Automobile :: essays research papers

History After the steam engine was invented in the early 17th century, various attempts were made to apply this source of power to self-propelled road vehicles. Early efforts were unsuccessful, except for those that produced interesting toys such as the machine developed about 1680 by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton, wich was propelled by the back pressure of a jet of steam directed to the rear. The first successful self-propelled road vehicle was a steam automobile invented in 1770 by the French engineer Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. It was designed to transport artillery, and it ran on three wheels. The British inventor William Symington in 1786 built a working model of a so-called steam carriage. The 19th century The first automobile to carry passengers was built by the British inventor Richard Trevitchick in 1801. In December of that year, Trevitchick conducted a successful road test of his vehicle, wich carry several passengers, on an open road near his native town, Illogan. His success was due to the greater efficiency and smaller size of his power unit, wich was the first to have the piston moved by steam at high pressure. In the United States, the inventor Oliver Evans obtained the first patent on a steam carriage in 1789. In 1803, he built a self-propelled steam dredge, wich is regarded as the first self-propelled vehicle to operate over American roads. In France and Germany, meanwhile, attention turned to the development of the internal-combustion engine. By 1980, more than 300 million cars and 85 million trucks and buses were operating throughout the world, forming an indispensable transportation network. Germany’s Volkswagen sent its first shipments of autos, popularly known as Beetles, to the Unites States in the early 1950s and eventually became a major force in the U.S. auto industry. The first Japanese imports to the United States was 16 compact pickups arrived in 1956. Ten years later, Japanese vehicle imports reached 65000 units. By 1980, the Japanese claimed 2.