Cars Information
This page is about cars and motors, also called automobile/ automobiles.
Cars were first produced in the country of Germany by Mr. Karl Benz in 1885-1886, and by Mr. Gottlieb Daimler between 1886-1889.
Karl Benz began his work on a new engine patent in 1878. He concentrated on creating reliable two-stroke gas engines, based on Mr. Nikolaus Otto's design of a four-stroke engine. A patent on this design by Otto had been declared void by then. Benz finished an engine on New Year's Eve and was granted patent rights for it in the year 1879. Benz built a first three-wheeled car in 1885 and was granted a patent in Mannheim, dated January 1886. This was a first car designed and built as such, rather than a converted carriage, boat, or cart. About 25 of them were built before 1893, when his first 4-wheel car was introduced. These were powered by four-stroke engines of his own design. Emile Roger of France, already producing Benz engines under license, now added a Benz automobile to his product line. Because France was more open to early automobiles, more were built and sold in France through Roger than Benz ever managed to sell in Germany.
By 1886 Gottlieb Daimler had fitted a horse carriage with a four-stroke engine. In the year 1889, he built two vehicles from scratch as cars, with several new innovations. From 1890 to 1895 about thirty vehicles were built by Daimler and his assistant, Wilhelm Maybach.
Benz and Daimler, both seem to have been unaware of each other's work and worked independently. Daimler died in 1900. During the First World War, Benz suggested a co-operation between the two companies, but it was not until 1926 that the they united under the name of Daimler-Benz with a commitment to remain together under that name, which they did until 2000.
In 1890, Emile Levassor and Armand Peugeot, France, began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and laid the foundation of a motor industry in France as well. They were inspired by a Daimler Stahlradwagen of 1889, which was shown in Paris in 1889.
The first American car was a gasoline internal combustion engine supposedly designed in 1877 by George Baldwin Selden of Rochester, New York, who applied for a patent on his car in 1879. Selden did not build an automobile until 1905, when he was forced to do so, due to a lawsuit threatening the legality of his patent. After building the 1877 design in 1905, Selden received his patent and later went ahead and sued Ford Motor Company for infringing on his patent. Henry Ford was notorious for opposing the American patent system and Selden's case against Ford went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that everyone was free to build automobiles without paying any royalties to Selden, since car technology had improved so significantly since the design of Selden's patent, that no one was building according to his designs any more.
In Britain several attempts to build steam cars were made with Thomas Rickett attempting a production run in 1860. One of the major problems was the poor state of the road network at the time. Santler is recognised by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as having made the first petrol/gasoline powered car in the country in 1894 followed by Frederick William Lanchester in 1895 but these were both one-offs. The first production vehicles came from the Daimler Motor Company, founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896.