=205. The Earliest Automobiles.= The first kind of automobile men tried
to build was a "steam carriage." A Frenchman in 1755 invented a steam
road wagon meant to draw a field gun. But his invention could not be
steered, and was soon wrecked by running into a wall.
[Sidenote: ="Steamers"=]
In England one hundred years ago a few of these "steamers" were run as
stage coaches. They were noisy, clumsy "steamers" and always likely to
explode. They were not popular, and a law was passed that a man must
always walk ahead of them carrying a red flag. They were only allowed
to go only four miles an hour. Of course this meant they could not be
used at all.
[Sidenote: =Watts could not imagine good roads=]
Oliver Evans of Philadelphia built the first steam automobile in the
United States in 1804, to carry a steam flatboat he had made down to
the river. Evans and other inventors after him for nearly one hundred
years worked on self-driven carriages, but could interest no one in
their plans. Watts, the great English inventor of the steam engine,
stopped a friend who had all but invented an automobile. It was
useless, he said; roads would not allow such rapid travel. Watts could
discover steam power, but it never occurred to him that good roads
could be easily built. The use of rubber tires in 1887 stopped the
jolting that had been such a difficulty.
In 1892 Charles Duryea built the first gasoline automobile in America.
He tried to get money to continue his work. He told a business man,
"You and I will live to see more automobiles than horses on the
street." The man thought him crazy, and refused to help him. Now horses
are becoming rare in large cities.
=206. America, the Land of Automobiles.= In 1891 the first electric
vehicle in this country was made. The first gasoline car was sold
March 24, 1898. Now, twenty years later, this country is manufacturing
nearly half a million cars annually. Other countries are backward by
comparison. Four-fifths of all the automobiles in the world are owned
in the United States.
[Illustration: AN EARLY AUTOMOBILE]
[Sidenote: =Motor trucks in the war=]
Motor trucks can carry many tons, and are now very largely used for
hauling, especially in cities. At the end of the war our government had
seventy thousand trucks in use overseas.
One time when the German army threatened Paris it was only the unbroken
stream of motor trucks moving along a great French road carrying men
and supplies to the front that saved the city. In memory of its service
the French call this road the "Sacred Way."