The Steam Buses

Advertisement

As France fell into the grips of revolution, Cugnot's work was largely forgotten, and the next big innovations in automobile technology came in Britain. Over the next several decades, various inventors worked on steam carriages, which resembled a cross between buses and rail locomotives. William Murdoch created a working model of one of these in 1784, but it wouldn't be until the beginning of the 19th century that Richard Trevithick was able to get a full-sized vehicle on the road.

Steam-powered mass transit had some limited success in the opening years of the 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1820s and 1830s that steam buses began gaining some measure of popularity with the British public. Further technological innovations in this early form of road-based mass transit including better brakes, a more advanced transmission, and improved steering.

Advertisement

But, as Erik Eckermann explains, the drawbacks still far outweighed the advantages of this new technology:

It was apparent that the technology was not yet fully developed, and this new means of transportation did not yet enjoy favorable public opinion. Crankshafts snapped, lines leaked, chains broke, and boilers exploded. Engine vibrations (which, unlike stationary installations, could not be overcome by mounting on a solid foundation, the pungent odor of burnt oil, and flying soot and coal dust soon drove the traveling public back to the old standby, the horse-drawn stage, or another new invention, the railway and its rapidly growing network of track.

Advertisement

The steam buses proved to be something of a dead end, and engineers turned their attention to traction engines, which were slower, more stable machines that were basically just steam locomotives adapted for use on land. This was a move away from the line of innovation that would eventually lead to the car, but even these proved too raucous for the public at large. The Locomotive Act of 1865 said no land vehicle could travel faster than 4 miles per hour, and that all such vehicles had to be preceded by a man waving a red flag and blowing a horn. This was not, as you might imagine, the automotive industry's finest hour.

Other Curiosities

Advertisement

There were several other attempts to build self-propelled vehicles, but none of them ever quite made that big leap to become the first practical automobile. An American inventor named Oliver Evans built the "Oruktor Amphibolis", a steam-powered dredging device that became more powerful and elaborate with each subsequent retelling, in part because Evans felt he never got proper credit for his engineering prowess. At this point, it's difficult to say with certainty exactly what the Oruktor Amphibolis was actually capable of.

Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin came other with a steam-powered vehicle in the 1780s, and it featured plenty of modern automotive hallmarks, including brakes, gearbox, flywheel, and bearing. The problem is that, though it did have a steam engine component, it still required human peddling to operate, so it can't really be considered an automobile.

Advertisement

While steam remained the main focus of inventors in search of a practical automobile, the results remained difficult to control and incapable of reaching speeds much over about five miles per hour. (In fairness, subsequent innovations in the late 1800s and early 1900s did result in actually practical steam cars.) The internal combustion engine provided the pathway to the first modern automobiles, with Karl Benz generally getting the credit for the first successful invention in 1886.

But now we're starting to cross over into the modern history of automobiles, so this is where I will stop. Here's to all the crazy forerunners of our modern marvel, be they Flemish polymath toymakers, Frenchmen crashing into walls, Dutchmen building engines out of gunpowder, or Brits crowding themselves onto noisy, supremely dangerous steam buses. All these innovators offer a very clear lesson: if you're going to fail to invent the automobile, at least fail with style.