiles.

Even with the availability of other modes of transportation that could even be more comfortable and convenient, it is evident that cars have dominated the transport sector. We find that vehicles have become an essential element in our day-to-day lives and most families have at least one car. Many resources are used on transportation particularly for the gas.

Economic hardships have for this reason resulted in people preferring to use public means of transport because in as much as they would wish to travel in the comfort of their own cars it becomes very expensive and they cannot afford to maintain their personal cars [3] .

Most aspects do not exist in isolation and therefore there are usually some forms of dependencies, which in turn lead to some effects. The effects could be either positive or negative depending on situations and the results achieved. The automobile evolution is associated with considerable impacts on the society, the positive ones seeming to outdo the negative ones.

The automobile industry and the evolutions involved have been received with a lot of excitement and appreciation by different members of the society due to the enhancement of lives particularly with respect to transportation and movement. It has for example allowed for integration and collaboration of people irrespective of the distance involved an aspect that was very difficult in the past.

Work is an area that has been improved to a notable degree where people can now work far from their resident areas. In the past, it was not possible for an individual to work away from the home area due to movement problems, those living in the city were forced to work in the city, and those living in the countryside worked in the farms.

The automobiles invention, development, and improvements have however improved the situation of the places where a lot of growth has been experienced in the suburbs allowing people to live near town centres where they can easily commute back and forth to work in the town. We can therefore say that the invention of the automobile has had a lot of effect on the world’s culture.

It has for instance eliminated the concept of isolation and instead given individuals a great degree of freedom where they can easily explore the world to the maximum for their benefit or rather survival [4] .

The automobiles have influenced the living habits and social conventions greatly through enhancing mobility. As opposed to earlier days where transport was a problem and people from different areas or regions would not integrate, it is now easy to move from one place to the other hence everyone from any location is able to be part of the mainstream in terms of economic and social practices.

Automobiles and the improvement of the transport system have played a great role in narrowing the gap that exists between rural and urban lifestyle. This is through improved access to facilities such as the market, schools, as well as health centres. Infrastructure has also improved as most people buy automobiles making investment on roads to be a national priority.

Concerning socialization, automobiles have improved the way people socialize and establish relationship ties. Young people have been able to improve their dating styles by going out and spending sometimes in separate places away from their home place.

In other words, automobiles have added to the youths, the freedom they need to make healthy relationships. Entertainment sector has also been influenced positively by the invention and development of the automobile.

Drive-in movies became very popular where people would conveniently meet at some movie location and since they had cars they would comfortably watch the movie without any worry of being late to go back home. Most teenagers would also have fun together as long as they know that movement is not a problem.

As opposed to the earlier days, people are now willing to relocate from the urban areas to the suburbs. The automobile has changed the city life by promoting the outward extension of the populations that adored the city to the suburbs.

This issue has been heightened by the fact that there has been enhanced highway transportation system, which in turn has facilitated the development and prosperity of businesses and industries far away from the city centres where there is plenty of cheap land.

Improvement of the rural areas and the availability of automobiles have really changed population distribution. Cars are now easily accessible, the areas are less crowded as compared to the urban centres, and spaces for building business structures are available.

Employment is another sector that has been touched by the automobile industry and its growth. Members of the society have not only enjoyed working in the automobile sector but also in other sectors in which the automobile has enhanced in one-way or the other.

Some of the sectors that have been enhanced by the automobile include the gas stations, auto shops, fast food centres, city construction programs, the transport related police and auto repair centres among others.

Some of these are entirely dependent on the automobile while others rely on it partly. Employment is a very crucial aspect that helps in lifting the living standards of people in the ever-growing population.

Another notable effect of the automobiles, although negative, is environmental degradation. Despite the fact that automobiles have been associated with many positive effects to the society, they have some negative effects on the society.

There has been a lot of pollution leading to environment degradation an aspect that is linked with very many negative impacts for instance global warming and the green house gas affect all these contributing to hunger and other negative aspects of life for example unfavourable weather conditions. The harmful emissions made by the automobiles are deemed dangerous to the environment and the organisms contained therein including human beings.

The pollution of air makes life unbearable for most organisms and may cause diseases especially respiratory related. The emissions also affect the ozone layer leading to unhealthy exposure that may cause diseases like cancer. Acidic rain is also an environmental problem caused by the harmful emissions.

This is because the oils consumed by these automobiles emit gases like sulphur dioxide that mix with rainwater to cause acid rain. This in turn causes harm to buildings (they wear out easily) and plants [5] .

It is evident that the automobile has undergone many significant changes all aimed at making them better, safer and comfortable. One of the factors that have fuelled the evolution of the automobile is the changes in the needs and desires of the society.

This has in a way led to incorporation of the changes in the automobile industry. The automobile industry and its evolution has not been without some effects to the society as well hence we can conclude that both the society and the industry have influenced each other greatly.

Some of the effects of the automobile evolution on the society include; improvement of economic and social lives of people through allowing for integration, provision of employment opportunities to the population, narrowing of the gap between the urban and the rural life and change of attitude towards the rural areas and environmental degradation among others.

Although the effects of automobiles have been witnessed largely in the United States of America, the effects are spreading to the other parts of the world in a very high speed.

• L.M. Berger (2001). The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
• U. Witt (2001). Escaping Satiation: The Demand Side of Economic Growth. New York: Springer.
• R. Volti (2006). Cars and Culture: The Life Story of a Technology . Baltimore, Maryland: JHU Press.
• X. Yang (1995). Globalization of the Automobile Industry: The United States, Japan, and the People’s Republic of China . Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
• L.D. Lewis (1991). The Automobile and American Culture . USA: University of Michigan Press.
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The Automobile

Lesson plan.

Introduction

Part 1: the assembly line and manufacturing.

• Read a good explanation of these techniques . 
• See more information . 
• Read a more detailed discussion of Ford’s life and business techniques .

Part 2: The Automobile as a Vehicle of Social and Cultural Change

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• Famous Inventors - Biography of Karl Benz
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What is Karl Benz famous for?

Karl Benz was a German mechanical engineer who designed and, in 1885, built the world’s first practical automobile to be powered by an  internal-combustion engine .

Did Karl Benz found Mercedes-Benz?

In 1926 the Benz company, founded by German engineer Karl Benz, merged with its competitor, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, to form  Daimler-Benz , maker of  Mercedes-Benz  automobiles.

When did Karl Benz die?

German engineer Karl Benz died on April 4, 1929, in Ladenburg, near Mannheim, Germany.

Karl Benz (born November 25, 1844, Karlsruhe , Baden [Germany]—died April 4, 1929, Ladenburg, near Mannheim , Germany) was a German mechanical engineer who designed and in 1885 built the world’s first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine .

(Read Henry Ford’s 1926 Britannica essay on mass production.)

Although the original Benz car (a three-wheeled vehicle, the Motorwagen , now preserved in Munich) first ran early in 1885, its design was not patented until January 29, 1886. Benz & Co. was founded in Mannheim in 1883 to build stationary internal-combustion engines; the company completed its first four-wheeled automobile in 1893 and produced the first of a series of racing cars in 1899. In 1926 the Benz company merged with Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz , maker of Mercedes-Benz automobiles, a  brand  soon synonymous with luxury. Benz had left the firm about 1906 to organize C. Benz Söhne in Ladenburg with his sons, Eugen and Richard. (The firm’s name reflected Benz’s sometime spelling of his first name as Carl.)

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 26, 2020 | Original: November 9, 2009

While working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford (1863-1947) built his first gasoline-powered horseless carriage, the Quadricycle, in the shed behind his home. In 1903, he established the Ford Motor Company, and five years later the company rolled out the first Model T. In order to meet overwhelming demand for the revolutionary vehicle, Ford introduced revolutionary new mass-production methods, including large production plants, the use of standardized, interchangeable parts and, in 1913, the world’s first moving assembly line for cars. Enormously influential in the industrial world, Ford was also outspoken in the political realm. Ford drew controversy for his pacifist stance during the early years of World War I and earned widespread criticism for his anti-Semitic views and writings.

Henry Ford: Early Life & Engineering Career

Born in 1863, Henry Ford was the first surviving son of William and Mary Ford, who owned a prosperous farm in Dearborn, Michigan. At 16, he left home for the nearby city of Detroit, where he found apprentice work as a machinist. He returned to Dearborn and work on the family farm after three years, but continued to operate and service steam engines and work occasional stints in Detroit factories. In 1888, he married Clara Bryant, who had grown up on a nearby farm.

Did you know? The mass production techniques Henry Ford championed eventually allowed Ford Motor Company to turn out one Model T every 24 seconds.

In the first several years of their marriage, Ford supported himself and his new wife by running a sawmill. In 1891, he returned with Clara to Detroit, where he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to chief engineer two years later. Around the same time, Clara gave birth to the couple’s only son, Edsel Bryant Ford. On call 24 hours a day for his job at Edison, Ford spent his irregular hours on his efforts to build a gasoline-powered horseless carriage, or automobile. In 1896, he completed what he called the “Quadricycle,” which consisted of a light metal frame fitted with four bicycle wheels and powered by a two-cylinder, four-horsepower gasoline engine.

Henry Ford: Birth of Ford Motor Company and the Model T

Determined to improve upon his prototype, Ford sold the Quadricycle in order to continue building other vehicles. He received backing from various investors over the next seven years, some of whom formed the Detroit Automobile Company (later the Henry Ford Company) in 1899. His partners, eager to put a passenger car on the market, grew frustrated with Ford’s constant need to improve, and Ford left his namesake company in 1902. (After his departure, it was reorganized as the Cadillac Motor Car Company.) The following year, Ford established the Ford Motor Company.

A month after the Ford Motor Company was established, the first Ford car—the two-cylinder, eight-horsepower Model A—was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit. At the time, only a few cars were assembled per day, and groups of two or three workers built them by hand from parts that were ordered from other companies. Ford was dedicated to the production of an efficient and reliable automobile that would be affordable for everyone; the result was the Model T , which made its debut in October 1908.

Henry Ford: Production & Labor Innovations

The “Tin Lizzie,” as the Model T was known, was an immediate success, and Ford soon had more orders than the company could satisfy. As a result, he put into practice techniques of mass production that would revolutionize American industry, including the use of large production plants; standardized, interchangeable parts; and the moving assembly line. Mass production significantly cut down on the time required to produce an automobile, which allowed costs to stay low. In 1914, Ford also increased the daily wage for an eight-hour day for his workers to $5 (up from $2.34 for nine hours), setting a standard for the industry.

Even as production went up, demand for the Tin Lizzie remained high, and by 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. In 1919, Ford named his son Edsel as president of Ford Motor Company, but he retained full control of the company’s operations. After a court battle with his stockholders, led by brothers Horace and John Dodge, Henry Ford bought out all minority stockholders by 1920. In 1927, Ford moved production to a massive industrial complex he had built along the banks of the River Rouge in Dearborn, Michigan. The plant included a glass factory, steel mill, assembly line and all other necessary components of automotive production. That same year, Ford ceased production of the Model T, and introduced the new Model A, which featured better horsepower and brakes, among other improvements. By that time, the company had produced some 15 million Model Ts, and Ford Motor Company was the largest automotive manufacturer in the world. Ford opened plants and operations throughout the world.

Henry Ford: Later Career & Controversial Views

The Model A proved to be a relative disappointment, and was outsold by both Chevrolet (made by General Motors) and Plymouth (made by Chrysler); it was discontinued in 1931. In 1932, Ford introduced the first V-8 engine, but by 1936 the company had dropped to number three in sales in the automotive industry. Despite his progressive policies regarding the minimum wage, Ford waged a long battle against unionization of labor, refusing to come to terms with the United Automobile Workers (UAW) even after his competitors did so. In 1937, Ford security staff clashed with UAW organizers in the so-called “Battle of the Overpass,” at the Rouge plant, after which the National Labor Relations Board ordered Ford to stop interfering with union organization. Ford Motor Company signed its first contract with UAW in 1941, but not before Henry Ford considered shutting down the company to avoid it.

Ford’s political views earned him widespread criticism over the years, beginning with his campaign against U.S. involvement in World War I . He made a failed bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1918, narrowly losing in a campaign marked by personal attacks from his opponent. In the Dearborn Independent, a local newspaper he bought in 1918, Ford published a number of anti-Semitic writings that were collected and published as a four volume set called The International Jew. Though he later renounced the writings and sold the paper, he expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Germany, and in 1938 accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime’s highest medal for a foreigner.

Edsel Ford died in 1943, and Henry Ford returned to the presidency of Ford Motor Company briefly before handing it over to his grandson, Henry Ford II, in 1945. He died two years later at his Dearborn home, at the age of 83.

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Impact Of The Automobile: How Have Cars Changed The World?

The invention of the automobile has changed the way people move from one place to another and brought many positive and negative effects in every sphere of life. The multifaceted impact of the automobile  has affected the advancement of society over generations. In fact, it has altered the economy, the transportation road map, and cultural scenario. Plus, it is impossible not to notice there presence in popular culture.

Carl Benz invented the first true gasoline-run automobile in the 1985/86. But, it was Henry Ford who revolutionized the automobile industry. He made them accessible to everyone. The selling price of the highly popular Model T was $490 in 1914.

What was the impact of the automobile  on the economy and society? Here’s a brief discussion:

1. Effects Of The Automobile On Economy

The gradual growth of the automobile industry fuels an economic revolution in countries with major car manufacturers like Germany and the United States. The booming motor vehicle business contributed to the blossoming of other industries like vulcanized rubber, oil, and steel. Finally, many new highways were constructed and road construction created thousands of new jobs.

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People grew the habit of traveling long distances – either for vacation or work purposes. This habit created scopes for two new industries in the USA – the motel and fast food business.

People needed breaks during long trips, hence the mushrooming of motels across the long-distance routes. The roadside diners followed the suit, giving birth to classic American food like french fries, burgers, shakes, and pies.

2. Effects Of Automobiles On Society

The motor vehicles brought great social changes. People could drive to their favorite family vacation spots, which was previously impossible. The new modes of transportation forced streetcars, horses, and horse-drawn carriages out of the streets.

Diesel-run motor cars and buses began dominating the urban streets in the USA at the beginning of the 1940s. Light rails also took a hit but it later made a comeback as rapid transit.

The availability of motor cars helped to flourish the suburbs. Single affluence suburban families led to the Baby Boomer generation. Also, it became much easier to move to and from city areas to the suburbs.

The increase of motor vehicles on the roads led to some unique problems – traffic jams and fatal road accidents. These incidents therefore made the authorities to exercise road safety regulations and executing the rule of licensure.

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3. Effects On Other Areas

The impact of the automobile  was not limited to economic and social contexts. It has become an indispensable part of the popular culture – books, music, and movies. In fact, motor cars have become a lifestyle where people see them as a status symbol. Collecting cars, especially the classic ones, and modifying them to boost performance or aesthetic are two of the most widely popular hobbies. Moreover, there are millions of people labeled as ‘car enthusiasts’ for their keen interest in everything related to motor vehicles.