Invention of the Automobile

Wheeling in mobility

Everything began with the invention of the wheel, an achievement that is shrouded in the darkness of history. The first known illustration of a vehicle with wheels is dated to the year 3000 BC. The invention of the wheel ushered in the development of mobility. Ever more refined mechanical systems and ever more ingenious features for carts and carriages made transportation and travel easier. The inventions of Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach finally ushered in the automotive age.

One idea — how many parents?

Who invented the automobile? Assumptions concerning the answer to this question differ widely throughout the world. Most Americans believe that Henry Ford invented the car. In England, many people will tell you that the car was invented by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. The widely held French view is that it was Count de Dion and Georges Bouton who invented the car. In Austria, even highly respected historians believed for a long time that the Viennese Siegfried Marcus (1831-1890) built the first car in 1865 when he fitted a stationary engine to a cart and took it for a 200 meter test run

He went on to build a second vehicle with a four-stroke engine in 1888/89. This was the source of much confusion for decades because it was incorrectly identified as having been built in 1877 and was therefore presented as the world's first automobile.

100 years before Marcus, France's Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725-1804) designed and built a vehicle which was later declared to be the first automobile in the world. It was a monstrous steam-powered affair which is said to have caused a road accident during a test run in 1769. In 1801 it was taken to the Conservatoire des Arts et M鴩ers in Paris without having made any further impact on the history of the automobile.

Switzerland's Isaac de Rivaz (1752-1829) worked on gas engines from 1770 and was the first person to equip a stationary gas engine with electric ignition. In 1813 de Rivaz fitted an engine of this type to a vehicle and conducted test runs in the area around Vevey on Lake Geneva.

In 1883, the French industrialist Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville (1856-1901) installed a gas engine in a three-wheeled vehicle. The experiment ended when the gas container exploded. The frame of a second vehicle with a liquid fuel engine broke during its first trials. Delamare-Deboutteville gave up.

In the USA, George Selden (1846-1922) claimed that he was the inventor of the automobile. This son of a patent attorney had filed a patent application for a motor vehicle in 1879. He was granted the patent in 1895 without ever having built an automobile. Selden bombarded American car manufacturers with demands for license fees.

It was not until 1911, following protracted litigation, that Henry Ford succeeded in overturning the mysterious Selden patent.

From a historical perspective, all of these would-be "world's first automobiles" have one thing in common: the influence which they exerted on the development of automotive transport was extremely short-lived because none of them had the necessary qualities to go down in history as a real breakthrough.

In 1886, Karl Benz and the team of Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach initiated general motorization with their inventions. These gave rise to several hundred different types of vehicle and design concepts which continue to be applied anywhere in the world to this day. They continue to form the basis for the motorization of transport and, in particular, for the unprecedented tradition of the Mercedes-Benz brand.