Car History Of The First Gas Powered Cars

By Mick Buick

The car history of the steam car as we know it was not made in one day by a single person. The history of the steam car is a story of a project that took years and was known worldwide. There is an estimated one hundred thousand patents that was created with the steam automobile. There were firsts on who had the blue print of the automobile. Leonardo Davinci and Issac Newton were the first two people to ever come up with the blue prints of the automobile.

In sixteen eighty and Dutch man by the name of Christian Huygens designed a gas vehicle engine that was to be fueled by gun powder, but this vehicle was never built. Finally in eighteen o' seven another man named Francois Isaan de Rivaz invented a internal combustion engine and he used hydrogen and oxygen for fuel to make the car go. Rivaz also designed a car for the engine he built but his design was unsuccessful.

Then in eighteen twenty four another English man named Samuel Brown made a steam engine that would burn gas. This engine was used only one time and it was powered up shooter's hill in London. In eighteen fifty eight an engineer that was born in Belgian inventor and got a patent on a double, electric spark ignition combustion engine and this was fueled by gas that was made from coal. This man also improved the engine and made a three wheel wagon that completed a fifty mile trip.

The Americans paying attention to this electric vehicle took the invention of an electric tricycle and a six passenger wagon back in the year of nineteen sixty one. The tricycle and wagon was built by two men by the name of A. L Ryker and William Morrison.

The steam powered cars worked by fuel that burned and heated water in a boiler and this created steam that would expand and push pistons and in turn this made the crankshaft turn, and of course the crankshaft turned the wheels. Cugnot also made a pair of steam engine trains and they never did work very well. Because steam engines were so heavy they were not very good for vehicles because of their weight. Steam engines were very successful in locomotives though. So in turn after all this Historians think that Nicolas Cugnot was the real inventor of the first automobile.

At the turn of the century the electric, gas and steam powered cars were becoming very popular. In eighteen ninety nine and nineteen hundred was when the most cars were bought and they were outsold by all other types of cars. The electric cars were much better than their rival. They were lacking in vibration, smell and noise. This was good because the gas powered car had all of these and most people did not like them.

The thing that most people found most difficult in the gas vehicles was changing gears and the electric vehicles did not require you to change the gears. The steam powered cars also did not require you to change gears manually but they were quite cold natured and on cold mornings you would have to wait around forty five minutes for the car to be drivable.

Basic electric cars only cost around a thousand dollars but these were for more upper class people. These cars were fancy inside and out and were made by expensive materials. These cars got up to as much as three thousand dollars by the year nineteen ten. Production of these vehicles started peaking in nineteen twelve but did not hit huge success until the nineteen twenties. - 21392

About the Author:

Mick is mad about old cars. If you want to learn more about the history of cars you can find lots of interesting facts invention of first car website.