The ambivalence of automobile invention

The history of automobile is uncertain and dates as back in the history as the 15th century when Leonardo Da Vinci started creating designs and models for transport vehicles. Even though the patent for the invention of automobile has been registered by Karl Benz in 1886, there had been inventions in different parts of the automobile industry before that. Some of the crucial, worth-mentioning dates and inventions are as mentioned below.


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Year	Name	Invention/Patent
1680	Christiaan Huygens (Dutch astronomer)	Designed the first Internal Combustion (IC) engine operable with gun powder but never built it
1769	Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (French Inventor)	Built the first self-propelled vehicle for French military
1826	Samuel Brown (English Engineer)	Altered a steam engine that could utilize gasoline (unfortunately the model didn’t get adopted by the public)
1832	Robert Anderson (Scottish inventor)	Devised the first crude electric carriage
1858	Jean Joseph-Etienne Lenoir (Belgian Inventor)	Patented a double-acting, electric spark-ignition combustion engine powered by coal gas
1873	George Brayton (American Engineer and inventor)	Originated the first two stroke engine that was operable on kerosene (was safe and practical)
1876	Nikoulas Otto (German Engineer)	Patented a four-stroke engine
1885	Gottlieb Daimler (German Engineer)	Created the first prototype of modern gasoline engine
1886	Karl Benz (German Engine Designer and automotive engineer)	Received the first patent for the first practical series production of a practical automobile
1895	Rudolf Diesel (German Mechanical Engineer and Inventor)	Patented the first safe, practical and efficient IC engine

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Keeping all these events in mind we can only speculate the invention of the first automobile. It is difficult to say from the aforementioned data about the invention of automobile in reality and yet some suggest that Karl Benz might’ve been the one to actually invented the first automobile. This was also because his model was consistent, practical and efficiently put together.

There have also been claims that the first ‘drivable’ automobile was assembled by Nicolas Joseph Cugnot for the military, even Daimler’s model could be called the first automobile that came into use.

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It is still ambiguous as to which could have been the first invention of the automobile but surely the history of automobile holds a prodigious record and Karl Benz has so far been widely accepted as the inventor of the first automobile.

Although the automobile invention went to his name there have been 100s of patents registered after that time even with the individual components and parts of automobiles.

By: Mitali P