Page 7 - the story of motoring

The Invcrt~rs

Like most inventions, many people were working on
the same idea at the same time, but one or two people
are outstanding for their achievements. It was Benz
and Daimler who first made the motor car possible.
Karl Benz lived in the German town of Mannheim.
His great ambition was to make a vehicle that would
be powered along by an engine, without the use of
horses or effort by the,driver. Benz used benzine
(later called petrol] as fuel. Benzine was commonly
used for cleaning clothes in those days. During the
1880s Benz experimented with this fuel in an inter-
nal combustion engine. By 1885 he had built a tri-
cycle car fitted with the new petrol engine. This
is considered to be the first car. After many prob-
lems had been solved, the Benz car worked remarkably:
well. When the public saw the car being drivenalong --
without horses they were amazed. Some thought itwas
wonderful, but some thought it was a machine made by Karl Benz
the Devil.
Gcttlict: Daimler was another German engineer but he did not know about the work
of Benz. Daimler's great ambition was to make a reliable petrol engine. The 4
stroke internal combustion engine had already been developed by Etienne Lenoir
(18591 and Nickolaus Otto (18671 but it did not work very well. They had used gas
as a fuel. Daimler invented a petrol engine that
did work very well, (it was a better engine than
made by Benzl. Daimler fitted his engine onto a
wooden bicycle in 1885 and so produced the first
motorbike. Unfortunately the engine was toonear
the saddle and on the first ride, the saddle
.caught fire. Daimler saw no future in the motor-
cycle, so he turned to making cars. In 1886 he
fitted his petrol engine onto a horse drawn car-
riage, less the horses.
Daimler did not intend to invent a new trans-
port for the future, a car, like Benz, but wasonly
interested in showing the many uses of his engine.
The real importance of Benz and Daimler was their invention
of small, relatively powerful engines that could power a
light vehicle. This was something really new. Soon otheP
engineers used Benz and Daimler's ideas. Now the problem
had been solved, other men improved the performance of the
engine and the design of the car. Most of this development
took place in France, which soon became the leading motoring
nati6n.

A French
Panhard 189

Gottlieb Daimler