TRANSACTIONS OK SECTION U. 705 



of the limited carrying capacity of the streets in cities where the police do not 

 attend to this important matter. It can be renietlied by the existing police 

 regulations being adhered to and insisted on by fixed-point constables, or by 

 constables moving about on motor-cars or bicycles. Slow moving and frequently 

 .stopping vehicles are another cause of congested traffic. A great deal might be 

 done by arranging that during certain hours much of the slower moving traffic is 

 shunted into alternative routes, so as to be kept by itself. An increase in the speed 

 of tiie street traffic is desirable ; for the faster the vehicles travel the less the 

 street is occupied by them. Motor-cars can safely travel at sixteen miles an hour, 

 and, therefore, need only take half the time and occupy only half the street 

 surface that an omnibus does when travelling at eight miles per hour. Such high 

 speeds as these, which are desirable and perfectly safe for motor-cars, cannot, 

 however, be obtained unless some regulations are made as to the use of the 

 roadways by foot passengers. There is no rule of the road for foot passengers — 

 they pass one another on the footpath, or vehicles in the roadway, just as they 

 please. jS'o driver of a vehicle in the road who sees a foot passenger stepping into 

 the roadwaj' can ever tell with certainty what his movements will be. It will be 

 no hardship to foot passengers to insist on their movements being regulated. 



Much has been recently said and written on the subject of motor-cars and 

 motor-wagons. It is generally admitted that there will be considerable scope for 

 engineering skill and capital in their improvement and construction. It is by no 

 means an easy problem to put into the hands of the public such a complicated 

 piece of mechanism as a self-propelled carriage which has in most cases to be 

 managed and driven by men who have had no special mechanical training. Motor- 

 cars to be universally successful must be made so as to reduce to a minimum the 

 liability to break down ; repairs must be limited to the replacement of worn or 

 damaged parts by other parts, which must be supplied by the manufacturers so 

 that they can be readily put in by the uiiskilled users. That this can be done is 

 shown by the success and universal use of typewriters, sewing machines, and 

 bicycles: all of these are really complicated pieces of mechanism, but which are 

 now in such general use and in everj^one's hands. In these cases, however, the 

 organised manufacture of machines with thoroughly interchangeable parts, or com- 

 ponents as it is the fashion to call them, has only been developed after the type of 

 machine had settled down, and this up to the present cannot be said of tbe motor- 

 car or motor-wagon. Up to the present the development of these cars has gone 

 on on several lines. The development in France, which so far has led the world, 

 has been principally in the direction of the use of light motors driven by petrol 

 spirit. Again to France we owe the flash boiler of Serpollet, which assists the use 

 of steam engines for this purpose. 



At first sight steam, with the complications of boiler, engine, and condenser, 

 does not appear likely to compete favourably with the simpler spirit motor, but for 

 heavier vehicles, Vv'here steady heavy pulling power is of importance, up to the 

 present no internal combustion motor has competed with it. The Americans, 

 with their usual skill and power of rapidly organising a new manufacture, have 

 already turned out a very large number of steam-driven motor-cars, which are .so 

 largely in use in unskilled hands that it shows that they have already solved the 

 problem to some extent. 



The directions in which the two classes of motors require further development 

 are, for the internal combustion motors, the satisfactory and inodorous use of the 

 heavier oils, and in this perhaps Herr Diesel may help us with his wonderfully 

 economical motor improvements in the clutch mechanism, for with all in- 

 ternal combustion engines up to the present it has been found impossible to start 

 the motor when coupled to the driving-wheels of the car ; and in the case of the 

 steam motor the simplification of the boiler, the boiler feed mechanism, tlie inodorous 

 and noiseless burning of heavj' oils as fuel, improved condensers, methods of 

 lubricating the pistons and valves so as to avoid oil passing back to the boiler 

 with the condensed water, and the rendering of all processes of boiler feed and fuel 

 feed mechanism completely automatic so as not to require tbe attention of the 

 driver. On points common to both classes, although much has been done, further 



