Hot Cars of the 1890s (Yes, You Read That Right)
Alex Reale
· 3 min read
When we get frustrated with the slight interruption of our favorite podcast during the transition from Airpods to car Bluetooth, as we’re settling into our heated driver’s seats, it can be helpful to recall
days of yore
.It wasn’t too long ago that people were getting wagons stuck in the middle of Oklahoma and founding entire towns. Over the years, many brilliant inventors have set their minds to solving the problem of moving humans from place to place, and the whole process started even earlier than you might think.
The French connection
The first “car” on the record was the brainchild of French army engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, according to
Connexion France
. Cugnot was working on a way to transport military equipment when he figured out how to power a horse-drawn cart with steam.His first full-size model was completed in 1770, and it could carry five tons of equipment and go just under 2.5 mph. It could even go backward. Cugnot’s "fardier à vapeur" (or “steam dray”) also takes the crown for the first official car accident in the history of humankind: it ran into a wall during a test in Paris.
Hopping over to Germany
40 years after the death of Cugnot, in neighboring Germany, another important person in the history of cars was born. His name was Carl Benz, and he would be remembered for patenting the “vehicle powered by a gas engine” in 1886, according to
Daimler
. His inventions and contributions are widely considered to comprise the origin story of the modern car.He would go on to invent the double-pivot steering system and several types of engine configurations. Eventually, Benz merged with engineer Gottlieb Daimler and other business partners, and the forerunner of Mercedes-Benz was born. Germany in the 1890s was a terrifically exciting place to be for fans of transportation innovation.
An American contribution
On the other side of the pond, a Scotsman-turned-Iowan named William Morrison was toiling in Des Moines. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot preferred steam, and Carl Benz worked with gasoline, but Morrison was interested in a different power source: electricity. He was a chemist whose passion was tinkering with batteries, and he was determined to come up with something that could power a vehicle, as recorded by the
Iowa History Journal
.His efforts eventually paid off. In 1890, the U.S. was introduced to its first electric car, a six-seater that topped out at 14 mph. This sparked interest in electric vehicles nationwide, and Americans briefly lived in a world where electricity ran the show.
It wasn’t until Henry Ford’s cheap Model T came out and Texas crude oil made gas prices reasonable that gas-powered vehicles took over, according to the
Department of Energy
. 100-odd years later, we are watching the popularity of companies like Tesla recreate the world of the 1890s. William Morrison would be proud.
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