Have you ever been trapped in the middle seat halfway through a long road trip and wondered who actually invented cars in the first place?
So Let's find out on this article.
No one person invented the
car. But there is one man who gets special credit for helping to transform transportation from horse drawn
carriages to full on automobiles.
Karl Benz, the German inventor
of a three wheeled motorcar called the Motorwagen, in 1886. Benz built three
prototypes of his gas powered carriage over the next two years before deciding it
was time to drum up some interest in his new invention. Karl Benz's wife and
business partner Bertha, took one of the cars early in the morning and drove it
66 miles to her mother's house. The clunky carb puttered along at about 10
miles per hour and was so new that Bertha had to improvise multiple repairs
along the way, but the trip was a success.
Bertha got to her destination
and learned how to improve the design with the repairs she made. It also
showcased the car to a skeptical public, who still saw cars as impractical at
the time. So while Karl Benz is often credited with inventing the very first
car. His was far from the first self propelled vehicle over 500 years ago,
Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of a mechanized cart that could move on its
own.
In the more recent past, a
French inventor named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, built a steam powered car like
contraption around 1769. His invention could move about the same speed as a
person walking and had to stop every 20 minutes. Over the next several decades,
other inventors worked diligently on designs for an internal combustion engine
that could be powered by gasoline.
By 1895, nine years after Karl
Benz debuted his Motorwagen, a French inventor named Rudolph Diesel designed
the diesel engine, the first fully functioning internal combustion engine to
hit the market.
Now that there was a standard
engine, other companies developed and sold their own cars and before long, a
whole new industry was born. Over the years, cars have changed quite a bit. Affordable
electric cars hit the market in the early 2000s. And self driving cars appear
to be right around the corner.
So who invented cars? Well no
one person, the important part is that people keep reinventing them.