History of the Motor Vehicle

The modern automobile is a convenience that we have all become so accustomed to that it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without them now. It is fairly well known that the motor vehicle became a refined method of transport in around 1900 and onwards, however how did the very first one come about? Who was the very first person that thought to try and take the horses off the carriage and make it move with a press of a pedal?

Ferdinand Verbiest is said to have made the very first construct that could reasonably be named an automobile in around 1672. It was a very small vehicle, incapable of carrying a driver or passenger, however it did move on its own through the power of steam. Verbiest built the small toy-like vehicle as a present for the Chinese Emperor of the time.

Following that came a series of self-propelled, mechanical engines and clumsy internal combustion engines, the first of which can be accredited to Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, who built the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle in around 1769, however there is speculation as to whether or not his vehicle was ever actually functional.

In 1806, the first internal combustion engine was invented by an inventor from Switzerland called Franois Isaac de Rivaz. It was powered using a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen and, although a break through at that time, it wasnt very successful in providing a feasible mode of transport.

The man who is usually accredited with the invention of the modern automobile is Karl Benz, although there were others working on it at around the same time such as Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus. Benz completed his first Motorwagen in 1885 and was granted a patent for it in early 1886. He then began promoting the vehicles in order to try and sell them to the wealthy and between 1888 and 1893 he had sold 25 vehicles.

DMG (Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft / Daimler Motor Company) was founded in 1890 by Daimler and Maybach and under the brand name Daimler, sold their first vehicle in 1892, which was simply a horse-drawn carriage, with an engine of their own design fitted into it. By around 1895 they had built around 30 vehicles, yet they, and Benz, seemed to be unaware of each others early work.

Right towards the end of the 1900s the crankshaft and piston engine came about and throughout the 20th century developed into the sophisticated piece of technology we know it as today. Mergers between DMG and Benz in later years bore the Daimler-Benz company and the Mercedes-Benz automobile range.