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.
"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.
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 andother 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.
AN EARLY AUTOMOBILE
AN EARLY AUTOMOBILE
AN EARLY AUTOMOBILE
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.
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 movingalong 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."