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Lenoir and Marcus had shown the feasibility of the
internal-combustion engines, but both lacked faith in their own
enterprises and abandoned their efforts. Closest to the mark in the
judgment of historians is another pair of inventors who had faith in
the future of the motorcar as well as in themselves. They worked
doggedly (and unbeknownst to each other) to find the missing pieces
of a puzzle that had been plaguing automotive inventors through the
years: how to propel the horseless carriage.
Carl Freidrich Benz and Gottlich Wilhelm Daimler worked separately
(and at almost the same moment) in Germany; each designing and
building the world's first commercially successful cars. These are,
for all intents and purposes, the direct linear antecedents of the
modern automobile.
Benz's first creation was not very impressive, either in design nor
in initial road test. It was a fragile, carriage-like three-wheeler
with tubular framework, mounted on a Benz-designed, one-horsepower,
one-cylinder engine. The engine was a refinement of the four-stroke
engine designed by Nikolaus Otto (another German), who had refined
his from Lenoir's two-stroke engine. Even though Benz's creation was
awkward and frail, it incorporated some essential elements that would
characterize the modern vehicle: electrical ignition, differential,
mechanical valves, carburetor, engine cooling system, oil and grease
cups for lubrication, and a braking system. He obtained a patent on a
"carriage with gasoline engine" in 1886.
About seventy-five miles from Carl Benz, Daimler worked diligently to
design a better internal-combustion engine. He was satisfied that he
had succeeded in 1833, when he took out a patent on what he believed
was a more efficient, four-stroke, gasoline-fueled engine. He first
mounted his engine on a sturdy bicycle, a two-wheeler, which ran
satisfactorily on its test run in 1885. This was the prototype of the
modern motorcycle. In 1887, Daimler, encouraged by this success and
by experience, installed his engine in a four-wheeled, two-passenger
vehicle. The engine had only a few more horsepower than Benz's, but
it was lighter and ran at a much higher speed - 900 rpm as compared
to Benz's 300 rpm. It was the first example of a high-speed,
internal- combustion engine.
Daimler and Benz argued heatedly concerning each other's claim to
fame and prestige. Daimler insisted that he had successfully tested
his engine on a bicycle before Benz had patented his tricycle and
had, in any case, been the first to patent a four-wheeled car. Benz
conceded that Daimler invented the motorcycle, but he insisted his
tricycle was the first motorcar. These claims are still argued to
this day by people who care; historians give both men a lot of
credit: Daimler for his high-speed engine; Benz for the features of
water cooling, electric ignition and differential gears. Benz and
Daimler continued separately and competitively, to develop improved
engines and refined vehicles to put them in. When Gottlich died in
1900, his company removed his name from the car he had created and
affixed "Mercedes," for Mercedes Jellinck, the daughter of an
influential distributor who lived in France. In 1926, when Carl Benz
was 82 (he lived three more years), the companies merged into one
firm. These two inventive giants, who worked so hard and lived less
than seventy-five miles apart, never met one another, but they poised
the world for entry into the Automobile Age. Just as the 19th-century
was making its way into the 20th, the world was little inclined to be
led in the direction of automobiles - except for those who had money
enough to indulge their fancies, and in France, where motorcar
production was beginning to assume some significant economical
measures.
The wide boulevards of Paris, and the fine paved roads radiating out
of the French capital, were ideal settings for rich sportsmen to show
off their noisy toys. By 1895, there were so many self-propelled
vehicles puttering around the city that the French Academy coined a
new word to the French language to describe them. The word was
"automobile."
One of the first vehicles to be officially designated an automobile
was a car which is now considered to be the real prototype of modern
cars. It was a Daimler-powered vehicle built in 1892 by the Parisian
carriage-making firm, Panhard and Levassor. The "Panhard" marked the
appearance of the automobile's classic design: engine in front,
supplying power to a gearbox behind it; gearbox connected by chain
drive to the rear drive wheels. It had four forward speeds and a
reverse, and an 1894 model made headlines when it covered a 750-mile
distance from Paris to Rouen in forty-eight hours at an average speed
of fifteen miles per hour.
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