Horses of Iron

LockH said:
Who Invented the Car?
by Lauren Cox, Live Science Contributor | June 18, 2013 06:46pm ET
http://www.livescience.com/37538-who-invented-the-car.html
The history of the automobile is a long and winding road, and pinpointing exactly who invented the car is not a simple matter. But if you rewind the evolution of cars past GPS, past antilock brakes and automatic transmissions and even past the Model T, eventually you'll get to the Benz Motor Car No. 1, the missing link between cars and horse-drawn buggies.

Karl Benz patented the three-wheeled Motor Car in 1886. It was the first true, modern automobile. Benz also patented his own throttle system, spark plugs, gear shifters, a water radiator, a carburetor and other fundamentals to the automobile. Benz eventually built a car company that still exists today as the Daimler Group.

Long history of the car

Benz patented the first gasoline-powered car, but he wasn't the original visionary of self-propelled vehicles. Some highlights in the history of the car:

Leonardo da Vinci had sketched a horseless, mechanized cart in the early 1500s. Like many of his designs, it wasn't built in his lifetime.
In 1769, a Frenchman named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot built a self-propelled vehicle with a steam engine. The cart moved at a walking pace and was abandoned.
Sometime between 1832 and 1839, Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first electric carriage, which used a rechargeable battery that powered a small electric motor. The vehicles were heavy, expensive and required frequent recharging. They were abandoned in favor of gasoline-powered engines.

Internal combustion engines

Vital to the modern automobile is the internal combustion engine. This type of engine uses an explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder. The piston's movement turns a crankshaft that is connected to the car's wheels of a drive shaft. Like the car itself, the internal combustion engine has a long history. An incomplete list of developments includes:

1680: Christiaan Huygens, better known for his contributions as an astronomer, designed but never built an internal combustion engine fueled by gunpowder.
1826: Englishman Samuel Brown altered a steam engine to burn gasoline and put it on a carriage, but this proto-automobile also never gained widespread adoption.
1858: Jean Joseph-Etienne Lenoir patented a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. He improved on that engine so it would run on petroleum, attached it to a three-wheeled wagon and traveled 50 miles.
1873: American engineer George Brayton developed a two-stroke kerosene engine. It is considered to be the first safe and practical oil engine.
1876: Nikolaus August Otto patented the first four-stroke engine in Germany.
1885: Gottlieb Daimler invented the prototype of the modern gasoline engine.

Innovative and entrepreneurial

Karl Benz gets the credit for inventing the automobile because his car was practical, used a gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine and worked like modern cars do today.

Benz was born in 1844 in Karlsruhe, a city in southwest Germany. His father was a railway worker who died in an accident when Benz was 2 years old. Although poor, Benz's mother supported him and his education. He was admitted to the University of Karlsruhe at age 15 and graduated in 1864 with a mechanical engineering degree.

Benz's first venture of an iron foundry and sheet-metal workshop flopped. However his new bride, Bertha Ringer, used her dowry to fund a new factory to build gas engines. With the profits Benz was free to start building a horseless, gas-powered carriage.

Benz had built three prototypes of his Motor Car in private by 1888, when Bertha decided it was time for some press. Bertha took the latest model in the early morning and drove her two teenage sons 66 miles to her mother's home. She had to improvise repairs along the way with shoe leather, a hair pin and her garter.

The successful trip showed Benz how to improve the car, and showed a dubious public that automobiles were useful. Benz demonstrated the Model 3 Motorwagen at the World's Fair in Paris the following year.

Benz died in 1929, just two years after he merged with fellow car-maker Gottlieb Daimler's company to form what is today the Daimler Group, manufacturer of the Mercedes-Benz.

I read often the slogan "ICE is so last century"
But its wrong. ICE is last last century. :wink:
 
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Look Ma! No chain! Gizmodo India does pics "29 Wonderful Bike Ads From The Golden Age Of Cycling":
http://www.gizmodo.in/news/29-Wonde...olden-Age-Of-Cycling/articleshow/34888324.cms
 
I'm reminded (yet again) of Wm.Gibsons remark "The future is already here, just not evenly distributed."
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(Missing stuff. A trike and a recumbent come to mind. And an electric assist, of course.) :mrgreen:
:)
 
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In the daze before electrics. (Not sure I spelled "days" correctly here.)
 
Amusing that folks are "discovering" old electrics. "History: Canada’s first electric car Dec 05 1893"
http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2015/12/04/history-canadas-first-electric-car-dec-05-1893/
151204_8z63x_rci-m-still-bigger_sn635.jpg


Pic is captioned "Canada's first, and one of the world's first (and much better than rivals) electric car on display at at Toronto Armouries auto show in 1912. it is pictured alongside another vehicle possibly an early Ford electric.
Photo Credit: Toronto Archives fonds 1244, Item 56."
 
Exciting day in ebikers in Toronto! ... on May 2, 1911.
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Seen here:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/31/one-upon-a-city-the-day-niagara-flowed-into-toronto.html
With the push of a button and a great whoosh, a torrent cascaded onto the cheering crowd from the huge picture of Niagara Falls hung over the main entrance to City Hall on May 2, 1911. This was the ceremonial start of the flow of electricity in Toronto.

Once Upon A City: The day Niagara flowed into Toronto
One day in 1911, a switch was flipped and voila, the power of The Falls was suddenly powering the lights of Hogtown

By: Carola Vyhnak Special to the Star, Published on Thu Dec 31 2015

It was a chilly spring evening 105 years ago and the atmosphere was electric as dignitaries and 30,000 Torontonians waited for the big moment.

As the clock atop Old City Hall struck 9 p.m., all eyes turned to the guest of honour: Niagara Falls. Well, maybe not the original gusher but an equally wet if smaller imitation.

With the push of a button and a great whoosh, a torrent cascaded onto the cheering crowd from the huge picture of the falls hung over the main entrance. The Toronto Hydro-Electric System was born.

The ceremonial start of the flow of electricity on May 2, 1911 capped three years of building the infrastructure to distribute power harnessed by the province, including a 13,000-volt main line, transmission towers and electrical sub-stations.

“There has been no development in modern years which more closely touches the comfort and prosperity of the people of any town or city,” declared Mayor George Reginald Geary.

If the flow from the mini falls dampened onlookers, it had no such effect on enthusiasm.

“There arose a mighty cheer,” the Toronto Daily Star reported. “Niagara power had officially arrived at five minutes after nine o’clock.”

The display of light bulbs strung across City Hall’s façade was “so intense and beautiful that the human sea could not repress murmurs of appreciation and delight,” noted a reporter, adding an afterthought about the soaking.

“Many a spring hat suffered diminished glory before some nameless hero thought to turn Niagara off.”

Electricity, in fact, had arrived in Toronto in the late 1880s, supplied by a handful of private firms, including the Toronto Electric Light Company founded by inventor John Joseph Wright.

Blogto.com credits him with becoming the first person to generate and sell electricity commercially in the city when downtown streets and homes were lit by gas lamp.

TELCO was awarded contracts for outdoor lighting and powering streetcars until the municipal system became the sole distributor of power in the early 1920s.

But if civic officials were eager to electrify, householders took a dim view of the new technology, thanks to finances and unfamiliarity. The rich and enlightened, on the other hand, were quickly turned on.

Financier Henry Pellatt, for one, had invested in the hydro-electric industry and reportedly installed 5,000 electric lights and an elevator in his new home of Casa Loma, completed in 1914.

Slow to warm up to kitchen appliances, housewives preferred gas stoves and old-fashioned ice boxes, which sparked a surge of marketing campaigns.

A glossy booklet targeting “small families that keep no servant” offered such temptations as toasters, vacuum cleaners, cereal cookers and even an electric vibrator for “my lady’s boudoir” – to be “applied at one’s own convenience.” The device was intended for facial treatments.

Irons were hot in 1914, totaling 5,600 sales in showrooms that promoted the latest products. Eaton’s helped the cause by telling newspaper readers its $2.50 Westinghouse model “saves a great deal of hard work and discomfort.”

Outside the home, things were humming along as streetcars, which had already replaced horses with overhead power lines, were joined in the early 1920s by trackless trolley buses.

But another spectacle attracted oglers in August, 1925: Toronto’s first traffic lights, installed at Yonge and Bloor. The big event drew a large crowd “expectantly waiting for something to happen” according to the Star, but no mishaps occurred and watching the lights change colour was as exciting as it got.

Night life took on new life with the illumination of baseball games and other sporting events as well as amusement areas such as Hanlan’s Point and the CNE’s Midway, all aglow in neon. When Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1932, the ice was lit by more than one hundred 1,000-watt bulbs.

The following year, Toronto Hydro opened its new head office on Carlton St., a 1933 Art Deco limestone mid-rise described as the very “model of modernity.”

Residents embraced electricity in growing numbers with the post-war baby boom sparking a 75-per-cent increase in kilowatt-hour consumption between 1945 and 1955. By now there were enough Hydro employees to form their clubs for curling, baseball, hockey, bowling, golf and photography.

For consumers, the ’60s became the decade of living electrically with most households boasting TVs, stereos, and numerous appliances. But Toronto Hydro was not without its failures, which hit close to home in January, 1968 when a storm paralyzed the city, causing an octogenarian in distress to summon police.

“Oh, do come in,” she said, greeting an officer in her nightdress. With no power, she complained, her beef stew wouldn’t cook.

But the mother of all outages occurred in August, 2003 when the biggest power blackout in North American history, triggered by malfunctions south of the border, affected 50 million customers in the northeastern U.S. and much of Ontario.

During the days-long calamity, Torontonians coped by helping each other, pinch-hitting as traffic cops and partying by candlelight.

“That is the magic of Toronto, yes? People who won’t give you the time of day when everything is normal are the first to stop and ask how they can help when something goes wrong,” taxi driver Amir Khan told a reporter.

As looming storms threaten power supplies this year, it’s worth recalling columnist Joey Slinger’s suggestion some 13 years ago: “Maybe we should declare one or two days a year electricity-free, and let the quiet seep into us, become a tranquilizer for our souls.”

Like Niagara, just go with the flow.

...and to this day electric service is still termed "Hydro" in Ontario, EVen though it is often 50% or more nuclear powered...
 
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December, 1912 advertisement in American Journal of Surgery. An Electric for her very own - what more enjoyable surprise could your wife receive on Christmas morning?
:)
 
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:)
 
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Very Hush-Hush in 1943 as to the exact location of the factory. But suspect here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welbike

So. The Excelsior Motor Company of Birmingham, UK. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelsior_Motor_Company

"World War II
Their major contribution to the war effort was the 98 cc (6 in3) Welbike (Corgi), a collapsible motorcycle delivered in a pod by parachute, intended to be used by paratroops for 'rapid' movement around a battlefield."

Originally in Coventry, before the move to Birmingham:
1907-excelsior-cycles.jpg



Wartime (1939-1945) The firm built the Welbike, which eventually became the post-war Corgi. The Welbike was a small British single-seat motorcycle devised during World War II at Station IX - the Inter Services Research Bureau - based at Welwyn, UK, for use by SOE (Special Operations Executive - 1940 to 1946). Subsequently it was not much used by SOE, but many were issued to the Parachute Regiment and used at Arnhem during Operation Market Garden. It was designed by the pseudonymous John Dolphin and powered by a Villiers 98 cm3 single-cylinder two-stroke petrol engine and was designed to fit into a standard parachute airdrop container. 3,853 units were build between 1942 and 1945.

Engine - 98cc, two stroke, petrol lubricated
Suspension - none
Gearbox - single speed
Wheels - 10 in, 20 psi front, 35 psi rear
Fuel Consumption - 45mpg
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Seen here:
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Excelsior_Motor_Co

... and one more pic:
latest
 
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^^ Sneaky Germans (BMW). Love the rear wheel spoke arrangement. :)

Seen in the pioneer museum in Dalby qld Australia:
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... from the daze before anyone thought to marry the two together (old, antique poop-mobile style bike in background.)
 
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Horses of Iron with a pony.
 
oatnet said:
LockH said:
Horses of Iron with a pony.
That's pretty cool!
-JD

Yah. But Oat? Gotta ask myself... why not a pram design feature in common use decades later? Odd maybe, yes?
 
Another from the daze before the Assist.
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