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AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES
An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been
Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled
Vehicles on the Common Roads
Illustrated
New York
The Monograph Press
Copyright, 1904
by the Monograph Press
All Rights Reserved
FOREWORD
In a large sense the history of the rise of the automobile has been a
history of some of the foremost inventors, mechanical engineers,
manufacturers and active business men of more than a full century. The
subject of self-propelled vehicles on the common roads has enlisted the
faculties of many men whose minds have been engrossed with the study and
the solution of mechanical and engineering problems, purely from an
absorbing love of science; it has had the financial support of those whose
energies are constantly and forcefully exerted in the industrial and
commercial activities of the age; it has received the merited
consideration of those who regard as of paramount importance any addition
to the sum of successful human endeavor and any influence that contributes
to the further advance of modern civilization.
Along these lines of thought this book of AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES has been
prepared. On its pages are sketches of the lives and the work of those who
have been most active in planning, inventing and perfecting the modern
horseless highway vehicle, in adapting it to the public needs for pleasure
or business and in promoting its usefulness and broadening the field of
its utility.
Included herein are accounts of the pioneer inventors, the noted
investigators and the contemporaneous workers who have helped to make the
automobile in its many forms the most remarkable mechanical success of
to-day and the most valuable and epoch-making addition to the
conveniences of modern social, industrial and commercial life. These
sketches have been carefully prepared from the best sources of
information, works of reference, personal papers and so on, and are
believed to be thoroughly accurate and reliable. Much of the information
contained in them has been derived from exceedingly rare old volumes and
papers that are not generally accessible, and it comes with a full flavor
of newness. Much also has been acquired from original sources and has
never before been given to the public.
The investigator into this subject will find, doubtless, to his very great
surprise, that the story of the pioneer inventors, who, in the early part
of the nineteenth century, experimented with the problems of the steam
road carriage, has been recorded voluminously and with much detail. It was
a notable movement, that absorbed the abundant attention of inventors,
manufacturers and the public at large at that time.
Writers of that day recorded with a great deal of particularity the
experimenting with boilers, engines, machinery and carriages, and the
promoting of companies for the transportation of passengers and the
hauling of goods. Modern students and historians of this subject find
themselves greatly indebted to the writers of that epoch, like Gordon,
Herbert and others, who preserved, with such painstaking care, for future
generations, as well as for their own time, the account of the lives and
labors of such men as Watt, Trevithick, Maceroni, Hancock and others.
Every modern work upon this subject draws generously from those sources.
Concerning the later period from the middle of the century that has just
ended, down to the present time, there is less concrete information,
readily available. With the cessation of public interest in the matter and
its general relegation into the background, by inventors, engineers and
those who had previously been financial backers of the experimenting,
writers ceased to give the subject the enthusiastic attention that they
had before bestowed upon it. Records of that period are scant, partly
because there was so little to record and partly because no one cared to
record even that little.
Until comparatively recent times the historian of the self-propelled
vehicle, who was so much in evidence seventy-five years ago, had not
reappeared. Even now his work is generally of a desultory character,
voluminous, but largely ephemeral. It is widely scattered, not easily
accessible and already considerably forgotten from day to day. Especially
of the men of the last half century, who have made the present-day
automobile possible and are now contributing to its greater future, the
following pages present much that has never been brought together in this
form. It is both history and the material for history.
It is believed that these sketches will be found peculiarly interesting
and permanently valuable. Individually they are clear presentations of the
achievements of some of the most distinguished engineers and inventors of
the last hundred years. Collectively they present a complete story of the
inception and gradual development of the automobile from the first clumsy
steam wagons of Cugnot, Trevithick, Evans and others to the perfected
carriage of to-day.
The chapter on The Origin and Development of the Automobile is a careful
study and review of the conditions that attended the attempts to install
the first common road steam carriages, the tentative experimenting with
bicycles, tricycles and other vehicles in the middle of the last century
and the renaissance of the last two decades. Several of the illustrations
are from old and rare prints, and others are from photographs.
It is not possible to set down here all the authorities that have been
consulted in the preparation of this work. Special acknowledgment,
however, must be made to The Engineering Magazine for permission to use
text and photographs, and to J. G. Pangborn for permission to use a great
deal of interesting information regarding the early steam inventors
contained in his work, The World's Railway, and to reproduce portrait
sketches of Trevithick, Murdoch, and Read, from the same valuable volume.
LYMAN HORACE WEEKS.
NEW YORK, January, 1905.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE AUTOMOBILE
STRANGE EARLY VEHICLES
He who would fully acquaint himself with the history of the inception and
growth of the idea of travel by self-propelled vehicles on the public
highways must go further back in the annals of the past than he is likely
first to anticipate. Nearly three centuries ago men of mechanical and
scientific turns of mind were giving attention to the subject, although
their thoughts at that time were mostly confined to the realms of
imaginative speculation. Even before that philosophers occasionally
dreamed of what might be in some far off time. Roger Bacon, in the
thirteenth century, looking into the distant future, made this prediction:
"It will be possible to construct chariots so that without animals they
may be moved with incalculable speed." It was several hundred years before
men were ready to give practical attention to this idea, and about 1740
good Bishop Berkeley could only make this as a prediction and not a
realization: "Mark me, ere long we shall see a pan of coals brought to use
in place of a feed of oats."
But the ancients, in a way, anticipated even Roger Bacon and Bishop
Berkeley, for Heliodorus refers to a triumphal chariot at Athens that was
moved by slaves who worked the machinery, and Pancirollus also alludes to
such chariots.
HORSELESS WAGONS IN CHINA
Approaching the seventeenth century the investigator finds that definite
examples are becoming more numerous, even if as yet not very practical.
China, which, like Egypt, seems to have known and buried many ideas
centuries before the rest of the world achieved them, had horseless
vehicles before 1600. These merit, at least, passing attention even though
they were not propelled by an engine, for the present automobile is the
outgrowth of that old idea to eliminate the horse as the means of travel.
Matthieu Ricci, 1552-1610, a Jesuit missionary in China, told how in that
country a wagon not drawn by horses or other animals was in common use. In
an early collection of travels this vehicle was described as follows:
"This river is so cloyed with ships because it is not frozen in winter
that the way is stopped with multitude; which made Ricius exchange his way
by water into another (more strange to us) by waggon, if we may so call
it, which had but one wheel, so built that one might sit in the middle as
'twere on horseback, and on each side another, the waggoner putting 't
swiftly and safely forwards with levers or barres of wood (those waggons
driven by wind and gayle he mentions not.)" It was somewhat later than
this that China was indebted to that other famous Jesuit missionary,
Verbiest, for his steam carriage, which, however, was not much more than a
toy.
MANUALLY PROPELLED VEHICLES
But in the seventeenth century most attention seems to have been given to
devising carriages that should be moved by the hand or foot power of man.
The auto car that was run in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, by Johann
Hautsch, in 1649, was of this description, and that of Elié Richard, the
physician, of La Rochelle, France, about the same time, was of the same
class.
Not long after this Potter, of England, came along in 1663 with a
mechanical cart designed to travel on legs, and in the same year the
celebrated Hooke presented to the Royal Society of England a plan for some
sort of a machine by which one could "walk upon the land or water with
swiftness, after the manner of a crane." It does not quite appear what
that cart and that machine were. One authority thinks that the Hooke
patent was for a one-wheel vehicle supposed to be propelled by a person
inside the wheel. Then, also, there was Beza, another French physician,
with a mechanical vehicle in 1710.
OTHER FRENCH AND ENGLISH EXPERIMENTS
In fact, the interest in carriages worked by man power extended from the
seventeenth well into the nineteenth century. Soon after the time of Beza,
mechanical chariots, modeled after the Richard coach, were advertised to
be run in London, but it does not appear that they met with public favor.
Scientists and others gave much thought to the subject, both in England
and in France. John Vevers, master of the boarding-school at Ryegate,
Surrey, came out with a carriage that was evidently copied from that of
Richard. Other forms of carriages worked by hand or foot power of
man were described in the periodicals of the time. George Black, of
Berwick-on-the-Tweed, built a wagon to be run by hand power in 1768. In
England, John Ladd, of Trowbridge, Wilts, in 1757; John Beaumont, of
Ayrshire, in 1788, and in France, Thomas in 1703, Gerard in 1711, Ferry in
1770, and Maillard, Blanchard and Meurice, in 1779, and others, were most
active during this period.
It was well into the nineteenth century before this idea was wholly
abandoned. Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the hand loom, contributed to
the experimenting, and the 1831 patent to Sir James C. Anderson was for a
very imposing vehicle rowed by twenty-four men.
COMPRESSED AIR POWER
At the same time that the steam engineers in England were bringing out
their vehicles, 1800-35, others were at work on the problem of compressed
air carriages. Among these was W. Mann, of Brixton, who, in 1830,
published in London a pamphlet, entitled A Description of a New Method of
Propelling Locomotive Machines, and of Communicating Power and Motion to
All Other Kinds of Machinery, and it contained a lithograph of the
proposed carriage. Sir George Medhurst, of England, about 1800, with his
proposed regular line of coaches run by compressed air was, perhaps, the
most conspicuous experimenter into this method of propulsion.
SAILING CARRIAGES ON LAND
Many men long speculated upon the possibility of wind propulsion on land
as well as upon the sea. The most ambitious attempt in that line was the
sailing chariot of Simon Stevin, of The Hague, in 1600. Vehicles of this
kind were built by others, and in 1695 Sir Humphrey Mackworth applied
sails to wagons on the tramways at his colliery at Neath, South Wales. The
Frenchman, Du Quet, in 1714, and the Swiss clergyman, Genevois, proposed
to get power from windmills mounted on their wagons. More curious even
than these was the carriage drawn by kites, the invention of George
Pocock, in 1826.
THE STEAM CARRIAGE PREDICTED
But all these and other fantastic devices never got beyond the
experimental stage, and nothing of a substantial, practical character was
ever evolved from them. It remained for the latter part of the eighteenth
century to see the subject taken up seriously and considered in a way that
promised definite results. And it was steam that then brought the matter
strongly to the front.
It is true that Sir Isaac Newton tentatively suggested the possibility of
carriage propulsion by steam about 1680, but his suggestion lay dormant
for nearly a century. Then the growing knowledge of the power of steam and
the possibilities in the new element turned men's thoughts again very
forcibly to this theme. The stationary engine had shown its usefulness,
and the consideration of making this stationary machine movable, and
therefore available for transportation, naturally followed.
Dr. Erasmus Darwin is said to have urged James Watt and Matthew Boulton to
build a fiery chariot as early as 1765. In his poem, The Botanic Garden,
famous in that day, Dr. Darwin, like a prophet crying in the wilderness,
sang of the future of steam in these lines:
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
On, on wide waving wings, expanded bear
The flying chariot through the field of air;
Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above,
Shall wave their fluttering 'kerchiefs as they move,
Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowds,
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy clouds."
These lines may indeed be fairly interpreted as anticipating in prophetic
prediction the modern motor airship, as well as the motor car.
THE FIRST STEAM VEHICLES
It was considerably later than this that the dream of Dr. Darwin
approached to realization at the hands of the steam engine inventors and
builders. Aside from Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, the French army officer who,
about 1769, constructed an artillery wagon propelled by a high-pressure
engine, those who first built successful self-propelled vehicles for
highway travel were the famous engineers of England and Scotland, who
harnessed steam and developed the high-pressure engine in the last half of
the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. James Watt
patented, in 1782, a double-acting engine, which he planned might be
"applied to give motion to wheel carriages," the engine to be portable;
but he never put the patent to trial. He was followed by George
Stephenson, Richard Trevithick, Walter Hancock, Goldsworthy Gurney, David
Gordon, William Brunton and others in England, and Oliver Evans, Nathan
Read and Thomas Blanchard in the United States, with two score or more
contemporaries. For more than half a century steam vehicles of various
types were invented by these engineers and many of them were brought into
practical use.
Soon after the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century the
interest in steam carriages had assumed large proportions in England. In
1833 there were no less than twenty such vehicles, either completed or in
hand, around London, and a dozen corporations had been organized to build
and run them over stated routes.
Alexander Gordon, the eminent engineer, wrote a book, entitled Treatise
Upon Elemental Locomotion, that went into three editions inside of four
years. He also brought out two special journals covering this field of
mechanics. The Mechanic's Magazine, and other publications, also gave much
attention to the subject, and the steam-carriage literature of the period
became very voluminous.
POPULAR PREJUDICE AROUSED
For a time it looked as though the new vehicle was destined to a
permanency and to accomplish a revolution in the methods of travel on the
high-roads. But several things arose to determine otherwise. There sprang
up an unreasoning senseless hostility to any substitute for the horse as
the agent of vehicular traffic. The stage-coach drivers were afraid that
they would be thrown out of work. Breeders of horses foresaw the
destruction of their business, when horses should no longer be in demand.
Farmers were sure that with horses superseded by steam, they would never
be able to sell any more oats. This public animosity manifested itself
wherever the steam carriages went. The coaches were hooted at and stoned
amid cries of "down with machinery." Stones and other obstacles were
placed in the roads, trenches were dug to trap the unsuspicious driver and
stretches of roadway were dug up and made into quagmires to stall the
machines. Parliament was called upon and enacted excessive highway tolls,
especially directed at steam carriages. Another law that stood on the
statute books of Great Britain until within comparatively recent times
compelled every self-propelled vehicle moving on the highway to be
preceded by a man walking and carrying a red flag.
THE BEGINNING OF RAILROADS
All this was undoubtedly due, in a large measure, if not wholly, to what
was then known as the Turn Pike Trusts, which, in conjunction with the
stage-line companies, in many cases, were owners of a thousand and more
horses. The latter, quite naturally, objected to the introduction of the
mechanical vehicle, while the former had such relations to them that both
their interests were identical.
But above all things, the great art of railroading had already grown from
infant existence to a condition of great possibilities, which were now to
be finally determined by a success, not alone mechanical and in the eyes
of the inventor, but measured by the balance sheets of the companies of
individuals who had made possible the construction of the various
experimental locomotives or experimental lines then being operated in
England and elsewhere. Just at this time, in the thirties of the
nineteenth century, seems to have been the crucial point. The arguments of
the engineers on the question of sufficient traction of the iron-shod
wheels on iron or other hard railways, while given due consideration, were
not wholly convincing, at least to the people investing their money in the
enterprises; the profits were to tell in the final conclusion, and it
would seem that the great era of railroading might be considered to have
had its actual birth at this time, because:
The first dividend was paid on one of the great railroad enterprises.
INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST DIVIDEND
For the time being that seemed to sound the death knell of the common road
steam-propelled vehicle. The engineers so strongly advocating the railroad
had proven their various propositions in the eyes of those who had the
financial powers to engage in the extensive introduction and development
of the new means of transportation. Further demonstration, extensively
exploited, was also made to the satisfaction of those investors, that
vehicles could be pulled with less power on a hard roadbed such as a
railway, than on an uneven and sometimes soft path such as common roads.
It seems clear that these and various other arguments, heartily urged at
that time, and, in some cases, unquestionable from a technical standpoint,
were really decided by that first dividend. And the common road vehicle
with the support and enthusiasm of its backers largely withdrawn from it
dropped to a position greatly subordinate to the other branch of
transportation.
THE STEAM ROAD VEHICLE AGAIN
On the other hand, the development which came in the next few decades in
the railroad department brought also a renewed demand for common road
vehicles for certain classes of work or for certain localities. The steam
vehicle for stationary purposes, and also for the locomotive, were being
rapidly developed and refined. The railroad settled down to the idea of a
power unit drawing numerous wagons. That has been consistently adhered to
to the present day, and only in the past decade have we gone back to the
old and first principles of embodying the mechanical propelling means in
the same vehicle that transports the passengers or goods. So, while
Hancock and his worthy contemporaries passed into history, other common
road steam advocates continued their isolated attempts up to and past the
middle of the nineteenth century, although without any such general
enthusiasm as prevailed in the twenties and early thirties.
NEW GENERATION OF INVENTORS
Many attempts in America, such as those of Fisher, Dudgeon, and others,
and the work in England by numerous inventors and machine manufacturers,
such as Tangye, Hilditch, Snowden, F. Hill, Jr., aided by the engineers,
Macadam, Telford and M'Neil, who were improving the common roads so that
they might approach the advantageous conditions of the railroad, assume
prominence in connection with that period of the history. Rickett's
carriage, in 1858; Carrett's, in 1862; Boulton's, in 1867; Catley's, in
1869, and others, were among the finger-posts of that time, pointing to
more notable achievements of the future.
But in England the Act of Parliament, passed in 1836 and in force almost
to to-day, known as the Locomotive Act, was the deterrent to progress in
common road steam locomotion. This condition even continued after the
select committee of Parliament, in 1873, endeavored to remove some of the
restrictions, but succeeded only in producing the Act of 1878, which in no
way improved the position of the common road vehicle.
In France and on the Continent political conditions doubtless mitigated
against any general advance, and though this period included the great
development of machinery and construction which paved the way for the
future, it is not of prominence in this history.
A PERIOD OF EXPERIMENTING
A new era may be said to have commenced in the early part of the seventies
when we find Amédèe Bollèe exhibiting a steam machine at the Vienna
Exposition. In the seventies were also experiments on modified forms of
power on vehicle propelling motors other than steam, but it still seemed
to be the steam vehicle that characterized the new period of activity
which blossomed out in the early eighties with many ardent advocates, and
exhibited a type of light vehicle with efficient strong boiler and light
engine. America should not be overlooked, however, when we consider the
one small vehicle of Austin, which was constructed in Massachusetts, and
attracted great attention at the shows of the Ocean Circus, in the early
seventies, or thereabout. Bouton, of France, came to the fore in the
early eighties, and the light steam vehicle seemed on the high road to a
great development and a monopoly of the common roads vehicle industry,
until its competitor appeared in what is now popularly known as the
gasoline vehicle in the middle eighties.
THE SELDEN PATENT
From this time on the great industry of to-day advanced in strides and
jumps, but while the future had been anticipated in some suggestions and
experiments in Europe, at last one great mind had delved into the problem
and anticipated the great future of the new type of vehicle in America.
Selden, after a decade or more of study and work, and well-directed
experiments, had made his own deductions, and with clear discerning had
concluded what, to his mind, would be _the_ vehicle in the future. The
result of his labors and the subsequent filing, in 1879, of a patent
application, when considered in connection with his persistent work from
that time on, even to the present day, would seem to justly mark him as
the pioneer in this type of vehicle; in fact, he was so called by the
Commissioner of Patents of the United States when publishing his annual
report, immediately after the issue of Selden's patent.
ADVENT OF THE HYDRO-CARBON ENGINE
Then followed the work on carbureters and ignition devices and details of
construction adapting the liquid hydro-carbons of uncertain quality to
more satisfactory use. Details became and still are numerous, and optional
to a great extent, but the liquid hydro-carbon engine of the compression
type distinguished the new epoch. The development of the stationary
engine operated with gas from receivers also proceeded rapidly in those
days, though it was well into the eighties before the gas engine of the
compression type involved a commercially successful industry to any
extent; not for several years did the principal manufacturers take up
commercially the proposition of the liquid hydrocarbon application. The
development of the small engine using liquid hydro-carbons received
attention from Marcus, in Austria, and the persistent attention of Benz
and of Daimler, in Germany. The two latter, furthermore, adapted their
engines to vehicles, and enthusiasm was great when Benz ran his
three-wheeler, with explosive engine, through the streets of his native
town.
PROGRESS IN FRANCE AND AMERICA
England was still shackled; but in France many were inspired to change
from steam to the hydro-carbon engine. About 1890 we find several French
manufacturers procuring engines, or the right to manufacture the small
explosive engines developed by the Germans, and promptly adapting them to
their vehicle construction, already well developed for steam propulsion.
Panhard & Levassor; Bouton, with his backer, DeDion; Bollèe, now Leon, the
nephew; Delahaye and Peugeot, were among the earliest Frenchmen to
appreciate the commercial possibilities of the new type. Then the large
manufacturers, already experienced in other lines, and particularly in
cycle manufacture, entered the field in 1893, 1894 and 1895; among them
such old concerns as DeDetrich, manufacturers for one hundred and more
years, grasped the opportunity. America was not idle, and while road
conditions in this country militated largely against the early attempts in
the industry, the efforts of the Duryeas and of Haynes, and various other
experimenters, who have since retired, were heard from. It was difficult,
however, with the obstacles then existing in America, for these early
workers to secure encouragement, and progress was slow, just as the
endeavors of Selden and some of the early steam vehicle people had
received nothing but discouragement at the hands of those whom they
endeavored to lead to the success of large manufacturing undertakings.
However, the Times-Herald race, in Chicago, near the close of 1895,
brought forth a large number of inventors and several starters, including
electric, steam and gasoline vehicles, and the showing was such as to
practically satisfy the doubting that these were the beginning of the
industry in this country.
THE ENGLISH REVIVAL
Abroad, the leaders in the automobile movement organized the now historic
races from Paris in different directions. With the runs of 1894, 1895 and
1896, and in each successive year thereafter, and with the road and other
conditions improved, the industry rapidly developed. England also was at
last reached. The restraints that had existed there for more than half a
century could no more be endured. The burden was finally thrown off, for
which great credit is due to Sir David Salomon, and the offensive
Locomotive Act was at last repealed in August, 1896. The subsequent
Locomotive Act which came into effect November 14, 1896, marked a
red-letter day in motoring history for England, and was justly celebrated
by a procession of vehicles from London to Brighton. Salomon had
previously organized an exhibition in England, and had imported a French
car, and as a prominent member of scientific and technical societies, in
which he presented many papers on the subject, had done, possibly, more
than any other individual to influence public sentiment and to secure this
new enactment. English manufacturers were not entirely unprepared for the
change, and a great wave of interest and activity swept the country.
Naturally this was followed by a reaction, but since then a
counter-reaction has set in, resulting in the present grand development of
that class of manufacturing in the British Isles.
The small steam vehicle of Whitney, and his contemporaries, the Stanleys
in the United States, then came to the fore. Under energetic promotion
thousands of small vehicles of that type were manufactured and put into
use. These, in no small measure, became to the public at large the
convincing object lesson of the practicability and possibilities of the
small automobile for every-day use.
MODERN CONDITIONS
The Paris show of 1900 revealed a great forward step in the development of
constructions, and the offer immediately thereafter of the James Gordon
Bennett trophy of international racing gave to the automobile industry
such an impetus as has seldom been the good fortune of any other art to
receive. To-day the automobile has reached that stage of perfection where
the question is no longer whether or not the vehicle will carry you to a
certain place and back. Now it is only a question of the speed, absence of
vibration, and sweetness of running the engine, absence of all noise, and
other details of refinement. Vehicles are now of the Pullman type,
luxurious to the extent of prices ranging into the thirties of thousands
of dollars, while on the other hand, thousands of small vehicles, costing
between five hundred and one thousand dollars, are annually made and sold.
The steam machine, after being practically succeeded by the gasoline, was
again improved by the flash boiler. The main development of this new power
was carried on by Serpollet, of France, and later, by Rollin T. White, in
the United States, both whom have become most able competitors of
manufacturers of machines of other classes.
THE INDUSTRY TO-DAY
The beginning of 1905 finds us with the annual shows, which have been
consecutive for many years, while the census of vehicles now in use, or
made in the last ten years, will aggregate several hundred thousand. The
annual production is estimated as probably approximating one hundred
thousand in a few of the principal countries. The value of the electrical
vehicle, particularly as the town vehicle for anything except speeding, is
now well established, and reports from Paris as well as New York indicate
the lack of facilities of factories in this line for producing these
carriages as rapidly as demanded. Heavy 'buses and individual vehicles
alike are also popular.
PIONEER INVENTORS
NICHOLAS JOSEPH CUGNOT,
WILLIAM MURDOCK,
OLIVER EVANS,
WILLIAM SYMINGTON,
NATHAN READ,
RICHARD TREVITHICK,
DAVID GORDON,
W. H. JAMES,
GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY,
THOMAS BLANCHARD,
M. JOHNSON,
WALTER HANCOCK,
W. T. JAMES,
FRANCIS MACERONI,
RICHARD ROBERTS,
J. SCOTT RUSSELL,
W. H. CHURCH,
ETIENNE LENOIR,
AMÉDÈE BOLLÈE,
GEORGE B. SELDEN,
SIEGFRIED MARCUS,
CARL BENZ,
GOTTLIEB DAIMLER,
M. LEVASSOR,
LEON SERPOLLET.
NICHOLAS JOSEPH CUGNOT
Born at Void, Lorraine, France, September 25, 1725. Died in Paris, October
2, 1804.
Concerning the early life of Cugnot, little is known. He was educated for
the engineering service of the French army, and gained distinction as a
military and mechanical engineer. He also served as a military engineer in
Germany. Soon afterward he entered the service of Prince Charles of
Lorraine, and for a time resided at Brussels, where he gave lessons in the
military art. He did not return to his native land until 1763, and then
invented a new gun, with which the cavalry were equipped.
This brought him to the attention of the Compte de Saxe, and under the
patronage of that nobleman, he constructed in 1765 his first locomotive.
This was a small wagon. On its first run it carried four persons, and
traveled at the rate of two and a quarter miles an hour. The boiler,
however, being too small, the carriage could go only for fifteen or twenty
minutes before the steam was exhausted, and it was necessary to stop the
engine for nearly the same time, to enable the boiler to raise the steam
to the maximum pressure, before it could proceed on its journey. This
machine was a disappointment, in consequence of the inefficiency of the
feed pumps. It has been stated that while in Brussels he had made a
smaller vehicle, which, if so, was soon after 1760.
Several small accidents happened during the trial, for the machine could
not be completely controlled, but it was considered on the whole to be
fairly successful and worthy of further attention. The suggestion was made
that provided it could be made more powerful, and its mechanism improved,
it might be used to drag cannon into the field instead of using horses for
that purpose. Consequently, Cugnot was ordered by the Duc de Choiseul,
Minister of War, to proceed with the construction of an improved and more
powerful machine. This vehicle, which was finished in 1770, cost twenty
thousand livres. It was in two parts, a wagon and an engine. The wagon was
carried on two wheels and had a seat for the steersman; the engine and
boiler were supported on a single driving-wheel in front of the wagon. The
two parts were united by a movable pin. A toothed quadrant, fixed on the
framing of the fore part, was actuated by spur gearing on the upright
steersman's shaft in close proximity to the seat, by means of which the
conductor could cause the carriage to turn in either direction, at an
angle of from fifteen to twenty degrees. In front was a round copper
boiler, having a furnace inside, two small chimneys, two single-acting
brass cylinders communicating with the boiler by the steam pipe, and other
machinery. On each side of the driving-wheel, ratchet wheels were fixed,
and as one of the pistons descended, the piston-rod drew a crank, the pawl
of which, working into the ratchet-wheel, caused the driving-wheel to make
a quarter of a revolution. By gearing, the same movement placed the piston
on the other side in a position for making a stroke, and turned the
four-way cock, so as to open the second cylinder to the steam and the
first cylinder to the atmosphere. The second piston then descended,
causing the leading wheel to make another quarter of a revolution, and
restoring the first piston to its original position. In order to run the
vehicle backwards, the pawl was made to act on the upper side, changing
the position of the spring which pressed upon it; then, when the engine
was started, the pawl caused the driving-wheel to turn a quarter of a
revolution in the opposite direction with every stroke of the piston.
This machine was first tried in 1770 in the presence of a distinguished
assembly, that included the Duc de Choiseul; General Gribeauval, First
Inspector-General of Artillery; the Compte de Saxe, and others.
Subsequently, other trials of it were made, with satisfactory results
generally. The heavy over-balancing weight of the engine and boiler in
front rendered it difficult to control. On one of its trips it ran into a
wall in turning a corner and was partly wrecked. Further experiments with
it were abandoned, and in 1800 it was deposited in the Conservatoire des
Arts et Metier, Paris, where it still remains.
At a later period of his life, having lost his means of support, Cugnot's
public services were considered to entitle him to a reward from the State.
Louis Fifteenth gave him a pension of six hundred livres, but the French
Revolution coming on, he was deprived even of that pittance, and he lived
in abject misery in Brussels. His carriage was then in the arsenal, and a
revolutionary committee, during the reign of terror, tried to take it out
and reduce it to scrap, but was driven off. When Napoleon came to the
throne, he restored the pension and increased it to one thousand livres.
In addition to his inventions, Cugnot wrote several works on military art
and fortification.
WILLIAM MURDOCK
Born in Bellow Mill, near Old Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, August 21,
1754. Died at Sycamore Hill, November 15, 1839.
Murdock was the son of John Murdoch, a millwright. He was modestly
educated, and brought up to his father's trade, helping to build and put
up mill machinery. A curious production of the father and son, at this
period, was a wooden horse, worked by mechanical power, on which young
Murdock traveled about the country. When he was twenty-three years of age
he entered the employment of the famous engineering firm of Boulton &
Watt, at Soho, and there remained throughout his active life.
Watt recognized in him a valuable assistant, and his services were
jealously regarded. On his part he devoted himself unreservedly to the
interests of his employers. In 1777 he was sent to Cornwall to look after
the pumps and engines set up by the firm in the mines, and for a long
period he lived at Redruth. For some five years after 1800 he was engineer
and superintendent at the Soho foundry. While living at Redruth, in 1792,
he began a series of experiments on the illuminating properties of the
gases of coal, wood, peat, and other substances, and in 1799 put up a
gas-making apparatus at Soho. In 1803 he fitted the Soho factory with a
gas-lighting system. Other inventions that are credited to him are models
for an oscillating engine and a rotary engine, a method of making steam
pipes, an apparatus for utilizing the force of compressed air, and a steam
gun.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MURDOCK]
His early training and all his surroundings naturally and inevitably
interested Murdock in the subject of steam locomotion, and before 1784 he
began to experiment on these lines. That he made definite progress is
shown in a letter that Thomas Wilson, agent in Cornwall of Boulton & Watt,
wrote to his employers in August, 1786, saying, "William Murdock desires
me to inform you that he has made a small engine of three-quarter-inch
diameter and one and one-half inch stroke, that he has applied to a small
carriage, which answers amazingly." He had made and run this model in
1784, and it is still in existence, and in the possession of the Messrs.
Richard and George Tangye, England.
This model was on the high-pressure principle, and ran on three wheels,
the single front one for steering. The vertical boiler, nearly over the
rear axle, was heated by a spirit-lamp, and the machine stood only a
little more than a foot high. The axle was cranked in the middle and
turned by a rod connected to a beam moved up and down by the piston-rod
projecting from the top of the cylinder. Yet it developed considerable
speed. It is interesting to note that the use of the crank for converting
the reciprocating motion of the steam engine into rotary was patented by
Pickard in 1780, and Murdock's was probably its first application to
self-propelled carriages.
The first experiment with this little engine was made in Murdock's house
at Redruth, when the locomotive successfully hauled a wagon round the
room, the single wheel, placed in front of the engine, fixed in such a
position as to enable it to run round a circle.
Dr. Smiles, in his work on inventors, tells an amusing story concerning
this machine. He says: "Another experiment was made out of doors, on
which occasion, small though the engine was, it fairly outran the speed of
its inventor. One night, after returning from his duties at the mine at
Redruth, Murdock went with his model locomotive to the avenue leading to
the church, about a mile from the town. The walk was narrow, straight and
level. Having lit the lamp, the water soon boiled, and off started the
engine with the inventor after it. Shortly after he heard distant shouts
of terror. It was too dark to perceive objects, but he found, on following
up the machine, that the cries had proceeded from the worthy vicar, who,
while going along the walk, had met the hissing and fiery little monster,
which he declared he took to be the Evil One in propria persona!"
But Murdock was too useful a man to Boulton & Watt to be allowed to have
free rein, and his inclination toward steam locomotion invention was
apparently curbed, though it would appear Watt thought the roads of that
time an insurmountable obstacle to the development of road vehicles, and
wanted Murdock to devote his time to mechanical matters more ripe for
success. Boulton, writing to Watt from Truro, in September, 1796, tells
how he met Murdock on his way to London to get a patent on a new model,
and how he persuaded him to turn back. This model was for a steam carriage
that was afterward shown as able to travel freely around a room with a
light load of shovel, poker and tongs upon it. His was probably the first
high-pressure steam-engine vehicle run in England. Though only a small
model, it did its proportionate work well.
Watt continued to oppose Murdock's scheme, but on one occasion suggested
that he should be allowed an advance of five hundred dollars to enable him
to prosecute his experiments, and if he succeeded within a year in making
an engine capable of drawing a post chaise, carrying two passengers and
the driver, at four miles an hour, it was suggested that he should be
taken as partner into the locomotive business, for which Boulton and Watt
were to provide the necessary capital. This proposition was never carried
out. Again, in 1786, Watt said: "I wish William could be brought to do as
we do, to mind the business in hand, and let such as Symington and Sadler
throw away their time and money in hunting shadows." Murdock continued to
speculate about steam locomotion on common roads, but never carried his
ideas further. He retired from the employment of Boulton & Watt in 1830,
and practically retired from all work at the same time.
Murdock seems to have had a very clear idea of the possibilities of steam
propulsion on the common roads. Had circumstances permitted he might well
have been expected to have solved the problem in 1796 quite as completely
as his successors did in 1835. But he was a quarter of a century ahead of
the time. Even the moderate public interest that existed later on had not
manifested itself at all in his day and the condition of the English
highways offered almost insuperable obstacles to steam vehicular travel.
Personally his lack of self-assertiveness and his feeling of dependence
upon Boulton and Watt also held him back. So he remained simply one of the
pioneer investigators pointing the way for others.
OLIVER EVANS
Born in 1755 or 1756, in Newport, Del. Died in Philadelphia, April 21,
1819.
Little has been preserved respecting the early history of Oliver Evans,
who has been aptly styled "The Watt of America." His parents were farming
people, and he had only an ordinary common-school education. At the age of
fourteen he was apprenticed to a wheelwright or wagonmaker, and continued
his meager education by studying at night time by the light that he made
by burning chips and shavings in the fireplace.
While yet an apprentice his attention was turned to the subject of
propelling land carriages without animal power. But the lack of definite
knowledge in regard to steam power compelled him to abandon his plans,
although his experiments were continued for a long time. Soon after
attaining his majority he was engaged in making card-teeth by hand, and in
connection therewith developed several labor-saving improvements. He also
invented improvements in the construction of machinery of flour mills that
effected a complete revolution in the manufacture of flour. These
improvements consisted of the elevator, the conveyor, the hopper-boy, the
drill and the descender, which various machines were applied in different
mills so as to perform mechanically every necessary movement of the grain
and meal from one part of the mill to the other, causing a saving of fully
one-half in the labor of mill attendance and manufacturing the flour
better. These improvements were not accepted by the mill owners at the
outset, and Evans spent many discouraging years before he could finally
persuade the manufacturers of the utility of his inventions. In the
end, however, he lived to see his inventions generally introduced, and he
profited largely thereby.
[Illustration: OLIVER EVANS]
In the year 1786, Evans petitioned the Legislature of Pennsylvania for the
exclusive right to use his improvements in flour mills and steam carriages
in that State, and in the year following presented a similar petition to
the Legislature of Maryland. In the former instance he was only successful
so far as to obtain the privilege of the mill improvements, his
representations concerning steam carriages being considered as savoring
too much of insanity to deserve notice. He was more fortunate in Maryland,
for, although the steam project was laughed at, yet one of his friends, a
member, very judiciously observed that the grant could injure no one, for
he did not think that any man in the world had thought of such a thing
before, and therefore he wished the encouragement might be afforded, as
there was a prospect that it would produce something useful. This kind of
argument had its effect, and Evans received all that he asked for, and
from that period considered himself bound in honor to the State of
Maryland to produce a steam carriage, as soon as his means would allow
him.
For several years succeeding the granting of his petition by the
Legislature of Maryland, Evans endeavored to obtain some person of
pecuniary resources to join with him in his plans; and for this purpose
explained his views by drafts, and otherwise, to some of the first
mechanics in the country. Although the persons addressed appeared, in
several instances, to understand them, they declined any assistance from
a fear of the expense and difficulty of their execution.
In the year 1800, or 1801, Evans, never having found anyone willing to
contribute to the expense, or even to encourage him in his efforts,
determined to construct a steam carriage at his own expense. Previous to
commencing he explained his views to Robert Patterson, Professor of
Mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania, and to an eminent English
engineer. They both declared the principles new to them, and advised the
plan as highly worthy of a fair experiment. They were the only persons who
had any confidence, or afforded encouraging advice. He also communicated
his plans to B. F. Latrobe, the scientist, who publicly pronounced them as
chimerical, and attempted to demonstrate the absurdity of Evans'
principles in his report to the Philosophical Society of Pennsylvania on
steam engines. In this he also endeavored to show the impossibility of
making steamboats useful.
Evans commenced and had made considerable progress in the construction of
a steam carriage, when the idea occurred to him that as his steam engine
was altogether different in form, as well as in principle, from any other
in use, a patent could be obtained for it, and then applied to mills more
profitably than to carriages. The steam carriage was accordingly laid
aside for a season of more leisure, and the construction of a small engine
was commenced, with a cylinder six inches in diameter and a piston of
eighteen inches stroke, for a mill to grind plaster of paris. The expense
of its construction far exceeded Evans' calculation, and before the
engine was finished he found it cost him all he was worth. He had then to
begin the world anew, at the age of forty-eight, with a large family to
support, and that, too, with a knowledge that if the trial failed his
credit would be entirely ruined, and his prospects for the remainder of
life dark and gloomy. But fortune favored him, and his success was
complete.