BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

THE STORY OF THE MOTOR CAR

DEVELOPMENT FROM A BICYCLE.

Dear Boys,— By chance I glanced out of the office window, and there drawn up against the opposite pavement was a long dark green car with black roof and highly polished woodwork. The radiator gleamed silver in the morning sunlight, and I could just see the outline of an oblong nameplate. "Come and see the Rolls," I called to Wendy, who was poring over some papers on her desk nearby. "A Rolls-Royce ?" she said, and joined me at the window. "Nothing very startling about it," she murmured, and after a short pause, during which she carefully studied the automobile, continued, "but it has something distinguished about it." So my mind was turned to motor cars. Since the very first days of man's existence he must have had dreams of a fast moving vehicle in which he could travel quickly from place to place. Steam seems to have been the first mechanical power utilised by man to drive his chariots along, and there was on the road, long before the first motor car, a steam-driven car made by William Murdoch. This queer contraption of wheels, cylinders and pistons, chuffed and jJuffed along in the year 1785, but'it was not until 1886 that Daimler's petrol engine was constructed. Curiously, it is not the steam engine which, is the father of the motor car, for steam requires far too much weight in fuel and water to make it really suitable for a small self-contained carriage, whereas an internal combustion engine /does away with all this.—there is no coal, there is no boiler, and there is very little water required for its functioning. Thus, we see, it is the gas engine from which the motor car really springs. The gas engine was perfected in 1876 by Dr. Nicholas Otto, by Gottliebj Daimler, "who|iiad been to England and serve*! witii a taiaous British engineering firm. ; This engine, however, was a slow mover, its flywheel making only a minute. Daimler determined to produce a lighter engine of greater speed, and this he did in spite of all opinion to the contrary. Few people believed that it could be done; it was said that the speed would shatter the engine, or burn it up, or wear it out. But Daimler had faith and vision, and every motor car in the world to-day witnesses that he was right. This engine, which used petrol, was made in 1886, and ran for three years. Then Daimler made a «econd, fitted it to a bicycle, and rode it. His first motor bicycle engine conveyed the power through a flywheel by means of a belt, but he improved on this by making a two-cylinder engine With the piston rods coupled to a single crank. This little machine ran about the streets until it snorted its way into wider notice, and a French firm purchased the right to use the dbgine. Tn the hands of this firm the motor car took; its place on the roads of the world in 1891. The motor car, from this ✓'Pi romantic beginning, has won its way /J/ f to fame all over the world, and in its vT/. ■> short existence the tiny petrol motor has changed the surface of the world.