Part 7
Levassor made many improvements in the machinery and output of Panhard & Levassor. Especially he perfected machines for wood-working and made important changes in the processes used for the cold cutting of hard metals. On the first appearance of gas motors he undertook their construction in France. It was in the establishment of Panhard & Levassor that the first motors were constructed under the system of Otto and Langen with atmospheric pressure, then the four-cycle engine of Otto and finally the two-cycle system of Benz and Ravell.
In 1886, when the Daimler petroleum motor appeared, he recognized the great part that it would play in practical application to the propulsion of vehicles and boats. He acquired the right to use it in France, and in 1887 exhibited, in Paris, a boat thus propelled. After several years he put forth the first automobile vehicle with motor in front.
LEON SERPOLLET
Serpollet is noted in France to-day as the champion of the steam automobile. In 1887, he appeared in Paris with his three-wheeler, two rear drive and one front steering wheel. With its light and safe generator his machine attracted much attention, but its use in the streets of the capital was temporarily prohibited, until the granting to him in 1891 of the first unrestricted license for such use resulted from his initiation of the prefect of police by driving that important personage in the steamer.
His generator, known as the "flash boiler," has been developed to a high state of perfection. The tubes of his boiler were heavy, flattened tubing, strengthened in that form by being transversally bent or grooved. He was helped doubtless to no small extent, in his work, by his association, about 1897, with a wealthy American, F. L. Gardner, who made possible the development of the large Gardner-Serpollet establishment in the Rue Stendhal, Paris.
While Serpollet has achieved a brilliant and well-deserved reputation in his native land, he is also recognized in other countries as one of the greatest living promoters of the steam branch of the automobile industry. His adherence to steam as the motive power in self-propelled road vehicles has been unremitting and energetic. Few men have done more than he to improve carriages in this class.
In 1900, Serpollet was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His sales to that date of five machines for the Shah of Persia and landaulets for the Maharajah of Mysore and other notables had given him much prominence at that time.
LOUIS AND MARCEL RENAULT
Born in Boulogne, France, the Renault Brothers, with general technical education, perseverance and ability, entered the field of automobile manufacturing only some six years ago, although they earlier gave to the subject much attention and study.
Having appreciated through personal experience the shortcomings of the gasoline tricycle, Louis Renault in October, 1898, manufactured, in his private shop, a small two-passenger vehicle, with a one and three-quarters horse-power motor, which eliminated the pedalling for starting, but was otherwise small and light as a tricycle. In January, 1899, he brought out a small four-wheeler with one and three-quarters horse-power motor in front, three speeds and chainless, or as now called propeller drive. The demand was immediate and large and resulted in the establishment of the works of Renault Frères, who began to make the first lot of these small vehicles in March of the same year. These won prizes in the Paris-Trouville, the Ostende and the Rambouillet runs, and one completed a three thousand six hundred kilometer tour through different parts of Europe and over the Alps.
The new model of 1900 had a three and one-half horse-power motor and thermo-syphon cooling system. Many honors were won with these, and notably that of Louis Renault's most successful use of one in the grand army maneuvers. But the output of three hundred and fifty showed the necessity for larger works. With the increased facilities of 1901, the product was doubled and the model increased to four and one-half horse-power, while eight and nine horse-power were winners in the Paris-Bordeaux and Paris-Berlin races.
In 1902 came another addition to the Billancourt works of Cloise to four thousand square meters area, and the Renault Brothers then changed their models to voiture légère, six to eight horse-power, steel tube frame and wood wheels--a full-fledged vehicle. They succeeded in the Circuit du Nord, organized by the Minister of Agriculture, for alcohol-motored vehicles. Then came the triumph of their twenty horse-power four-cylinder type in the great Paris-Vienna race, where it was pitted against forty and even seventy horse-power vehicles. The result was a great impetus commercially, and new shops accommodating a thousand workmen and covering thirteen thousand square meters, which produced one thousand four hundred vehicles in the following year.
Both brothers, who had always been at the wheel of their own cars in the years of racing, entered the memorable "race-of-death," Paris-Madrid, in May, 1903. Louis arrived first at Bordeaux, but his unfortunate brother Marcel, while close to victory, was killed with the overturning of his machine only a few kilometers from the goal. In memory of Marcel Renault a simple monument was unveiled at Billancourt May 26, 1904, on ground contributed by the municipal council; a bronze plate on one side of this perpetuates his triumphant entry into Vienna, showing his arrival at the finish.
Louis Renault, since continuing the business, has now produced larger machines, including the sixty to ninety horse-power made for the Vanderbilt race in America, October, 1904.
NOTED INVESTIGATORS
SIMON STEVIN, THOMAS WILDGOSSE, DAVID RAMSEY, JOHANN HAUTSCH, CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS, STEPHEN FARFLEUR, FERNANDO VERBIEST, ISAAC NEWTON, VEGELIUS, ELIÉ RICHARD, GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ, HUMPHREY MACKWORTH, DENIS PAPIN, VAUCAUSON, ROBINSON, ERASMUS DARWIN, RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, FRANCIS MOORE, PLANTA, J. S. KESTLER, BLANCHARD, THOMAS CHARLES AUGUSTE DALLERY, JAMES WATT, ROBERT FOURNESS, GEORGE MEDHURST, ANDREW VIVIAN, DU QUET, J. H. GENEVOIS, JOHN DUMBELL, WILLIAM BRUNTON, THOMAS TINDALL, JOHN BAYNES, JULIUS GRIFFITHS, EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, T. BURTSALL, T. W. PARKER, GEORGE POCOCK, SAMUEL BROWN, JAMES NEVILLE, T. S. HOLLAND, JAMES NASMYTH, F. ANDREWS, HARLAND, PECQUEUR, JAMES VINEY, CHEVALIER BORDINO, CLIVE, SUMMERS AND OGLE, GIBBS, CHARLES DANCE, JOSHUA FIELD, DIETZ, YATES, G. MILLICHAP, JAMES CALEB ANDERSON, ROBERT DAVIDSON, W. G. HEATON, F. HILL, GOODMAN, NORRGBER, J. K. FISHER, R. W. THOMPSON, ANTHONY BERNHARD, BATTIN, RICHARD DUDGEON, LOUGH AND MESSENGER, THOMAS RICKETT, DANIEL ADAMSON, STIRLING, W. O. CARRETT, RICHARD TANGYE, T. W. COWAN, CHARLES T. HAYBALL, ISAAC W. BOULTON, ARMSTRONG, PIERRE RAVEL, L. T. PYOTT, A. RICHTER, RAFFARD, CHARLES JEANTEAUD, SYLVESTER HAYWOOD ROPER, COPELAND, G. BOUTON, COUNT A. DE DION, ARMAND PEUGEOT, RADCLIFFE WARD, MORS, MAGNUS VOLK, BUTLER, LE BLANT, EMILE DELAHAYE, ROGER, GEORGES RICHARD, POCHAIN, LOUIS KRIEGER, DE DETRICH, DAVID SALOMONS, LEON BOLLÈE, JOSEPH GUEDON, RENE DE KNYFF, ADOLF CLEMENT, A. DARRACQ, JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
SIMON STEVIN
Born in Bruges, Holland, in 1548. Died in 1620.
Stevin was a noted mathematician, and also experimented in the construction of wheel vehicles about 1600. He built in his workshop at The Hague a wheeled vehicle that was propelled by sails. This was simply a tray or boat of wood, which hung close to the ground. It was borne on four wooden wheels, each one of which was five feet in diameter, and the after-axle was pivoted to form a rudder. A tall mast was carried amidships, and there was a small foremast that was stayed aft. Large square sails were carried on these masts. A trial trip of this sailing ship on land was made in 1600, when the journey from Scheveningen to Petten, a distance of forty-two miles, was made in about two hours. On this occasion some twenty-two passengers were carried. Prince Maurice of Holland steered, and among the passengers were Grotius, and the Spanish Admiral, Mendoza, who was then a prisoner of war in Holland.
Stevin also built a smaller sail vehicle, similar to the one just described, that carried from five to eight persons. Both carriages were used a great deal, running many miles on the Dutch coast. The smaller one was to be seen at Scheveningen as late as 1802. Grotius wrote a poem on these carriages. Bishop Wilkens, in England, also wrote about them in 1648, and showed a drawing that was made from a description given to him by those who had seen the car at work. Howell, a writer of the period, thus quaintly described the Stevin carriage: "This engine, that hath wheels and sails, will hold above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn or moved by nothing else, and will run, the wind being good and the sails hois'd up, about fifteen miles an hour upon the even hard sands."
THOMAS WILDGOSSE
In 1618, Thomas Wildgosse got out a patent for "newe, apte, of compendious formes or kinds of engines or instruments to ploughe grounds without horse or oxen; and to make boates for the carryage of burthens and passengers runn upon the water as swifte in calmes, and more safe in stormes, than boats full sayled in great wynnes." It is agreed by the best authorities that these vehicles were set in motion by gear worked by the hand of a driver, although Fletcher thinks that steam engines were intended. Additional patents were granted to Wildgosse in 1625.
DAVID RAMSEY
Associated with Thomas Wildgosse in his experimenting and patenting, in 1618, was David Ramsey, who at that time was Page of the Bed Chamber to James I. of England, and afterwards was Groom of the Privy Chamber to the same monarch. In 1644, Ramsey was again a partner in the grant of a patent for "a farre more easie and better waye for soweing of corne and grayne, and alsoe for the carrying of coaches, carts, drayes, and other things goeing on wheels, than ever yet was used and discovered." This may have been a manually or a steam propelled vehicle. It is most reasonable to suppose that it was the former.
JOHANN HAUTSCH
Born in 1595. Died in 1670.
Hautsch was a noted mathematician, and, experimenting in the construction of road vehicles, he built a mechanical carriage for use on common roads. This carriage was successfully run in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1649, and thereafter attracted a great deal of attention. It was propelled by a train of gears that turned the axle, being operated by two men who, secreted in the interior of the body, worked cranks. The finish of the body of this coach was very elaborate, being heavily carved and having fashioned in front the figure of a dragon, arranged to roll its eyes and spout steam and water, in order to terrify the populace and clear the way. On each side of the body were carved angels holding trumpets, which were constantly blown, the precursors, perhaps, of the automobile horns of to-day. The Hautsch coach was said to have gone as rapidly as one thousand paces an hour. One of the carriages which he built was sold to the Crown Prince of Sweden, and another to the King of Denmark. Not much more is known of the Hautsch vehicles, but it is a matter of record that the inventor was preceded by one whose name is unknown, but who ran a coach, mechanically propelled somewhat like this car, in January, 1447, near Nuremberg.
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
Born at The Hague, Holland, April 14, 1629. Died at The Hague, June 8, 1695.
Huygens received a good education, and at early age showed a singular aptitude for mathematics. Soon after he was sixteen years of age he prepared papers on mathematical subjects that gave him pre-eminent distinction. He became noted as a physicist, astronomer and mathematician. He devoted some time to the consideration of improvements in road vehicular travel.
STEPHEN FARFLUER
Born in 1663.
Farfluer was a contemporary of Johann Hautsch, and was a skillful mechanician of Altderfanar, Nuremberg, Germany. About 1650 he made a dirigible vehicle propelled by man power, but as distinguished from that of his rival, Hautsch, this was a small carriage, being calculated only for one person. Being crippled, Farfluer used the wagon as his only means of getting about alone. It had hand cranks that drove the single front wheel by gears.
FERNANDO VERBIEST
Born near Courtrai, Belgium, 1623. Died in China in 1688.
Verbiest became a Jesuit missionary, and was a man of marked ability. After going to China he acquired a thorough knowledge of the language of that country, where he spent the greater part of his life. Under his Chinese name he wrote scientific and theological works in Chinese. He was appointed astronomer at the Pekin observatory, undertook the reformation of the Chinese calendar, superintended the cannon foundries, and was a great favorite of the Emperor.
About 1655 he made a small model of a steam carriage. This is described in the English edition of Huc's Christianity in China, in Muirhead's Life of James Watt, and in the Astronomia Europia, a work that is attributed to Verbiest, but was probably compiled from his works by another Jesuit priest and was published in Europe in 1689. The Verbiest model was for a four-wheeled carriage, on which an aeolipile was mounted with a pan of burning coals beneath it. A jet of steam from the aeolipile impinged upon the vanes of a wheel on a vertical axle, the lower end of the spindle being geared to the front axle. An additional wheel, larger than the supporting wheels, was mounted on an adjustable arm in a manner to adapt the vehicle to moving in a circular path. Another orifice in the aeolipile was fitted with a reed, so that the steam going through it imitated the song of a bird.
ISAAC NEWTON
Born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, December 25, 1642. Died at Kensington, March 20, 1727.
Isaac Newton, who became one of the greatest mathematicians that the world ever knew, was the son of a farmer. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in his early youth he mastered the principles of mathematics, as then known, and began original investigations to discover new methods. His great achievement was the discovery of the law of universal gravitation, but his genius was active in other directions, as the investigation of the nature of light, the construction of improved telescopes, and so on. He was a Member of Parliament in 1689 and 1701, and master of the mint, a lucrative position, from 1696 until the time of his death. In 1671 he was elected a member of the Royal Society, and was annually chosen to be its president, from 1703 until his death.
Newton was one of the first Englishmen to conceive the idea of the propulsion of vehicles by the power of steam. Taking up for consideration Hero's hollow ball filled with water from which steam was generated by the outward application of heat, he added these conclusions: "We have a more sensible effect of the elasticity of vapors if the hole be made bigger and stopped, and then the ball be laid upon the fire till the water boils violently; after this, if the ball be set upon little wheels, so as to move easily upon a horizontal plane, and the hole be opened, the vapors will rush out violently one way, and the wheels and the ball at the same time will be carried the contrary way." Beyond this philosophical suggestion, however, Newton never went. The steam carriage attributed to him by some writers is merely an imaginative creation, by writer or artist, based upon the above proposition.
VEGELIUS
A professor at Jena, Saxony, in the seventeenth century, Vegelius constructed, in 1679, a mechanical horse, which was propelled by springs and cased in the skin of a real horse. This machine is said to have traveled four German miles an hour.
ELIÉ RICHARD
Born on the Island of Ré in 1645.
A physician of La Rochelle, France, Elié Richard was a man of science, and a considerable celebrity in his day. He had built, in 1690, a dirigible vehicle that he used to travel about in on his professional work. The carriage was propelled by mechanism operated by a man-servant by means of a treadle. The operator was placed on the rear of the carriage, and the occupant, seated in front, steered by a winch attached to a small wheel. This construction was frequently referred to by contemporaries of Richard, and even later on, and was copied by others during the following hundred years or so.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ
Born at Leipsic, Germany, July 6, 1646. Died at Hanover, November 14, 1716.
Leibnitz, in addition to his work as a philosopher and mathematician, was also interested in mechanics. He gave some attention to the study of the possibility of making improvements in common road vehicles, and he endeavored to encourage, though without results, his contemporary, Denis Papin.
HUMPHREY MACKWORTH
Born in 1647. Died in 1727.
A celebrated English politician and capitalist, Sir Humphrey Mackworth matriculated at Magdalene College, Oxford, December 11, 1674. He was entered at the Middle Temple, in June, 1675, and called to the bar in 1682. In 1695 he was engaged in developing collieries and copper and smelting works at Melencryddan, near Neath, Wales, and the improvements introduced by him there were of the greatest value. Among other improvements he constructed a wagon-way from the mines, and propelled his coal-carrying cars by sails.
DENIS PAPIN
Born at Bloys, France, August 22, 1647. Died in England, 1712.
Papin was a son and nephew of a physician. He studied medicine in Paris and practiced for some time, attaining distinction in his profession. A passion for the sciences, mathematics and physics drew him away from medical practice and he became skillful in other lines. He followed assiduously the footsteps of Huygens and in some respects became a rival of his master in original thought and experimenting and in professional attainments.
Papin invented in 1698 a carriage that was fitted with a steam engine as such is now understood; that is, a cylinder and a piston. This was probably the first vehicle of its kind known in Europe. The construction was a model merely, a toy which ran around the room, but it is said to have worked well. Concerning this invention, Papin said: "I believe that one might use this invention for other things besides raising water. I have made a little model of a carriage that is propelled by this force. I have in mind what I can do, but I believe that the unevenness and turns of the highway will make this invention very difficult to perfect for carriages or road use." Although encouraged to prosecute his work by the Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, his doubts could not be overcome in regard to the practicability of his proposed carriage. He still claimed, however, that by the aid of such vehicles, infantry could probably be moved as quickly as cavalry and without the necessity of heavy impedimenta of food and other supplies.
VAUCAUSON
A celebrated French mechanician, Vaucauson, in April, 1740, built a vehicle "to go without horses." He was visited at his palace in Rue Charonne, Paris, by King Louis Fifteenth, and the exhibition of this vehicle, which, according to reports, was propelled by a "simple watch spring," was reviewed in a journal of the time as follows:
"Yesterday, at 3 P.M. His Majesty, accompanied by several officers and high court functionaries, repaired to the palace of M. Vaucauson and took his seat on a species of throne specially prepared for his reception on a raised platform, whence he could clearly discern all the mechanism of the carriage in its gyrations through the avenues and alleys. The vehicle would seat two persons, and was painted scarlet, bordered in blue, ornamented with much gilding; the axle trees of the wheels were provided with brakes and set in motion by a fifth wheel, likewise well braked and bound with long ribbons of indented steel. Two chains communicated with a revolving lever in the hands of the conductor, who could at will start or stop the carriage without need of horses. His Majesty congratulated the skillful mechanician, ordering from him for his own use a similar vehicle to grace the royal stables. The Duke of Montemar, the Baron of Avenac and the Count of Bauzun, who had witnessed the trial, were unable to credit their own vision, so marvelous did the invention appear to them. Nevertheless, several members of the French Academy united in declaring that such a piece of mechanism could never circulate freely through the streets of any city."
Either from royal forgetfulness or thanks to the customary court intrigues to turn His Majesty from his purpose, or possibly because of the somewhat crude nature of the invention itself, the fact is that from that time forth not the slightest mention is to be found in history of the motor carriage of Vaucauson.
ROBINSON
It is on the authority of James Watt that Dr. Robinson is credited with having conceived the idea of driving carriages by steam power. Watt wrote as follows:
"My attention was first directed to the subject of steam engines by the late Dr. Robinson, then a student in the University of Glasgow, afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He, in 1759, threw out the idea of applying the power of the steam engine to the moving of wheel carriages, and to other purposes, but the scheme was soon abandoned on his going abroad."
ERASMUS DARWIN
Born at Elton, Nottinghamshire, England, December 12, 1731. Died at Derby, April 18, 1802.
Having studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and at Edinburgh, Darwin settled as a physician at Litchfield and gained a large practice. In 1781 he moved to Derby. He was a man of remarkable scientific attainments and a voluminous writer of poetry that was pervaded by enthusiasm and love of nature, but had little poetic quality.
Darwin, wrote most of his poetry and evolved most of his ideas as he drove about the country in a doctor's covered sulky that was piled high with books and writing materials. He was in correspondence with Benjamin Franklin and Matthew Boulton about 1765 in regard to steam, and writing to Boulton, said: "As I was riding home yesterday I considered the scheme of the fiery chariot, and the longer I contemplated this favorite idea, the more practicable it appeared to me. I shall lay my thoughts before you, crude and undigested as they appeared to me, and by these hints you may be led into various trains of thinking upon this subject, and by that means (if any hints can assist your genius, which, without hints, is above all others I am acquainted with) be more likely to approve or disapprove. And as I am quite mad of the scheme, I hope you will not show this paper to anyone. These things are required: (1) a rotary motion; (2) easily altering its direction to any other direction; (3) to be accelerated, retarded, destroyed, revived, instantly and easily; (4) the bulk, the weight, the expense of the machine to be as small as possible in proportion to its weight." Darwin gave sketches and suggested that the steam carriage should have three or four wheels, and be driven by an engine having two cylinders open at the top, and the steam condensed in the bottom of the cylinder, on Newcomen's principle. The steam was to be admitted into the cylinders by cocks worked by the person in charge of the steering wheel, the injection cock being actuated by the engine. The "fiery chariot" never went beyond this suggestion, however.
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH