CATALOGUE OF THE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING COLLECTION. 53 



be used where desired ; that is, wherever power is required there it 

 may be had by building a steam engine to generate it. This factor 

 of mobility carried a step further gave to the world the first practical 

 self-propelled vehicle when Cugnot, a French military engineer, 

 mounted a steam engine on a three-wheeled truck and applied the 

 power developed to propel it. 



During the first half of the nineteenth century a largo number of 

 steam carriages were designed and built, particularly in England, 

 some of them being successful and profitable. The men most promi- 

 nent in this field in England were Gurney, Hancock, Dance, and 

 Church, who built stage coaches and other public vehicles during the 

 period from 1827 to 1834. About this time, however, laws imposing 

 heavy highway tolls on mechanically propelled vehicles stopped fur- 

 ther progress, and for over forty years little was done either in 

 Europe or the United States beyond improving the type of farm trac- 

 tor and steam roller. In the meantime the internal-combustion en- 

 gine was being developed and improved without, however, the idea 

 of its application to road vehicles. 



As late as 1883 the oil engines produced were heavy and cum- 

 brous, rotating at a speed of between 150 and 250 revolutions a 

 minute. Gottlieb Daimler, however, about this time conceived the 

 idea of a small oil engine with light moving parts, to run at a speed 

 of 800 to 1,000 revolutions a minute. In 1886 he made his first 

 experiment with a motor bicycle, and on March 4, 1887, ran for 

 the first time a motor car propelled by a gasoline engine. T\niile 

 the motors developed by Daimler contained nothing new in their 

 cycles of operation, great credit must be given him for realizing 

 the possibility of producing durable and effective engines rotating 

 at high speeds and for providing the first step in gasoline motive 

 power development. 



The possibilities of the gasoline engine brought to light by Daim- 

 ler were almost immediately taken up and developed in Europe and 

 the United States, especially by Benz in Germany; by Panhard, 

 Levassor, Peugeot, de Dion, Delahaye, and Renault in France; by 

 Napier, Lanchester, Royce, and Austin in England; and by Duryea 

 Brothers. Haynes, Apperson, Olds, Winton, and others in the 

 United States. 



Electrically driven vehicles were the latest type to be developed, 

 and, while possessing several advantages, are as yet confined to use 

 within a small area of travel. 

 Model of Sir Isaac Newton's Locomotive, 1680. Made in the Museum. 

 This is a small model of a machine made to prove that a reaction 

 of a let of steam impinging upon the atmosphere would propel a 

 ,.,hicle. (^^t. No. 181.282 U.S.N.M. 



