Humans
have possessed knowledge of the wheel for several thousand years and carts have
been mentioned in literature as far back as the second millennium B.C. In some
sense, the earliest fore runners of the car date back to the earliest mists of
our pre history. The wagon existed in its animal-drawn form for thousands of
years before it was possible to make it self-propelled, literally an
"auto-mobile."
Ironically, this ‘technological toy’ was invented by a Flemish missionary named
Ferdinand Verbiest as a toy for the Chinese emperor. Considering this is over
200 years before the construction of what's generally considered the first
modern automobile, this was a remarkable achievement, yet we are not sure if
this was an actual invention or a figment of Verbiest’s own imagination. What
we can be assured of is this- Although Steam technology was still in its
infancy at the time, Verbiest’s rudimentary, ball-shaped boiler, which then
forced steam towards a turbine that could turn the back wheels, was effectively
one of the earliest scale models of an automobile.
At the end of the seventeenth century, existing vehicular technology was more
than adequate to meet the demands of society. In the age of absolute monarchs,
it was more important to solve other engineering challenges that were difficult
or impossible to achieve with conventional energy sources. While no one was
really tackling this subject directly, the legendary Dutch scientist Christian
Huygens did take a crucial step towards the car in 1673, one year after
Verbiest reputedly began work on his ‘technological’ toy for the emperor of
China. The 1700’s were dominated by various inventors trying to perfect the
steam engine.
From Karl Benz’s automobile production being the first in the 18th century to the 20th century where the
automobile industry started spreading its wings in various parts of the world,
cars have certainly evolved in terms of technological
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