Talk:History of the automobile
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[edit] Cyclecar
Some mention of the Cyclecar seems appropriate--Kayaker 10:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC).
[edit] Veteran/Brass confusion
The 'Automobile history eras' template talks about 'Veteran' as an era prior to 'Brass or Edwardian' - but it links 'Veteran' here where it refers to says 'Main article: Brass Era car' right under the heading for 'Veteran'. What gives?
[edit] Yank tanks
I feel that the addition of the yank tank paragraph and photo is out of place in this high-level article. Perhaps it would be more at home in the articles on antique or classic cars but this is way too much of an overview for this location-specific content. There are MANY other things that could be added, but the article would then become too long and would not serve its purpose as a general overview of automobile history. I intend to remove this content. --SFoskett 14:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
- You've got a point (although I don't understand what you mean by 'high level' article - aren't all articles supposed to be high level? :) ). I now realise why I put it here. In the 'Automobile history eras' overview the cars in Cuba fall largely under 'post war', so I clicked that, but that article doesn't exist yet (which is a bit strange) and it redirects here. That is often a problem when I want to place a photograph and the appropriate article doesn't exist yet. Then I place it in the article that comes closest, so the 'locals' can then use it for the appropriate article when it gets created. I'm not going to start the article, so I'll leave it to those who deal with this subject to deal with the photo and info. Btw, I see I already placed it in the 'classic car' article some time ago. Anyway, thanks for pointing this out to me at my talk page. Not many people are that polite. :) DirkvdM 17:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
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- I mean that History of the automobile should be a general overview of the history of the automobile and cannot include too much specific content. I think that a paragraph, photo, and link to yank tank is absolutely warranted in classic car, but it's just too specific here. And we should all be polite, right? :) --SFoskett 14:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge
I've run into a series of new articles such as 1980 in motoring, 1981 in motoring, etc. On a glance, they appear to have been lifted out of an automotive magazine somewhere, but since there are no sources on the articles, this is difficult to ascertain. In any case, though the "years in motoring" concept may be appropriate at some point, I think that for now, Wikipedia would be better served by either merging the information in those articles into "History of the automobile", or perhaps deleting them as unsourced. Does anyone else have an opinion, or perhaps want to suggest another option? --Elonka 23:18, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
- Wikipedia has a number of series of "years in ..." articles, such as music, film, archaeology, etc. I suspect something similar for motoring might be useful. (This is IMO a seperate point from the fact that the current articles could benifit from better organization and sourcing.) Cheers, -- Infrogmation 23:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
- Keep them separate. There is a lot of content on the pages, far too much to go into this article. As is mentioned above, "years in " articles are quite common in other areas and I agree can be useful. Malcolma 10:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
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- In the absence of further discussion, and as there is now a large series of "Years in motoring" articles. I have removed the "merge" tag. The "Years in motoring" really need some North American input. Malcolma 16:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Clean-up / doubled up text
- Somehow it seems much of the text of this article got doubled up.. I've taken the liberty of removing the doubled section and for reference purposes pasted it below instead
--GeeTeeBee 00:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
The first known automobile was a steam car, created by Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish priest, in 1678 • Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot successfully demonstrated such a vehicle on a real scale as early as 1769 • Cugnot's invention initially saw little application in his native France and the center of innovation passed to Great Britain, where Richard Trevithick was running a steam carriage in 1801 • Such vehicles were fashionable for a time, and over the next decades such innovations as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions, and improved speed and steering were developed • Some were commercially successful in providing mass transit, until a backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in passing a law, the Locomotive Act, in 1865 that self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom must be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn • This effectively killed road auto development in the UK for most of the rest of the 19th century, as inventors and engineers shifted their efforts to improvements in railway locomotives • The law was not finally repealed until 1896 although the need for the red flag was removed in 1878 • The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789 • Later, in 1804, Evans demonstrated his first successful self-propelled vehicle, which not only was the first automobile in the USA but was also the first amphibious vehicle, as his steam-powered vehicle was able to travel on wheels on land and via a paddle wheel in the water • Belgian born Etienne Lenoir made a car with an internal combustion engine around 1860, though it was driven by coal-gas • His experiment lasted for 7 miles, but it took him 3 hours • He would have been faster on foot. Lenoir never tried experimenting with cars again • The French claim that a Deboutteville-Delamare was successful, and the French celebrated the 100th birthday of the car in 1984 • About 1870, in Vienna, capital of Austria (then, the Austro-Hungarian Empire), inventor Siegfried Marcus put an internal liquid fuel engine on a simple handcart which made him the first man propelling a vehicle by means of gasoline • Today, this car is well known as “The first Marcus Car” • In 1883, Marcus got a patent for a low voltage ignition of the magneto type in Germany • This design was used for all further engines and, of course, the famous “Second Marcus Car” of 1888/89 • This ignition in conjunction with the “rotating brush carburetor” made the “Second Car’s” design very innovative • • It is generally acknowledged that the first automobiles with gasoline powered internal combustion engines were completed almost simultaneously by several German inventors working independently: Karl Benz built his first automobile in 1885 in Mannheim • Benz was granted a patent for his automobile on January 29, 1886 and began the first production of automobiles in 1888 • Soon there after, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Stuttgart in 1889 designed a vehicle from scratch to be an automobile rather than a horse carriage fitted with an engine • They also were inventors of the first motor bike in 1886 • Much earlier, above mentioned Siegfried Marcus in Vienna built his crude First Car (engine on handcart) around 1870 • His Second Car with four seats may have run only in 1888-1889, thus after Benz and Marcus never applied for a general patent for his liquid-fuel wheelers, only for his Second's ignition • One of the first four wheel petrol-driven automobiles built in Britain came in Birmingham in 1895 by Frederick William Lanchester who also patented the disc brake • The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and under licence to Benz, in France by Emile Roger • By 1900 mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States • The first company to form exclusively to build automobiles was Panhard et Levassor in France • Formed in 1889, they were quickly followed by Peugeot two years later • In the United States, brothers Charles and Frank Duryea founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1893, becoming the first American automobile manufacturing company • However, it was Oldsmobile who would dominate this era of automobile production. Its large scale production line was running in 1902 • Within a year, Cadillac (formed from the Henry Ford Company), Winton, and Ford were producing cars in the thousands • Within a few years, dizzying assortments of technologies were being produced by hundreds of producers all over the Western world • Steam, electricity, and gasoline-powered autos competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s • Dual- and even quad-engine cars were designed, and engine displacement ranged to more than a dozen liters • Many modern advances, including gas/electric hybrids, multi-valve engines, overhead camshafts, and four-wheel drive, were attempted and discarded at this time • Innovation was rapid and rampant, with no clear standards for basic vehicle architectures, body styles, construction materials, or controls • Many veteran cars use a tiller rather than a wheel for steering, for example, and most operated at a single speed • Chain drive was dominant over the modern driveshaft, and closed bodies were extremely rare • On November 5, 1895, George B. Selden was granted a United States patent for a two-stroke automobile engine (U.S. Patent 549160 ) • This patent did more to hinder than encourage development of autos in the USA • Selden licensed his patent to most major American auto makers, collecting a fee on every car they produced • Throughout the veteran car era, however, automobiles were seen as more of a novelty than a genuinely useful device • Breakdowns were frequent, fuel was difficult to obtain, and rapid innovation meant that a year-old car was nearly worthless • • • • • Major breakthroughs in proving the usefulness of the automobile came with the historic long-distance drive of Bertha Benz in 1888 when she traveled more than fifty miles (106 km) from Mannheim to Pforzheim to make people aware of the potential of the vehicles her husband, Karl Benz, manufactured, and after Horatio Nelson Jackson's successful trans-continental drive across the United States in 1903 • Named for the widespread use of brass in the United States, the Brass or Edwardian era lasted from roughly 1905 through to the beginning of World War I in 1914 • 1905 was a signal year in the development of the automobile, marking the point when the majority of sales shifted from the hobbyist and enthusiast to the average user • Within the decade and a half that make up the Brass or Edwardian era, the various experimental designs and alternate power systems would be marginalized • • • Although the modern touring car had been invented earlier, it was not until Panhard et Levassor's Système Panhard was widely licensed and adopted that recognizable and standardized automobiles were created • This system specified front-engined, rear-wheel drive internal combustion cars with a sliding gear transmission • Traditional coach-style vehicles were rapidly abandoned, and buckboard runabouts lost favor with the introduction of tonneaus and other less-expensive touring bodies • Throughout this era, development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to a huge number (hundreds) of small manufacturers all competing to gain the world's attention • Key developments included electric ignition (by Robert Bosch, 1903) and the electric self-starter (by Charles Kettering, for the Cadillac Motor Company in 1910-1911), independent suspension, and four-wheel brakes • Leaf springs were widely used for suspension, though many other systems were still in use, with angle steel taking over from armored wood as the frame material of choice • Transmissions and throttle controls were widely adopted, allowing a variety of cruising speeds, though vehicles generally still had discrete speed settings rather than the infinitely variable system familiar in cars of later eras
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