Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built a steam-powered vehicle around 1672 as a toy for the Chinese Emperor. It was small scale and could not carry a driver but it was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile').[2][3]
Steam-powered self-propelled vehicles large enough to transport people and cargo were first devised in the late 18th century. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his fardier à vapeur ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France. The center of innovation shifted to Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth [4] and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the roads in Camborne. The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789.
During the 19th century attempts were made to introduce practical steam powered vehicles. Innovations such as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions and better steering developed. Some commercially successful vehicles provided mass transit until a backlash against these large vehicles resulted in the passage of legislation such as the United Kingdom Locomotive Act (1865), which required many self-propelled vehicles on public roads to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn. This effectively halted road auto development in the UK for most of the rest of the 19th century; inventors and engineers shifted their efforts to improvements in railway locomotives. The law was not repealed until 1896, although the need for the red flag was removed in 1878.
In 1816, a professor at Prague Polytechnic, Josef Bozek, built an oil-fired steam car.[5]:p.27 Walter Hancock, builder and operator of London steam buses, in 1838 built a four-seat steam phaeton.[5]:p27
In 1867, Canadian jeweller Henry Seth Taylor demonstrated his 4-wheeled "steam buggy" at the Stanstead Fair in Stanstead, Quebec and again the following year.[6] The basis of the buggy, which he began building in 1865, was a high-wheeled carriage with bracing to support a two-cylinder steam engine mounted on the floor.[7]
One of the first "real" automobiles was produced by Frenchman Amédée Bollée in 1873, who built a self-propelled steam road vehicles to transport groups of passengers.
The first carriage-sized automobile suitable for use on existing wagon roads in the United States was a steam-powered vehicle invented in 1871 by Dr. J.W. Carhart, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Racine, Wisconsin.[8] It induced the State of Wisconsin in 1875 to offer a $10,000 award to the first to produce a practical substitute for the use of horses and other animals. They stipulated that the vehicle would have to maintain an average speed of more than 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) over a 200-mile (320 km) course. The offer led to the first city to city automobile race in the United States, starting on 16 July 1878 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and ending in Madison, via Appleton, Oshkosh, Waupun, Watertown, Fort Atkinson, and Janesville. While seven vehicles were registered, only two started to compete: the entries from Green Bay and Oshkosh. The vehicle from Green Bay was faster, but broke down before completing the race. The Oshkosh finished the 201-mile (323 km) course in 33 hours and 27 minutes, and posted an average speed of six miles per hour. In 1879, the legislature awarded half the prize.[9][10][11]
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