(1) The growth of the car has been an extraordinary story, as remarkable for its destructive power as its benefits. Only 100 years ago, horses were the primary transport and speeds across London were faster than they are today in a car. Yet London was chocking in a sea of manure, and horses were an expensive luxury, so for the most part, people simply did not travel far. By the end of the century, the world’s car makers employed nearly four million people to produce 35,801,618 cars in a single year to add the estimated 500 million in daily use around the globe. (2) The first self-propelled vehicle could have appeared around 350 years ago. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon mentioned the possibility of carriages propelled with the use of animals, and in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci sketched a self-moving car, but the first record of a powered vehicle comes from Astronomia Europea, published in 1687. It describes a small steam-powered model carriage constructed under Pierre Verbiest. He spent a large part of his life in China and was appointed Astronomer Royal to Emperor Kang-Hi. The small vehicle, apparently constructed around 1662, was fueled with a pan of hot coals. Steam turned a simple turbine, which was geared to the front axle of the vehicle. (3) The first successful steam wagon built by Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot in 1770 to pull cannon also provided a lesson in the dangers of powered transport. His carriage hit the wall of the Paris Arsenal to become the earliest recorded powered vehicle accident. The FirststTeTeststDriveve (4) The motor car’s time came in the 19th century with the emergence of volatile fuels such as coal, gas, and liquid petroleum spirit. In 1829, Samuel Brown of Brompton, London, produced a vehicle powered by a four horsepower, gas-vacuum engine. This was a true three-stroke internal combustion engine, but was uneconomical compared with the steam engines of the time and little came of it. (5) In 1862, the French engineer Alphonse Beu de Rochas proposed four-stroke explosion cycle, the basis on which almost all modern cars operate. Rocha’s paper coincided with the work of Nikolaus Otto, who had been developing the first commercially available gas engine in 1860. In 1862, Otto prepared a gas-powered engine that operated on the four-stroke cycle but it promptly blew to pieces. Otto was then joined by Gottlieb Daimler, the son of a German baker, who patented a high-speed petrol engine in 1876. (6) At the same time, in Mannheim, Karl Benz was working on a petrol tricycle. Benz’s tricycle took to the streets in 1885, was patented the following year, and offered for sale as the ‘patent motor wagon’ in 1887; the modern motor industry was born. (7) In August, Berta Benz borrowed her husband’s 1886 Benz tricycle-car without permission. She packed provisions and her two young sons on board and drove off to visit relatives in Pforzheim some 75 miles from Mannheim. On route, she had to refuel with dry cleaning fluid when she ran out of fuel; she repaired a short circuit with garter elastic, unblocked a fuel line with a hatpin and found a cobbler to reline a brake. She arrived safely and five days later she drove home again; it was the first ever long-distance journey by motor car. Who developed the gas engine that later blew to pieces?
Who developed the gas engine that later blew to pieces?