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| ISBN-13: | 9781609404895 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2015 |
| Edition description: | None |
| Pages: | 234 |
| Sales rank: | 438,669 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.10(w) x 12.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
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Early Automobiles
A History in Advertising Line Art, 1890-1930
By Jim Harter
Wings Press
Copyright © 2015 Wings Press for Jim HarterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-492-5
CHAPTER 1
STEAM CARRIAGE ANCESTORS
Today's automobiles are the result of a long process of technological evolution. This evolution didn't begin with the motorcar, but extends back to earlier innovations in carriage, wagon, and bicycle design. This accumulated knowledge provided essential technological knowhow for automotive development in its formative years. Equally essential for the automobile was having a reliable power source. Contending for this role in the early years were the steam engine, the gas-powered internal combustion engine, and battery-powered electrical motors. All of these technologies went through their own developmental phases, all had positive and negative qualities, and it took a while before a clear winner was decided.
Of these, the steam engine came first, and the story of its use for powering road vehicles is an interesting one. In the 1760s Englishman James Watt developed a workable steam engine from one developed earlier by Thomas Newcomen. In this process, coal or wood was burned, heating water to the boiling point where it produced steam. This steam was then carried to a cylinder where its pressure would drive a piston rotating on an axle. This converted reciprocating motion into rotary motion. While steam engines were first adapted for industrial manufacturing purposes, it wasn't long before they they were tried out as a power source for transportation.
The first steam-powered road vehicle was built in 1769 by the Frenchman Nicholas Cugnot. Intended as a tricycle-type, self-propelled gun carriage, it was powered by two single-acting vertical engines operating alternately on a driving axle. Sometime later, experiments in England resulted in steam carriages built by William Murdock in 1784, William Symington in 1786, and Robert Fourness of Halifax in 1788. Symington's vehicle was powered by a low-pressure Watt condensing engine, and had a rack-and-ratchet drive. While none of these efforts were really successful, they furthered experimentation in this field, helping to pave the way for more successful machines later.
Steam engines at this time were very heavy in relation to the power they produced. If they were to have any practicality for powering vehicles, it was necessary to improve the weight/power ratio. Raising steam pressure would do this, but it increased the risk of boiler explosion. In the late 1790s Richard Trevithick of Cornwall began experiments with higher-pressure steam. On Christmas eve, 1801, he successfully tested a steam carriage that carried 7 to 8 passengers. His next important creation, the world's first steam locomotive, was built in Shropshire in 1803. It began the history of railroads, and gained him lasting fame. Oliver Evans of Philadelphia developed a high-pressure steam engine that he adapted for industrial use in 1802. This was followed two years later by his strange creation, the "Oructor Amphibolis" a steam-powered scow on wheels. It was capable of moving on both land and water.
However, Aside from Evans' work and earlier experiments by Nathan Read of Salem, Massachusetts, there was relatively little interest at this time for such vehicles in America. Compared to Britain, its road system was very crude. Much transportation then was by water, but the introduction of railroads about 1830 allowed the country a way of vastly improving its transportation system. Rail travel had the advantage of being faster and cheaper than road travel. National attention became focused on railroad development, and by the 1850s lines reached the Mississippi River, and by 1869, California. Improved roads of the kind in Britain were only possible where a sufficient population and level of wealth existed to support them. Aside from a few east coast cities, America's population in the early 1800s was sparse. It was poorer and in a more primitive state. So there was relatively little interest in road development and self-propelled vehicles for decades to come.
English roads owed something to the Romans, who had constructed some very good ones during their occupation of the country, and which to some degree remained in existence many centuries later. In the early 19th century the Scotsmen Thomas Telford and John McAdam separately developed schemes to improve roads by laying down layers of specific kinds of rocks. For this Telford owed some of his inspiration to the Frenchman Pierre-Marie-Jerome Tresaguet who had made similar improvements in France during the latter part of the 18th century.
The existence of these improved roads was an incentive for building steam vehicles to carry passengers commercially. A rather elaborate steam coach was built by W.H. James and Sir James Anderson in 1810. It was powered by two engines, each separately driving a rear wheel. In 1824 Walter Hancock built the first of ten steam passenger carriages. by 1836 he had finished nine and was operating them in London. In a twenty-week period, five of these traveled 4,200 miles between Stratford, Paddington, and Islington, and carried a total of 12,761 passengers.
Hancock's vehicles had some interesting names, among them "Infant," "Era," "Automaton," and "Autopsy." About 1827 James Nasmyth built a successful steam carriage capable of carrying 6 to 8 passengers. It ran for some months on the Queensferry Road near Edinburgh before being dismantled. About this same time Goldsworth Gurney built a 21-passenger coach, the first of a number, and soon began carrying passengers between Gloucester and Cheltenham.
Col. Francis Maceroni and John Squire, two of Gurney's former associates, designed a multi-tubular boiler whose working pressure was around 150 psi. The resultant boilers were incorporated into a number of steam carriages they built. These operated at speeds up to ten miles per hour. On July 18, 1833 one of them began a shuttle service between Paddington and Edgeware in London. A more ambitious undertaking was the highly ornamented steam coach built by Dr. Church in 1832. Having 22 inside and 22 outside seats, it operated at speeds up to 14 miles per hour, and ran for a time between London and Birmingham.
Among the best designed of these early machines were some built by John Scott Russell of Edinburgh. They apparently could climb steep hills and operate at speeds up to 17 mph. A number were put in operation in 1834 by the Steam Carriage Co. of Scotland, running between Glasgow and Paisley. While having a seating capacity of 26, they often carried 30 to 40 passengers, some riding on a tender pulled in the rear. Three persons were involved in the operation of these machines: the steersman sat in the front seat, the engine-driver sat in the rear above the engines, with gauges close by, and the stoker stood below on the footplate near the boiler.
However, for various reasons, public objections were raised. After a fatal boiler explosion occurred in Paisley on July 29, 1834, Russell's vehicles were withdrawn from service and subsequently outlawed in Scotland. Steam carriages were disliked for a number of reasons. Their coal smoke produced irritating and noxious fumes. They were noisy and gave off steam exhaust. Often they frightened horses, and presented the danger of a boiler explosion. When operated at higher speeds they frightened some, not only riding passengers, but other traffic on the road. Finally, those in the omnibus and stage coach businesses feared their competition, as did the newly emerging railways.
J.W. Boulton of Ashton-under-Lyne built a number of steam carriages beginning in 1848. These were mainly of the small "pleasure" variety, likely intended for estate use. In the 1850s both Thomas Rickett and H. Percy Holt built a few similar carriages, all of 3-wheel design. Of somewhat greater passenger capacity was a 4-wheeled carriage built by Yarrow & Hilditch in 1862. A skillfully designed 3-wheeled "Steam Wagonette" was developed by Catley & Ayres from 1863-7.
Meanwhile, the railway and stagecoach companies had begun working together against their competition. Beginning in 1836 legislation was enacted subjecting self-propelled, non-rail vehicles to excessive fees and tolls, which significantly hurt their operations. Later, in 1865, the Locomotives Act was passed. This limited self-propelled vehicles to a speed of four mph on public roads, and required a man with a red flag to precede them. Only repealed in 1896, this law greatly discouraged further improvements of this technology in Britain. But inventive efforts still went on in improving steam traction engines for farm use and road locomotives for goods haulage.
Elsewhere, however, interest in passenger vehicles increased. Inventors in countries like France, Germany, and the US began to experiment, not only with steam carriages, but later with gas and electrical power. Things began slowly in America. In the 1850s New Yorker Richard Dudgeon built a 10-passenger steam vehicle. Performing well, it was exhibited at New York's Crystal Palace. Unfortunately, this building was destroyed by fire in 1858 and Dudgeon's carriage was lost. After the Civil War he built another steam vehicle, but at the time there seemed to be little interest in it. The Nov. 28, 1863 issue of Scientific American reported on a 2-passenger steam carriage built by Sylvester H. Roper of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Essentially a buggy with a vertical boiler engine at the rear, it developed 2-hp and reached speeds of 20 mph. Afterwards it became an attraction at fairs and circus sideshows.
CHAPTER 2EARLY DEVELOPMENTS IN GAS PROPULSION AND MOTOR CARRIAGES
Pioneering efforts with the internal combustion engine begin with John Barber who built a crude motor fueled by coal gas in 1790. Robert Street built a turpentine-powered engine in 1794. In 1860 the Belgian Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir filed a French patent for a 1-cylinder 2-stroke (2-cycle) engine designed to use vaporous illuminating gas. In 1862 Alphonse Beau de Roches filed a French patent describing the principle of the 4-stroke (4-cycle) engine. By 1863 Lenoir was operating a small vehicle powered by an engine producing 1.5-hp at 100 rpm. However, it was heavy and inefficient, and the 2-stroke design was not yet successful. Siegfried Marcus of Vienna was later authorized to build motor carriages using Lenoir's engine. Apparently these were not very successful, but his second vehicle, built in 1875, still exists today in Vienna's Technisches Museum.
During the 1860s, the Germans Nikolaus August Otto and Eugen Langen formed a company to build an improved version of Lenoir's motor. After winning a gold medal at the 1867 Paris World Exhibition, they continued their efforts, and in 1876 introduced the much quieter 4-stroke Otto gas engine. In his book The Illustrated History of Tractors, Robert Moorhouse notes that this new motor introduced the "basic engine cycle of operation used today ... l. Induction of the air and fuel mixture, 2. Compression of the mixture, 3. Power from the burning of the fuel, 4. Exhaustion of the burnt gases and so back to induction."
Otto and Langen's firm became known as Gasmotoren Fabrik Deutz AG in 1880. Working for the company at this time were Wilhelm Mayback and Gottlieb Daimler. This pair subsequently left the firm and began engine experiments using a liquid petroleum derivative called benzin (gasoline) for fuel. They developed a 900 rpm engine in 1885 and used it to power a motorized bicycle. About this same time Karl Benz, a German builder of gas motors, built a 4-stroke engine and adapted it to power a tricycle. It is interesting to note that despite the later association of their names, Daimler and Benz never met.
Gasoline was one of the products that resulted from crude oil processing. During the 19th century it was done in a number of European countries. In America, Edwin L. Drake was the first to produce it commercially at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. Other products included kerosene, fuel oil, lubricant oils, waxes, and asphalt. Kerosene quickly replaced whale oil for lamp fuel, and the other products found uses also, but it took longer for volatile gasoline to find its special niche, as fuel for the internal combustion engine. Its advantages were that it vaporized quickly, was rich in heat energy, and that the crude oil from which it came apparently existed in vast quantities underground.
Otto's 1876 engine produced 3-hp at 180 rpm. By 1885, however, Daimler's engines ran about 800 rpm. and he had reduced the ratio of weight per unit of horsepower from about 1,000 lbs. to less than 100. In 1889 Daimler patented two different 2-cylinder engines, a V-2 with cylinders inclined 15 degrees, and one where the cylinders were horizontally opposed. In 1891 the French firms of Panhard & Levassor and Peugeot began production of motor carriages using Daimler engines. The second Panhard carriage built was the first to have a front-mounted engine. It set a precedent for a layout that became widely copied in the industry: a vertical front-mounted engine, connecting transmission, and rear-wheel drive. It was called la Systeme Panhard. The firm began designing its own engines in 1895.
While Daimler had invented a hot tube ignition system, Benz devised one having an electric spark. His 1885 tricycle, powered by a single cylinder engine, ran at speeds of 6-10 mph. Moving to 4-wheel designs, Benz continued his work and built a factory in Mannheim. By 1894 his company was producing 500 motor vehicles per year.
In the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, a 3-cylinder 2-stroke engine was exhibited. Built by George Brayton of Providence, Rhode Island, its intended use was for powering a streetcar. A Rochester patent lawyer, George B. Selden, saw the engine and began to think of its possibilities for powering carriages. In May 1879 he applied for a patent for a "road engine" using a liquid hydrocarbon fuel, a steering mechanism, and a device that could disengage the engine from the driving wheels. It is unclear whether Selden actually intended to build this vehicle. Instead, he may have hoped that sometime in the future he could collect royalties for patenting this idea before anyone else. He didn't seek approval right away, but instead filed successive amendments, keeping the application pending until a more auspicious moment arrived — in this case, until Nov. 5, 1895. This would soon become a problem for this newly emerging industry.
In the 1870s-90s bicycles became popular in Western countries. In the beginning high-wheeled velocipedes were used, but they required considerable physical strength, and largely limited this sport to hardy men (trousers were also required). In 1877, cyclist J.K. Starley of Coventry, England, devised the first differential, and in 1885 he introduced his "safety" bicycle. Having low-wheels, chain-drive, and gearing, it made bicycle riding much easier and accessible for women and children. Bicycling rapidly became very popular in America, and one result was that it raised awareness about the poor quality of roads.
The Good Roads Movement was officially launched in May 1880 in Newport, Rhode Island. In January 1892, the League of American Wheelmen, an organization of bicyclists, began publication of Good Roads Magazine. This group successfully petitioned state and local authorities for road improvements. Congress appropriated $10,000 in 1893 for a Department of Agriculture study on improved methods of highway construction. The Office of Road Inquiry was established that year as a branch within the Department. This began a process that ultimately led to the formation of the Bureau of Public Roads and to federal highway assistance, but these improvements were over two decades away. In 1900, outside of major cities, there were only about 200 miles of hard-surfaced roadways.
In his book The American Automobile: A Brief History, John B. Rae notes a number of contributions the bicycle made to motor car development: "There were other influences besides the stimulation of highway travel. From the bicycle manufacturers the early automobile industry inherited steel-tube framing that combined strength with lightness, the chain drive, ball and roller bearings, and differential gearing. The vital role of the bicycle in preparing the way for the automobile is strikingly illustrated in the long roster of men and companies who moved from one industry to the other; prominent on the list are Morris in England, Opel in Germany, and Duryea, Pope, Winton, and Willys in the United States."
CHAPTER 3EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Thomas Davenport, a Brandon, Vermont blacksmith, was fascinated by magnets. He constructed in 1834 what was perhaps the world's first electric motor. He then devised a second motor that propelled itself around a small track in the manner of a toy train. In 1839 the Scotsman Robert Davidson created a 6-ton electric locomotive. For power a primitive galvanic battery was devised. When power was needed some 78 pairs of zinc and iron plates were lowered into a container of sulphuric acid. To cut off the power, these plates were raised out again. In 1850 Professor Charles G. Page devised a ring-shaped iron bar, apparently the world's first armature.
Zenobie Theophile Gramme, a Belgian, invented the first successful dynamo generator in 1870. Essentially an iron cylinder enclosed in a coil of copper wire, it could be driven by the motion of waterpower or a steam engine to generate electrical power. Two years later Gramme discovered that his dynamo could also function as a motor, receiving electric current and converting it into motion. In 1880 France's Gaston Plante invented the first rechargeable storage battery, a great improvement over the galvanic type. Soon storage batteries were tested out for railway and tramway use. After America's Frank Sprague made improvements in electric motor design in 1884, this technology showed potential for road vehicle use.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Early Automobiles by Jim Harter. Copyright © 2015 Wings Press for Jim Harter. Excerpted by permission of Wings Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
A Short History of the Methods of Printed Illustration, by Eric Edelman,Introduction, by Jim Harter,
Early Automobiles: A History in Advertising Line Art, 1890-1930,
Steam Carriage Ancestors,
Early Developments in Gas Propulsion and Motor Carriages,
Early Development of Electric Vehicles,
America's First Successful Motor Carriage,
Steam Revisited,
Fin de Siecle,
Viva le France,
The New Century and General Developments,
Improvements in Tires and Roads,
The Era of the Electric Car,
The Electric Cab Venture and the Seldon Patent,
Col. Pope's Automobile Empire,
Henry Ford, the Model T, Lincoln, and the Model A,
Ransom E. Olds, Oldsmobile and Reo,
Buick, William C. Durant, and General Motors,
Cadillac and LaSalle,
The Three P's,
Maxwell, Chrysler, and Dodge Brothers,
Mercer and Stutz,
Auburn, Duesenberg and Cord,
Honorable Mention,
Plates,
Automobile Image Sources,
Bibliography,
Index,