FROM CART TO AUTOMOBILE 



early as 1824, one can scarcely avoid the conviction 

 that had legislation favored, instead of opposing, the 

 inventor, the automobile might have been developed 

 in Great Britain as rapidly as railway traffic ; in which 

 event the middle of the nineteenth century would have 

 seen the world at least as near the horseless age as we 

 are in reality at the close of the first decade of the 

 twentieth century. What this would have meant in 

 its economic bearings on civilization during the past 

 fifty years, the least imaginative reader can in some 

 measure picture for himself. 



In opposition to this view it might be urged that 

 the real progress of the automobile has taken place 

 since 1885, when the Daimler oil engine was substi- 

 tuted for the steam engine in connection with motor 

 vehicles. But in reply to this it must be remembered 

 that the workable gas engine had been invented as 

 early as i860, and that the Otto engine, of which the 

 Daimler is a modification, was patented as early as 

 1876. These developments, it will be noted, took 

 place at just about the time when the new interest in 

 the automobile had been aroused, as evidenced by the 

 repressive British legislation just referred to. It can 

 be but little in question that had the early interest 

 in the British automobile been maintained, inventive 

 genius would long since have provided a suitable motor. 

 There was no incentive for the English inventor dur- 

 ing those long years when the automobile was under 

 legislative ban; and in the meantime the idea of the 

 highway automobile seems not to have taken posses- 

 sion of other nations. 



[163] 



