Imagine you are a little boy living in the 1950s. You have been working hard at school to get the best possible grades you can manage, because if you do well, your parents have promised you a special reward. They will take you to the bookshop and you can choose any book you like! You have already decided which book you want to choose, a book about Motor Cars, with lots of pictures inside. You just hope you get the grades you need!
When I showed the children this Pageant Picture Book; ‘Motors’ they were intrigued, not so much by the book, but by the pictures contained inside. Children are, of course, very familiar with modern cars, but they were amazed to see what some of the older cars looked like, and several thought they looked slightly ‘more handsome’ than cars of today. The cars which truly intrigued them most though were the experimental cars – they were amazed to think about people experimenting with making ‘crazy cars so long ago – I thought people only did that now!’
Automobiles, or cars as we usually call them today, have a remarkably long history, dating right back to the 1700s and, during their entire history, have involved a lot of experimentation. In 1768 Nicolas Joseph Cugnot design the first ever steam powered automobile which was able to be used for transport while in 1807 Francois Isaac de Rivaz created the first car powered by internal combustion. This car had an internal combustion engine which used a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, which was ignited with an electric spark. His engine was certainly not the same as those used in cars today, but was a remarkable step forwards. However, it wasn’t commercially successful and like many other early cars, it didn’t catch on.
The idea of a combustion engine had merit though, and in the late 1870s Nikolaus Otto created the four stroke internal combustion engine which is most often used today. Although the internal combustion engine was successful and became well used, people still continued to experiment with different ways of powering cars (and in fact steam powered cars were still being experimented with into the 20th century). Electric engines to power car’s first appeared in the 1800s, with the Flocken Elektrowagen, created by Andreas Flocken in 1888, considered to be the first fully operational electric car. It was the 1950s though which brought about perhaps the most dangerous experiments concerning powering cars – nuclear powered cars! These cars had tiny nuclear reactors on board, but the technology was soon abandoned because it was incredibly dangerous. Of course, today people continue to experiment with ways to power cars, looking for cleaner, greener options – but there is nothing new about the experimentation process itself!