by Vaclav Smil
Car races played an important role both in bringing the new machines to widespread public attention and in improving their design and performance. The first one was organized by Le Petit Journal in 1894 between Paris and Rouen (126 km), and the very next race in 1895 was ambitiously extended to a return trip between Paris and Bordeaux, a distance of nearly 1,200 km that the winning vehicle completed with average speed of 24 km/h (Flower and Jones 1981). In 1896 the Paris-Marseille-Paris race, beset by heavy rains, covered more than 1,600 km: Emile Levassor was among many injured drivers, and his injuries caused his death a few months later. The first decade of the 20th century saw more intercity races beginning with the Thousand Miles Trial in the United Kingdom in 1900, Paris-Berlin race in 1901, and Paris-Madrid race in 1903. The latter ended prematurely in Bordeaux after many accidents and 10 fatalities. Louis Renault, who won the first leg of the race in the light car category (figure 3.18), learned of the death of his brother Marcel only after arrival at Bordeaux.
But soon even longer races were held, such as the first long-distance rally from Paris to Constantinople in 1905, and, audaciously, the 14,000 km Beijing-Paris run in 1907 when cars often had to be towed or even carried over rough, roadless terrain. This was followed by inauguration of the world’s two most famous speedways at Le Mans in 1906 and Indianapolis in 1909 (Boddy 1977; Flower and Jones 1981). Today’s variety of car races (from international to local, from monster drag car to dune buggy competitions) and the magnitude of annual spectator pilgrimages, particularly to the Formula 1 contests, demonstrate how enormously the interest in speed and performance has grown.
FIGURE 3.18. Louis Renault winning the first leg of the ill-fated Paris-Madrid race in May 1903. Reproduced from the cover of The Illustrated London News, May 30, 1903.
The international character of the emerging car industry was seen in both licensing agreements and sales. French winners of car races had German motors in their vehicles, DMG licenses launched the car-making industry in the United Kingdom (1893), and exports were important for most of Europe’s pioneering car producers as well as Ford’s company. For example, in 1900 when Benz & Cie. was still the world’s largest automaker, it sold 341 out of the total of 603 vehicles abroad. As already noted, there were only some 8,000 cars in the United States in 1900, and fewer than 2,400 in France, the country that pioneered modern car design during the 1890s. In 1905, Germany and France each had fewer than 20,000 passenger vehicles, United Kingdom’s total was about 30,000, and the U.S. registrations reached 77,000.
As is so often the case in early stages of a new industry, too many companies competed in the market. By 1899 there were more than 600 car manufacturers in France; nearly 500 car companies were launched in the United States before 1908, and about 250 of them were still in operation by the time Ford began selling his Model T (Byrn 1900; Flink 1988). Post-WWI consolidation reduced these numbers to fewer than 20 major companies, and by the end of the 20th century about 70% of all passenger cars made in North America were assembled by just three auto makers, General Motors, Ford, and Honda (Ward’s Communications 2000).
Americans were late starters compared to Germans and the French. Although there were at least half a dozen experimental gasoline cars built in the United States between 1891 and 1893, the first machine that attracted public attention was designed by Charles and Frank Duryea in Springfield, Massachusetts. The two bicycle mechanics decided to build it after reading about Benz’s latest vehicle in Scientific American in 1889. Their machine was ready in 1893; they won America’s first (88 km) car race held in Chicago in November 1895 (beating a Benz, the only other car that finished the course) and sold the first car in February 1896. Other early automakers included Elwood Haynes and Alexander Winton. By the century’s end, there were at least 30 American car makers, and they produced 2,500 vehicles in 1899 and just more than 4,000 in 1900 (Flink 1975).
All but one of the great enduring names in the American car industry appeared before 1905, with production conspicuously concentrated in Michigan (May 1975; Kennedy 1941). Ransom Olds (1864–1950), financed by S. L. Smith, began making his Oldsmobiles, which were nothing but buggies with an engine under the seat, in 1899. In 1901 Olds introduced America’s first serially produced car, Curved Dash, with a single-cylinder 5.2 kW engine (May 1977). The Cadillac Automobile Co. began selling its vehicles in 1903, the same year when David D. Buick (1854–1929) sold his first car. In 1908 all of these brands became divisions of General Motors under William Durant (1861— 1947). Only Walter Chrysler (1875–1940), who bought his first automobile in 1908 and became a Buick manager in 1912, did not begin making his cars before WWI.
Once the gasoline-powered engine prevailed, the speed of the post-1905 American automobilization was unparalleled. By 1913 Americans could choose among cars of more than 120 manufacturers, ranging from Ford’s cheapest Model T (at $525 it was not the cheapest car available, as Metz and Raymond were selling inferior vehicles for, respectively, $395 and $445) to “America’s Foremost Car,” the Winton Six, whose “freedom-from-faults” had made it the leader with “up-to-the-minute in everything that makes a high-grade car worth having.” France had the largest motor vehicle industry until 1904, when its output of nearly 17,000 cars was surpassed by the U.S. production of just over 22,000 vehicles (Kennedy 1941; Flink 1988). Then the gap widened rapidly: by 1908 U.S. output reached 60,000, and by 1913 it approached half a million (USBC 1975).
At that time U.S. car production was actually a quasi-monopolistic endeavor, a licensed enterprise with individual companies belonging to the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) and paying a fee for every vehicle produced. This peculiar situation arose from an even more peculiar patent application. George B. Selden, a Rochester patent lawyer, filed the claim on May 8, 1879, but the patent was not issued until 16 years later, on November 5, 1895 (U.S. Patent 549,160), as Selden kept filing amendments and thus deliberately deferring the start of the 17-year protection period (Selden 1895; Kennedy 1941). By that time its design, shown in derisory drawings of an awkward looking carriage, was left far behind by the intervening engineering advances. Selden never built any vehicle, and the early automotive pioneers were not aware of the pending patent’s existence until Albert A. Pope of the Electric Vehicle Co. bought the rights to Selden’s patent in November 1899. He promptly filed and won an infringement suit against the Winton Co. (Flink 1975).
As the wording of Selden’s claim was so broad—applying to any vehicle with “a liquid hydrocarbon gas-engine of the compression type comprising one or more cylinders” (Selden 1895:3)—a group of 32 automakers formed ALAM in 1903 and agreed to pay 1.25% of the retail value of their cars to the Electric Vehicle Co. (Kennedy 1941). Producers soon succeeded in reducing the rate, but ALAM continued legal fight against those manufacturers that refused to pay the fees as a means of regulating competition and keeping prices high. Henry Ford’s new company was sued in October 1903 and, after a fight resembling the contested invention of incandescent lights, lost the case completely in 1909.
This put the Ford Co. in a very precarious position just as it was entering the mass-production stage with the Model T. Ford appealed, and maintained in his advertisements that the Selden patent does not cover a practical machine and that his company is the true pioneer of the gasoline automobile. The dubious patent was finally invalidated in January 1911, the year when other monopolies were outlawed with the antitrust verdicts that dissolved the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey and the American Tobacco Co. (Kennedy 1941). And so the passenger car in America—though still adventuresome to drive, not particularly comfortable, and still rather expensive—was on the verge of becoming a mass property. After being first a marginal mechanical curiosity and then a pastime of some rich eccentrics, the car began to cast a widening spell.
Soon even the author of what is now seen as one of the great classics of English children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows, wrote admiringly of it. As Kenneth Grahame’s animal friends, trav
eling in a horse-drawn gypsy, were swept into a deep ditch by a rapidly passing magnificent car, the Toad did not complain. Instead, they
found him in a sort of a trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the dusty wake of their destroyer… “Glorious, stirring sight!” murmured Toad, never offering to move. “The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here to-day—in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss!” (Grahame 1908:40–41)
Toad’s monologue (“O what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What dust-clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way!”) prefigured the infatuation of hundreds of millions of drivers and passengers that followed during the 20th century. That some modernistic poets became early car enthusiasts is far less surprising. To give just one, and almost deliriously, overwrought example, William E. Henley (1849–1903), one of young Kipling’s mentors, thought in his Song of Speed (written in 1903) that a Mercedes touring car was nothing less than a divine gift (Henley 1919:221):
Thus has he slackened
His grasp, and this Thing,
This marvellous Mercédes,
This triumphing contrivance,
Comes to make other
Man’s life than she found it:
The Earth for her tyres
As the Sea for his keels.
Apparently little has changed since 1903, as many drivers still think of a Mercedes as a “triumphing contrivance,” and some are even willing to pay for its latest embodiment—the overhyped (“well-pedigreed contender…ultra smooth ride”) Maybach 62 Large Sedan—no less than $350,000 (yes, that was the starting price in 2003). Besides the gargantuan engine and electrohydraulic brakes this gives them also “private jet levels of luxury,” with Grand Nappa leather, fully reclining airplane-style rear seats (“actively ventilated”), TV and DVD, a refrigerator and compartments for champagne flutes, choice of various woods for the inside finish, and (what a bargain!) a sunroof, two-tone paint, and a refrigerator as no-cost options.
Expanding Applications
Not surprisingly, it did not take long for European and American engineers to begin mounting new gasoline engines on chassis other than flimsy buggies or sedate carriages. Some of these applications, including small delivery vehicles and taxicabs, did not call for any special engines or body designs, but many other uses required more powerful engines and sturdier bodies. Heavier designs began appearing during the late 1890s, and by 1913 just about every conceivable type of a heavy-duty commercial vehicle that is now in service was present in forms ranging from embryonic to fairly accomplished. A century later we rely on a great variety of internal combustion engines whose ratings span five orders of magnitude. The smallest and lightest engines (<1 kW) are installed in lawnmowers, outboard motors, and ultralight airplanes. Most passenger cars do not have engines more powerful than 100 kW, off-road machines can rate above 500 kW, airplane engines more than 1 MW, and the largest marine engines and stationary machines for electricity generation can surpass 20 MW.
After 1903 another process began unfolding in parallel with the development of specialized engines for buses, trucks, off-road vehicles, locomotives, and ships: increasingly more sophisticated efforts to use new engines in flight, to become finally airborne with a machine heavier than air. A different type of engine was needed to meet this challenge, a light and powerful one with very low mass/power ratio. As is so well known, Wright brothers achieved that goal on December 17, 1903, when their airplane had briefly lifted above the dunes at North Carolina’s Kitty Hawk by an engine that, like its wooden body, they built themselves (Wright 1953). The new aeroengines had seen an even faster rate of improvement during after 1905 than did the automotive ones. These impressive early advances put in place all the key features and basic design trends that dominated the world of flight until the gas turbines (jet engines) took over as the principal prime movers in both military and commercial planes about half a century later.
But before turning to these machines I should mention small engines that are used wherever low weight, small size, and low cost operation are needed. Their development began during the late 1870s with Dugald Clerk’s (1854–1932) two-stroke gas-fueled compression engine designed in 1879 and Benz’s first two-stroke gasoline-fueled machines. In North American homes, they can be found in more than 50 million lawn mowers, grass trimmers, and snow and leaf blowers, in many millions of chain saws, in outboard engines for motorboats, and in motorcycles. But in 2002 Honda, the world’s leading maker of motorcycles, announced plans to use only four-stroke engines because they produce fewer emissions and consume less fuel than do two-stroke models (Honda 2002). Small two-stroke engines have another disadvantage: most of them have only one cylinder, which means that there is only one power stroke per revolution, and the resulting widely spaced torque pulses cause much more perceptible vibrations than do multicylinder engines.
Heavy-Duty Engines
After 1905 it was obvious that steam-powered wagons, trucks, and tractors faced an inevitable extinction as more powerful internal combustion engines were being installed in a widening variety of commercial vehicles. Benz & Cie. built the world’s first gasoline-powered bus able to carry just eight passengers in 1895. London got its first famous red double-deckers, built on a chassis virtually identical with that of a 3-t truck, in 1904, and by 1908 there were more than 1,000 of them in service. They displaced some 25,000 horses and 2,200 horse-drawn omnibuses, and Smith (1911) concluded that their higher speed had an effect of more than doubling the width of city’s main thoroughfares. Horse-drawn omnibuses disappeared from London by 1911; Paris saw the last one in January 1913. As much as we complain about congestion caused by motor vehicles, the equivalent amount of traffic powered by horses would be at least twice or three times more frustrating (see figure 1.7).
DMG built its first gasoline-powered truck, a 3-kW vehicle with two forward and one reverse speed, in 1896; it could carry up to 5 t at speeds not surpassing 12 km/h. In the United States Alexander Winton began manufacturing his first delivery wagons, powered by a single-cylinder, 4.5-kW engine, two years later. Two-ton and 3-t trucks were the first common sizes, with smaller machines popular for city and suburban delivery (figure 3.19). Fire engines were the most frequently encountered special truck applications before WWI (Smith 1911), and heavier, 5-t trucks that could haul gross trailer loads of up to 40 t became standard in the United States for long-distance transport before WWI (Anonymous 1913b). The preferred U.S. practice that emerged before WWI is still with us. The semi-trailer is made up of the tractor unit (now normally with two-wheel steer axle and two rear drive axles with a pair of double wheels on each side) that carries a turntable on which is mounted the forward end of the trailer (initially just a two-wheeled, and now typically eight-wheeled), hence named a standard 18-wheeler.
By 1913 the area served daily by a truck was more than six times larger than the one served by horse-drawn wagons, and total work nearly was four times greater, with less than 15% of space required for garaging as opposed to stabling, and all that at an overall cost of motorized hauling that was only about two-fifths of the expense for animal draft (Perry 1913). Massive deployment of trucks began only with the U.S. involvement in WWI: by 1918 the country’s annual truck production was nearly 230,000 units, more than nine times the 1914 total (Basalla 1988). Postwar production continued at a high rate, but truck capacities remained relatively low until after WWII, and eventually they have reached maximum gross weights of as much as 58 t (truck tractor and two trailing units). But most U.S. states limit the 18-wheelers (with engines of about 250 kW) used in highway transport to about 36 t. Where these restrictions do not apply, trucks have grown much bigger: a fully loaded Caterpillar 797B, the world’s largest truck powered by a 2.65-MW engine and used in surface mining, weighs 635 t (Caterpillar 2003).
FIGURE 3.19. A 1913 advertisement for a small (four-cylinder) utility truck (maxim
um carrying capacity of 0.9 t) made by the Gramm Motor Truck Co. This “most practical and serviceable truck of its size ever built” was designed for city and suburban delivery. Reproduced from Scientific American, January 18, 1913.
Use of internal combustion engines in field machinery began almost as soon as the first small-scale sales of passenger cars (Dieffenbach and Gray 1960). The first, and excessively heavy, gasoline-powered tractor was built by John Froehlich in Iowa in 1892 and sold to Langford in South Dakota, where it was used just in threshing for a few months. Froelich formed the Waterloo Gasoline Tractor Engine Co., which was later acquired by the John Deere Plow Co., whose successor remains a leader in producing tractors and other self-propelled agricultural machinery. By 1907 there were no more than 600 agricultural tractors in the United States, and most of these early models resembled more the massive steam-powered machine rather than today’s tractors: their mass/power ratios were between 450 and 500 g/W, compared to just 70–100 g/W for modern machines. Only Henry Ford experimented with very light (his 1907 test model weighed less than 700 kg) and small machines.
By 1912 the number of tractor makers rose above 50, the first international trials had taken place (Ellis 1912), and smaller, more practical, and more affordable machines began to appear (Williams 1982). Given the climate and terrain of California’s Central Valley, it is not surprising that this region pioneered the widespread use of gasoline-fueled tractors and combines (Olmstead and Rhode 1988). By 1912 the United States had some 13,000 working tractors, and 80 companies produced more than 20,000 new machines in 1913 as the massive replacement of draft animals by internal combustion engines was finally underway (Rose 1913). But it was only during the 1920s when the power of agricultural machinery surpassed that of draft animals (see figure 3.2).
