Development of the horseless carriage has been a gradual affair. Country after country built and experimented, each one improving on his neighbor’s achievements.

Over in France, for instance, the year Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in 1769, a French soldier, Captain Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, terrified the peasants of his native land by rattling down the highway in a tractor he had built for the artillery.

By 1830 England, parent country of the steam engine, startled the world with a steam carriage which could take steep hills in its stride and still make ten miles an hour carrying fourteen passengers. To the people living beside the quiet English country lanes traveled by these monsters, progress brought anything but delight. Horses shied and children ran, and stage coach companies fought the competition. For safety’s sake a law was passed making it illegal to drive a steam carriage unless it was preceded by a man carrying a red flag by day or a lantern by night. That stopped the development of horseless carriages dead in their tracks in England for many a long year.

One big drawback to the steam engine was that power had to be developed by heating water separately in a tank. Inventors overcame this by working out a marvel of ingenuity called the internal combustion engine, in which vaporized gasoline or atmospheric gas could be ignited in a cylinder. They were not concerned with horseless carriages; all they cared about was perfecting an engine. Not until 1886 did any connection between this new motor and transportation take shape, when Gottlieb Daimler installed a one-cylinder motor and drove out in a horseless carriage. Also in Germany, Charles Benz came out with a motorized tricycle about that time.

At that point a Frenchman took over. Lavassor developed a special vehicle built to take the shock of a running motor. By 1892, as a result of his progress it might be said that the modern automobile was born.

Along with the gasoline buggy came electric and steam cars. The electric was a gentle contrivance whose steering gear responded easily to the gloved hand of the lady at the tiller. A good story about a lady driving one of these plushy vehicles in New York is told in Edward R. Hewitt’s book, Those Were The Days, published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc. It concerns Mrs. F., who "bought an open electric car, which looked magnificent. The demonstrator showed her how to run it. The lever which turned on the power was at the driver’s side. All you had to do was to push the lever forward to go forward, back to go backward, and upright to stop. This was considered simplicity itself, but the car’s makers did not know Mrs. F.

"The first time she took the car out alone she started toward Third Avenue. Just as she got under way, a big black man crossed the street in front of the car. Mrs. F. wanted to slow down, but she pushed the lever further forward, so the car kept going. It hit the man and knocked him down. She pulled the lever back – too far back – and the car slowly reversed and ran over the man again. This got Mrs. F. really rattled. She moved the lever forward again – too far forward – and ran over the man a third time. Fortunately the car was not very heavy and the man was not hurt much. Before Mrs. F. had time to move the lever again, he got up and yelled, ‘Fore God, Ma’am, you sure is going to run over me!’ Then he disappeared round the corner at high speed. Mrs. F. managed to stop the car and left it right there. That was the last ride the ever had in it."

Ideas came thick and fast once the trend was established. Around the turn of the century the United States saw the development of a host of mechanical inventions, but it was slow in building roads. It has been said that if all the hard-surfaced roads in the United States as late as 1900 had been laid end to end they would not have reached from New York to Boston.

Americans still slogged along through mud, sand and ruts. Perhaps this was one of the main reasons for the slow progress of automobile development.

By 1894 there were just four cars in the United States. One year later American inventors went to work in earnest on the problem of mechanical propulsion, Still the public failed to show any great interest. High initial cost of the car and its upkeep, as well as bad road conditions, put automobiles beyond the reach of the average man.

Strangely enough, the needed stimulus came from Europe, just as the car had come in the first place. A great race took place in 1895 from Paris to Bordeaux; it was described as "such a phenomenal performance that all Christendom paused for a moment to fasten its eyes upon the flying automobiles. 650 miles in 48 hours and 15 minutes! Then the American people seemed to awake with a start to the importance of the motor vehicle."

The automobile business was a racing business in the United States for a decade or more, and many of the racing drivers were to become dominant figures in the industry. Following close on the heels of the Paris to Bordeaux race came America’s first road race, on Thanksgiving Day 1895 – 52 miles from Jackson Park, Chicago, to Evanston. There were six entries, but only two finished, due to heavy snow and slush over the course. Contestants followed the example of some genius who had discovered that the way to keep tires from skidding on a slippery surface was to wrap them around with coarse rope. The man who won was Charles Duryea (the nation’s first automobile builder). He won the race in 10 hours, 48 minutes.

"A Horseless Carriage Contest" in New York on Decoration Day, 1896, with $3,000 offered for best horseless carriages, was announced by the Cosmopolitan Magazine. The course was 16_ miles long (up Broadway from City Hall Square to Kings Bridge over the Harlem River) and the winner made the trip in the astounding time of 1 hour, 5 minutes.

One of the judges of that race, Chauncey Depew, was urged by his nephew some time later to invest $5,000 in the business of an obscure mechanic named Henry Ford, but he told the boy not to be foolish.

Most people shared Depew’s misgivings about these new-fangled cars; many were in deadly fear of them and hostile to their development. David L. Cohn’s highly entertaining book, Combustion on Wheels, published by Houghton Muffin Company of Boston, describes how they considered the motorist "merely a varmint more pestiferous than skunks, thicken-killing weasels, or holders of the mortgage."

Farmers were up in arms because these new contraptions frightened their horses. All would have been well if the suggestion of Uriah Smith, of Battle Creek, had been followed. He had a wonderful idea but it died on the vine. "Why not," said the ingenious Uriah, "make the automobile look like a horse?" It could be done by having the front part of the machine built in the shape of a horse’s head and neck, then when the car-that-looked-like-a-horse and a real horse met, everybody would be happy about the whole thing.

Before the automobile became "the poor man’s car" it was the rich man’s toy. Imported cars cost from $3,500 to $15,000. Fashion decreed at least two types of bodies for high-grade machines – a touring body and a limousine for winter use. Interiors were fitted lavishly with such things as silver mirrors, jeweled clocks, crystal perfume bottles and sometimes a well-stocked cellarette. On the dash in front of the driver was an instrument with a dial which lit up with various commands when the owner pressed a button from his seat behind: "faster," "left," "right," "slower," "stop," "club," "home," etc.

There were less than 4,000 automobiles in the United States by 1900. Indifference changed perceptibly to interest when, four years later, a Franklin was driven from San Francisco to New York in 43 days.

The world still considered European cars superior to anything made in the United States; American cars exported to Europe had been failures and lacked prestige until three Cadillacs, driven 500 miles over the race track at England’s Brooklands course in 1906, ended with perfect scores.

The story of the development of the automobile is a fascinating illustration of the fact that when people want something badly enough, nothing will stop them.

[Fireman’s Fund Archives: 4-1-3-4-60; 0411]