44 Automobiles or Horseless Carriages. 



speed of three or four miles an hour — a speed which would not 

 seem excessive at all events to our modern police. The 

 machine is preserved in the Musee des Artset Metiers. Fifteen 

 years later William Murdock made a model steam carriage. It 

 is related that when trying it in a churchyard at night it greatly 

 frightened the vicar, who met it accidentally on its fiery way, 

 and at once concluded it to be of the evil one. In 1802 

 Trevestried constructed a steam carriage that attained a speed 

 of ten miles an hour. A little latter Gurney constructed 

 passenger coaches, which plied between Gloucester and Chelten- 

 ham, and covered some 4,000 miles before they were stopped by 

 public opposition and the extravagantly high tolls charged at 

 the turnpikes for them. Views of numerous other early coaches 

 were shown, including one called the Fly-by-night. After 

 having been summoned for too high speed several times, its 

 owners rigged it up to look like a fire engine, donned brass 

 helmets, and thus contrived to escape legal interference for some 

 months. The great weight of the machinery in nearly all these 

 early forms was prohibitive. This difficulty is now surmounted 

 by using the oil motor, recently so generally applied. The first 

 automobile propelled by an oil engine was brought out by an 

 Englishman, Mr. E. Butler, in 1883. Many of its details were 

 similar to those now employed in the Continental forms, but 

 Mr. Butler, like all other Englishmen, was obliged to give up 

 making automobiles because of the illegality of using them in 

 England. In considering the history of English effort in 

 this direction, one cannot help being struck by the undaunted 

 enthusiasm which induced men time after time to spend 

 so much thought and money, sometimes to the complete 

 emptying of their pockets, notwithstanding the complete 

 discouragement with which the law oppressed them. One 

 can only imagine what might have been if the law had 

 been encouraging instead of the reverse. As the automobile 

 is on account of this discouragement not a British product, 

 it was necessary to study it elsewhere, and for that purpose the 

 lecturer had made a trip last autumn to Paris, calling on the 



