HALL BIOGRAPHIES

While Richard Trevithick was busy developing the steam engine in the UK, Oliver Evans was doing the same in the USA, although it took him 18 years to build it into a vehicle. Evan’s steam-powered machine was the accidental by-product of necessity when he was commissioned to make a steam dredging machine. To get it to the river from his workshop – a distance of some 1.5 miles – he attached stout-wheeled undercarriage and jury-rigged a belt and pulley system to transfer the power to the wheels. He’d inadvertently created a rudimentary on-road vehicle.

In 1860 a patent was filed by Etienne Lenoir for a commercially practicable gas engine. While technology made the design more efficient quite soon after its inception, it was both simple and reliable and remained in production until 1890. Lenoir’s patent describes how the engine could be independent from the fuel supply. He constructed a very basic ‘car’ in 1863, but it was slow, heavy and underpowered.

Five people were killed when the Glasgow to Paisley steam carriage overturned in 1834. Technically, a case of manslaughter could have been brought against the Turnpike Trustees who heaped loose stones up to 45cm deep across the road in a bid to stop the service. This was the second fatal accident, though: A stoker on a steam omnibus fastened the safety valve of the boiler shut in 1832 causing it to explode, killing him.

In 1840 Francis Hill’s large steam coach covered a distance of 128 miles from London to Hastings and back in one day without encountering the slightest mechanical trouble. Due to the inherent unreliability of cars right through to the early 1900s, this distance wasn’t surpassed until more than 40 years later, standing as the record for the furthest distance covered by a mechanical vehicle.

Long journeys and potential death became increasingly available to the general public in the late 1880s. Moto-Cycle Co. of Philadelphia offered the first catalogue in 1886 from which customers could order a steam tricycle or similar vehicle to a set design. None were sold, but it set a precedent.

The method of creating power in steam engines – boiling water – created the need to reduce dampness in enclosed spaces. While this wasn’t a factor in the operation of automobiles, it was in factories. The market need lead to the invention of the non-condensing steam engines.

The auto industry really kicked off with the Model T Ford. The assembly line meant a car could be made extremely cheaply and quickly. Ford produced more than 15 million of that model, a number which wasn’t exceeded until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

The first British company formed to produce petrol-powered motor cars was the Daimler Co. Wheeling and dealing by a chap called Lawson almost saw a monopoly created – a dubious one at that! Lawson acquired the German Daimler licenses and was to manufacture to those designs, but instead copied Panhard-Levassor designs, but using Daimler-type engines (Panhard-Levassor licensed their engines from Daimler).

Reading reviews about marques such as classic Hillmans will expand your knowledge of how the automobile developed.