Sit-pplonent to ''Nature" March 13, 1902. 



MOTOR VEHICLES. 



Motor Vehicles ami Motors. By \V. W'oiljy BeauiiioiU. 

 (Westminster : A. Constable and Co., Ltd., 1900.) 



TT IS difficult within the limits of an ordinary notice to 

 -'- deal adequately with this huge work of 618 quarto 

 pages. Mr. Beaumont has attempted to give a complete 

 history of all the applications of mechanical methods of 

 propulsion to vehicles running on the highway, and has 

 described almost every motor vehicle of importance 

 which has been put on the road during the past seventy- 

 five years. 



He first deals with that part of the history of 

 self-propelled carriages which is prior to the date 

 when Daimler, by his introduction of the internal com- 

 bustion petroleum spirit-worked motor, enabled designers 

 for the first time to dispense with the complication of a 

 steam boiler. The author considers Daimler's invention 

 marked an entirely new departure, and he is undoubtedly 

 justified in holding this opinion, as within a few years 

 after Daimler's engine had been applied to motor cars 

 they developed so rapidly and were so commonly used in 

 France and Germany that even in England, the country 

 par excellence of restrictive legislation, Parliament was 

 compelled during the year 1S96 by sheer force of public 

 opinion to pass an Act removing some of the absurd 

 provisions which had up to that time prohibited any 

 attempt to use motor vehicles on highways or in our 

 streets. 



This early historical portion, which occupies the first 

 forty-eight pages, is useful, as it brings clearly before us 

 the great success obtained by the early engineers, such as 

 Hancock, Gurney and others, fully seventy-five years ago. 

 We are apt to forget that the adaptation of steam 

 power to road vehicles was made so successful by these 

 men that it is beyond doubt that if they had been left 

 unharassed by interested opposition and legislation the 

 inethods of traffic which now prevail would have been 

 greatly modified ; that is to say, that instead of the rail- 

 ways being, as they are at present, practically the sole 

 routes along which traffic is carried, there is no doubt 

 that if Hancock and those of his time had been allowed 

 to continue their work, the highways of England would 

 have carried their share of the traffic, the factories of 

 England would not have been concentrated as they are, 

 all of them close to lines of railway, and many other 

 modifications wholly beneficial would have taken place 

 afifecting the distribution, health and happiness of our 

 industrial population. 



Designers of modern vehicles learn much from the 

 history of the early attempts. It is interesting, for 

 instance, to notice from the illustrations of the early 

 boilers used by Gurney, Summers and Ogle how closely 

 they approached to the instantaneous generator or flash 

 boiler, as it is called, which was reintroduced by 

 Serpollet in i88g. 



Mr. Beaumont has introduced a few chapters on the 

 general questions affecting locomotion on highways ; 

 he gives comparatively short descriptions of modern 

 steam vehicles and electrically driven vehicles, but the 

 bulk of his work is occupied by a carefully written history 

 of the modern motor car driven by the internal combus- 

 tion engine which has been developed from Daimler's dis- 

 NO. 1689, VOL. 65] 



covery in 1885. This history, which occupies more than 

 half of the book, commences with Daimler's work and 

 goes on to describe the important modifications introduced 

 by him and by the various French engmeers, Panhard, 

 Levassor, Peugeot, De Dion, Mors and others and 

 by the Daimler Co. themselves at their works at 

 Cammstadt. He also describes very fully the alternative 

 line of discovery followed up by Benz which also com- 

 menced in 1885. 



This description of the development of the modern 

 motor car is so complete and so profusely illustrated by 

 reproductions of photographs, as well as by scale 

 drawings and diagrams, that it ought to be of consider- 

 able value to everyone interested in this matter, whether 

 they be engineer designers, patent agents, or a 

 general reader attempting to post himself in this interest- 

 ing matter. But the value of the work as a book of 

 reference on the motor car is greatly diminished by the 

 very confused arrangement of this descriptive history. 

 The author could have either described the whole of the 

 successive developments in their strict chronological 

 order or he could have described in turn each 

 inventor's line of development, giving dates so as to 

 enable us to know to whom we owe the initiative 

 in each successful step. Instead of this he has com- 

 menced by describing the work of Daimler in 18S5 and 

 the next succeeding years, and from thence jumped to a 

 description of the Daimler motors as manufactured in 

 1899. He then describes the work of the French 

 engineers, without stating when or how they took up 

 Daimler's work, and then goes back to Benz and treats 

 his discoveries in fair chronological order, so that it is 

 very difficult for the average reader of Mr. Beaumont 

 to learn how much is due to Daimler and how much to 

 Benz. 



As we have said above, the work is magnificently illus- 

 trated; as a rule the author gives an illustration reproduced 

 from a photograph showing the external appearance of 

 each vehicle described. This is followed in most cases 

 by a sectional drawing showing the general arrangement 

 and by detailed drawings to scale of the important in- 

 ternal organs. Some of the drawings, the credit of 

 which we learn from the preface must be given to Mr. 

 d'Esterre, such as those of the general arrangements. 

 Figs. 99 and 100, which are the sectional and plan views 

 of the Panhard and Levassor Daimler motor carriage of 

 6 h.-p. racing type, are marvellous examples of correct 

 draughtsmanship, and it is a pity that these drawings are 

 confined to the limits of a quarto page, as they would 

 well bear enlargement to double their present scale. 



The author has made some attempt to group together 

 his descriptions of certain important features of the 

 engine, such as the carburettors and cylinder-cooling 

 arrangements. He here also gives us a kind of essay on 

 driving and steering wheel axles, although these are 

 common to all classes of mechanically propelled vehicles. 

 He completes his survey of the motor vehicle driven by 

 the internal combustion engine by several pages of 

 tables of the economic performances of these engines 

 when using petrol as fuel. We are inclined to believe with 

 him that many of the French tests of the power given 

 out by these motors are not trustworthy, as the dura- 

 tion of the tests was quite insufficient to enable one 



