The Automobile

A Chronology of Its Antecedents, Development and Impact

Clay McShane

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781135919450
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: History

This comprehensive chronology of the automobile covers its engineering as well as the social, cultural and political impact of the car from the invention of the wheel to the O.J. Simpson car chase. It examines the auto industry, the road and roadside, the car in popular culture, fuel history, the spatial transformation of cities, air pollution, critics of car culture, traffic accidents, the globalization of car culture, and much more. This is a reference guide for students and scholars of transportation history and for anyone with an interest in the development of automobiles. Clay McShane is Professor of History at Northeastern University and a noted authority on transportation history. Among his earlier publications is Down the Asphalt Path: American Cities and the Automobile.

1

Prelude to 1885

c. 8000 B.C.E.

Domestication of animals.

c. 5000 B.C.E.

Sumerians invent the wheel.

c. 2400 B.C.E.

Egyptians build a paved road for sleds from a quarry to the Nile near modern Cairo.

c. 2200 B.C.E.

First suburbs reported, under the wall of Ur in Mesopotamia.

c. 2000 B.C.E.

Babylonians pave their streets and a highway to Memphis, Egypt.

c. 1700 B.C.E.

First chariots.

c. 1000 B.C.E.

In Book 18 of the Iliad Homer describes a wheeled, self-propelled tripod built by Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods.

612 B.C.E.

Biblical book of Nahum celebrates the fall of Nineveh: “The Chariots rage in the streets, they rush to and fro through the broad ways; they gleam like torches, they dart like lightning.”

450 B.C.E.

Greek architect Hippodamus lays out the city of Piraeus with a gridiron.

312 B.C.E.

Appius Claudius builds the first paved Roman road, the Appian Way.

170 B.C.E.

Rome paves its streets to ease both travel and drainage.

c. 100 B.C.E.

Following the invention of the camel saddle, the Middle East largely abandons wheeled vehicles for camels.

45 B.C.E.

Julius Caesar bans carts and chariots from Rome during daylight hours to relieve traffic jams.

50

Hero of Alexandria speculates about a steam-powered vehicle.

100

Chinese invent the wheelbarrow.

846

Arab geographer Ibn Khurdadbih publishes the first book of road maps.

c. 900

Western Europe makes great improvements in horse power with the development of horse shoes, the collar harness and the stirrup.

950

Caliph of Cordova, Spain, orders the streets paved and lighted.

1135

King Henry I orders that all British roads should be two chariots wide.

1184

Paris begins to pave its streets.

1209

London Bridge built—360 meters.

1272

Roger Bacon forecasts self-propelled carriages.

1274

British Parliament authorizes the first toll road.

1300

The Strand becomes London’s first paved street.

1395

Paris prohibits residents from dumping chamber pots on the street.

1478

Leonardo da Vinci fantasizes about a spring-driven horseless carriage.

1493

Columbus lands Andalusian horses, the first in the Americas.

1525

Public coach services introduced in Milan.

1532

Spanish conquistadors find a 2,400-kilometer paved, tree-lined Inca highway, far longer than any paved way in Europe.

1540

Paris requires horses to walk, not gallop, and bans U-turns.

1553

Queen Mary rides in an imported coach during her coronation.

1555

First enclosed private coaches in London, named after the Hungarian town of Kocsi, where the leather-springed vehicles originated.

1610

First English stagecoach.

During the “starving time,” Jamestown residents consume their horses.

1625

First hackney coaches for hire in London, forerunners of the taxicab.

1636

Massachusetts Bay requires its townships to appoint road surveyors.

1645

France issues a patent to Jean Thesson for a four-wheel cycle, which the rider propels by pushing his feet along the ground.

1650

Boston begins to pave streets.

Charles II tries to ban hackneys from London because they are slowing down the carriages of the nobility.

1652

New York City bans galloping.

1656

New York City paves Stone Street.

1661

Spain’s Infanta Maria has glass windows placed in her coach, a sign of smoother roads and better suspension.

Philip di Chiesa puts iron springs on a carriage.

1662

Philosopher Blaise Pascal opens a bus service in Paris. Government regulation limits ridership to the bourgeoisie.

1667

In his epic, Paradise Lost, John Milton writes about a highway to hell paved “with asphaltic slime.”

1673

Post riders take two weeks in the first Boston-New York mail service.

1675

First road link between New York and Philadelphia.

1678

Jean d’Hautefeuille adopts a cylinder and piston to pump water.

1680

Sir Isaac Newton predicts steam-powered vehicles.

1688

Denis Papin builds a primitive steam engine in Kassel, Germany.

1690

Iron rim brakes developed.

1699

Visitor to Boston: “Its streets, like the hearts of the male inhabitants, are paved with pebbles.”

1706

Thomas Newcomen develops a steam engine to pump water from mines.

1710

Antoine de la Mothé Cadillac founds Detroit.

1719

Philadelphia paves its sidewalks.

1722

Traffic required to keep to the left on London Bridge, the beginning of the English drive on the left policy.

1736

Saxony requires traffic to keep to the right.

1747

École des Ponts et Chausées, Paris, first highway engineering program, opens.

1750

Horace Walpole complains that London merchants, in imitation of the nobility, are buying country villas in the London environs to be within daily traveling distance of work.

1755

English General Braddock begins first road across the Appalachians from Maryland to Pittsburgh. George Washington surveys the 3.5-meter-wide highway.

1756

First stagecoach service between New York and Philadelphia takes three days.

Ben Franklin produces 150 Conestoga wagons for the British army.

British Parliament requires all traffic to keep to the left.

1761

Philadelphia raises money through a lottery to pave its streets.

1766

John Gwynn, in London and Westminster Improved, an important city-planning text, argues for new residential squares in London to allow wealthy merchants to separate home and work.

1768

Boston, the largest city in the colonies, has 22 wheeled vehicles.

Steel springs improve coach efficiency, helping to reduce the London-Manchester trip from 62 to 27 hours.

1769

Nicholas Cugnot builds a steam-powered gun carriage, which he runs into a wall.

Alessandro Volta proves that an electric spark can ignite gases.

C. Varlo places roller bearings on a carriage.

1776

France ends the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Prelude to 1885
• 2. From Benz to Ford: 1886–1907
• 3. The Model T Era: 1908–1926
• 4. Peace and War: 1927–1945
• 5. The Age of Muscle and Smog: 1946–1964
• 6. End of the Honeymoon: 1965–1980
• 7. Revival: 1981–1994
• Appendix A: Tables
• Appendix B: North American Car Museums
• Index