Early Steam Cars
Although the first applications of steam to propelling a road vehicle were attempted in the 17th century, it was not until the advent of high pressure steam engines, in the early 19th century, that such vehicles became a practical proposition. Limitations in manufacturing technology and the poor condition of road surfaces meant that nothing that could be realistically regarded as a 'steam car', suitable for personal transportation, was created until the end of the 19th century. Despite this, the story that a pair of Yorkshiremen, engineer Robert Fourness and his cousin, physician James Ashworth had a steam carriage running in 1788, after having been granted a British Patent, No.1674 of December 1788, insists on cropping up. An illustration of it even appeared in Hergé's book "Tintin raconte l'Histoire de l'Automobile" (Casterman, 1953).
Read more about this topic: Steam Car
Famous quotes containing the words early, steam and/or cars:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A steam ran small and terrible and shrill;
it was so still;
the stream ran from the oak-copse
and returned and ran
back into shadow.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)