Combustion

Part 4 - de Dion-Bouton

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first self-propelled road vehicle in 1769. It was a three-wheeled tractor for the French army with a top speed of about 2.5 miles per hour.

In 1789, American Oliver Evans received the first US patent for a steam-powered land vehicle.

In 1801, in Britain, Richard Trevithick built a steam powered road carriage although it was later regarded as the first tramway or railway locomotive.

A Swiss military engineer, François Isaac de Rivaz, built the first vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine in 1807.

On carts and carriages, wheels rotated independently on fixed axles but, when they were driven, wheels were attached to rotating axles and it was necessary that the wheels rotate at different speeds when the vehicle was turning.  This problem was solved, in 1827, (for steam-driven vehicles) by a French clockmaker, Onésiphore Pecqueur, and afterwards the automobile differential gear was a standard part of every vehicle with two or more driving wheels.

In 1863, Belgian Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir drove his 'Hippomobile' a distance of eleven miles in less than three hours. It used a one cylinder, internal combustion engine fuelled with hydrogen and despite being inefficient, noisy, liable to overheat and capable of only 3 km/h, 143 were sold in Paris by 1865.

In 1883, the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton, and Charles Trépardoux founded the French company De Dion-Bouton, for a time, the world's largest automobile manufacturer. Initially, they built steam cars, and in 1894, one of these averaged 18.7 km/h (11.6 mph) in the 126 km Paris–Rouen race but was disqualified for needing both a driver and a stoker for the coal fired boiler.

De Dion-Bouton made a series of two-cylinder tricars from 1885 (which from 1892 used Michelin pneumatic tires) and also steam buses and trucks until, in 1904, they started to make vehicles with internal combustion engines.

In 1885, Karl Benz built the first three wheeled automobile, powered by his two stroke gasoline engine, and Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach converted a stagecoach into the first four-wheeled vehicle to reach 16 kilometres per hour (10 mph) driven by a 1.1 hp engine.

Meanwhile, in 1886, in Michigan, Henry Ford built his first automobile.

Although boat engines became Daimler's main product, the engines were also used to power street-cars and trolleys and even a balloon which Daimler successfully flew over Seelberg in August 1888. That year, Bertha Benz drove more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, to publicize her husband's cars.

In 1889, Daimler-Maybach built their first automobile, that was not a modified horse-drawn carriage. The Stahlradwagen (steel wheel car) used a water cooled, two cylinder, four stroke engine in a V-configuration (to reduce vibration), and a four speed gear box.

In 1890, they formed Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, and developed a high-speed, inline, four cylinder engine with camshaft operated valves, a new spray carburettor and an improved belt drive. In 1895 a car fitted with this engine won the Paris to Rouen automobile race.

In 1891 Édouard and André Michelin patented a removable pneumatic bicycle tire which was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long distance bicycle race, the 1891 Paris–Brest–Paris.

But early cars were slow. Gear wheels had been used for centuries in watermills and in clocks but the small engines were connected through fixed gearing to the drive wheels, often by flat leather belts that were slid off the belt drum to disconnect the drive (so the engine didn't stall if the car stopped). A belt drive also acted as a crude clutch that would slip as the car started to move. But the demand for higher speeds required a range of gears that could be changed as the speed increased.

The small engines were started by hand cranking, using a recoil starter or spinning a flywheel by hand, all of which could kick back and cause serious injuries but the problem was not solved until 1911 when Charles F. Kettering at Delco developed a practical electrical self-starter.

In 1891, Panhard and Levassor in France, invented a transmission, with gears that slid along shafts to change gear ratios, and this system was adopted by most car makers and remained the standard until Cadillac introduced synchromesh in 1928.

Panhard was making Daimler's engines, under licence, for the new Système Panhard, a vehicle plan with four wheels, a front-mounted engine, front wheel steering and rear wheel drive. This  was eventually adopted by almost all automobile makers as the standard plan for the next 80 years.

In 1894, Alfred Vacheron replaced the tiller with a steering wheel on his Panhard 4 hp car to compete in the Paris–Rouen race and, from 1898, all Panhard et Levassor cars were equipped with steering wheels.

Charles Rolls, a London car dealer, imported a 6 hp Panhard from France in 1898. It was the first car in Britain fitted with a steering wheel. 

In 1904 Henry Royce made his first car, a two-cylinder Royce 10 and Charles Rolls agreed sell all the cars Royce could make. The first car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904 and Rolls-Royce Limited was formed on 15 March 1906.