Shocking Developments
The first electric-powered road vehicle is believed to have been built
in Scotland about 1839 by Robert Anderson, but it, along with others within
the next several years, were generally unsuccessful. The steamer had to
wait for a boiler to build up pressure and was very noisy besides. The
concept of an electrical engine that could start immediately and run quietly
was very attractive at that time. There were disadvantages, however. Electric
batteries were heavy, bulky, unreliable, and needed recharging after a
short run. In 1880, there was a general improvement in the development
of longer-lasting batteries. There still existed, however, excessive weight
and bulk of the batteries and a need for frequent rechargings, although
electric cabs appeared on the streets of London in the late 1800s.
Steamers and electric vehicles gained only restricted acceptance on
the continent as well. In France, the electric had a shining, brief hour
of public acclaim when Camille Jenatzy, driving a Jeantaud electric, pushed
the cigar-shaped vehicle to a record of sixty miles per hour on April 29,
1899. The high-speed run, however, burned out the specially fabricated
batteries and the interest in electrics died almost as soon as the cheers
of the attending public.
It was in America that steamers and electric cars gained their most
sustained measure of success. Eventually twenty different U.S. car companies
would produce electrics; and in the peak of popularity, 1912, nearly 35,000
were operating on American roads. But even America could not shake the
limitations of the bulky batteries and the short ranges between recharging.
Steamers were actually more popular. More than 100 American plants were
making steamers, the most famous of which were the Stanley brothers factory
in Newton, Massachusetts. The "Stanley Steamer" had the affectionate nickname,
"The Flying Teapot," and with good reason. In 1906, a Stanley Steamer was
clocked at 127.6 miles per hour on the sands of Ormond Beach, Florida.
In spite of this, the steamers, along with the electrics, were only living
on borrowed time. Experiments were being made on an automobile powered
by a gasoline-fueled, internal-combustion engine, and the steamers and
electrics would not survive the impact of the coming collision.
Internal-combustion automobiles did not just burst forth on the scene
all of a sudden to crowd the electrics and steamers off the road. The theories
of internal-combustion engines had been on the way ever since 1860, when
Etienne Lenoir applied to the authorities in Paris for a patent on his
invention, an internal-combustion engine powered by coal gas. Two years
later, Lenoir hooked his engine to a carriage, and, although it was crude,
it worked. It worked so poorly and so slowly (about one mile an hour),
however, that he became discouraged and abandoned his efforts.
In 1864, a resourceful Austrian in Vienna, Siegfried Marcus, built a
one-cylinder engine that incorporated a crude carburetor and a magneto
arrangement to create successive small explosions that applied alternating
pressure against the piston within the cylinder. Bolting his engine to
a cart, Siegfried geared the piston to the rear wheels, and while a strong
assistant lifted the rear of the cart off the ground, Siegfried started
the engine. The wheels began to turn and continued to turn with each successive
"pop." Marcus signaled the assistant to lower the cart and watched it burp
along for about 500 feet before it ran out of fuel. Ten years later, he
built the new, improved version of his motorcar, and then, mysteriously
washed his hands of the entire thing, saying it was a waste of time. (The
second model, which is preserved in an Austrian museum, was refurbished
and taken for a test run in Vienna in 1950. It reached a top speed of ten
miles per hour on level ground.)
Although Lenoir and Marcus did not have the grit and determination to
pursue their enterprises, they made some valuable contributions to the
theory of internal-combustion engines. It would be overstating the case
to credit them with the creation of the internal-combustion automobile,
however.
