Read At Home: Eight Misconceptions About The Very First Car In The World

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 13:59

The coming week in Russia has been declared non-working - so that we can all be at home, reducing the spread of the coronavirus epidemic. And, it seems, there is nothing better than spending this time with benefit! For example, learn something new and fill in some of the gaps in your knowledge. The next two weeks we will be telling you unknown and just interesting facts about cars - under the tag of a read house. And we'll start - of course! - from the very first car in the world

We collect all materials from this cycle under the tag read houses

More and more often, a bold phrase is heard - that, they say, over the past 30 years (some prefer to indicate the number 50, 70, or even 100), the design of the car has not undergone fundamental changes. That technical progress is marking time … To understand how far such talk is from the truth, it is enough to get acquainted with the design of the first cars in history. We assure you that those who approach veterans with the expectations and habits of today's motorists will be in for a huge surprise!

We are not suggesting that there is absolutely nothing in common between the self-run carriages of the late 19th century and modern cars. Take the Benz Motorwagen for example, which is officially considered the first car in the world and which appeared in 1886

He had windows, doors and a key. Nope

How does a trip in a modern car begin? By pressing a button on the key fob, opening the door, starting the engine. Well, the Benz Motorwagen had no key and no doors at all. And not only with him. Open to winds and bad weather, the "runabout" body - without windows and without a roof - is the most familiar and most widespread of the first two decades of the automotive era. Ignition keys on cars will become familiar only at the end of the 2000s, and the massive transition to closed bodies will not take place until the 1920s - almost 40 years after the appearance of the Benz Motorwagen!

What do we see? The wheels are round (albeit strange spoke), rubber tires (but not pneumatic yet), a four-stroke gasoline engine (one-cylinder - well, let it be), a frame chassis (we can't be surprised with that), and a spring suspension (hello, ToyotHilux!). But if we move from the general to the particulars, then the picture is rapidly changing.

It was started by turning the handle, like a Zhiguli. Oops …

Not. Engine "Motorvagen" with a capacity of 0.75 hp. even turned on not the way we are used to. It did not have a starter, and the starting process required physical strength: to get the engine to work, the driver had to very vigorously turn a horizontally located flywheel, similar to a sewing machine wheel. A certain dexterity was also required: it was important to remove the fingers in time so that they did not fall into the spokes of the launched flywheel. Alas, not everyone succeeded, and not always …

He had a steering wheel. Ah-ahah

Oh, if only! Perched on a high-positioned driver's seat, the first thing you would notice is that there is no "steering wheel" in the usual sense here. Instead, a weighty handle, docked to the fork of an absolutely unsprung front wheel, is responsible for the direction of movement. And also - the first car in the world was three-wheeled for a reason, but precisely because Karl Benz simply did not know about the existence of the steering linkage, which had already been invented by that time. Can you imagine how bad it was for people without the Internet ?!

There were more pedals than there are now. Not guessing

M … no. Motorvagen had no pedals at all. None! The fuel supply was adjusted, for example, using a manual throttle valve. In other words, we had to “gas” with handles. And there was no brake pedal on the Benz because of … the lack of the brakes we are used to. The first car in the world was equipped with a so-called band brake, which did not act on the wheels, but on the drive belts of the simplest transmission. Only two years after the debut of Motorvagen, Karl Benz will add a brake shoe to the model's design - in the manner of those that are familiar to us from inexpensive bicycles.

What else is there? Clutch pedal? She wasn't there either. Why? Because the clutch itself was absent here, and the moment from the engine was transmitted by belts.

He could drive back. Oh, if only …

Another difficulty for the owner of the Benz Motorwagen is the lack of reverse gear as such. But in 1886 it didn't seem too awkward. At that time, it was considered a miracle that the car itself, at the very least, goes at least forward. And Motorvagen did not have a gearbox in the usual sense, because it had only one gear. And the clutch function (it, in the traditional sense, was also not observed) was performed by a simple "fork", with the help of which the driver transferred the belt drive from the idle pulley to the working one.

Over time, Benz will add a second gear to the drivetrain design to facilitate downhill travel. But this will not happen until 1888 …

But he also had a gas tank … Or, again, not ?

Yes. That is, no … In general, the most shocking fact is that the first car in the world did not have a fuel tank at all. The entire volume of fuel on board is the one that fit in the 4.5-liter body of the spray carburetor. It is not difficult to imagine that even with a quite humane consumption of about 10 liters per 100 km, Motorvagen was a bad fit for travel. Once again, realizing and recognizing the flaw, Karl Benz will equip later versions of his car with an additional gas tank. But the first copies of the model really did without it.

It was as simple as a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Knope

On the one hand, yes. No electronics, complex transmission solutions, and so on. However, the hassle both during the trip and in preparation for it was much more than that of any today's motorist. For example, the first car did not have a common engine lubrication system, so the driver had to check ahead of time the individual oiler for each mechanism. Modern drivers are too lazy to pull out an oil dipstick every 1000 kilometers, and in the days of Karl Benz, a trip three or four streets long required an almost cosmic level of training.

He was so weak that he didn't need to be cooled. Yes but no

Again, there was no cooling system in the usual sense. A single cylinder was cooled with an evaporator shell that covered this very cylinder. The water in it boiled away quickly, and in order not to overheat the engine, it had to be topped up regularly. And full-fledged cellular radiators will appear on cars only in the 20th century, and even then not immediately.

Well, let's not forget about the little things, like the lack of lighting devices, even a primitive set of sensors and indicators, as well as turn signals, wipers and seat belts. No matter what they say, but over the past 130 years, technical progress has not stood still.