AUTOMOBILE EVOLUTION

The automobile has been around for more than 100 years. The first automobiles were basically horse-drawn buggiesand carriages powered by gasoline-fueled engines instead of horses. They were called gas buggies and horseless carriages. The early engines had one cylinder that could produce only one or two horsepower. A horsepower is roughly the power of one horse.

The first automobile was a gas buggy built by Karl Benz in Germany in 1885 and 1886. It had three wheels, one in the front and two in the rear. That year another German, gottlieb Daimler, mounted an engine in a wooden bicycle. The next year he also built a four-wheel gas buggy.

Two brothers Charles and Frank Duryea, built the first automobile in the United States in 1893. By 1895, Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and others were buiolding cars in this country. By 1900, several factories in detroit and elsewhere were makingautomobiles. Most manufacturers were building cars that kept getting bigger and more expensive. Ford wanted to make cars as cheaply as possible so more people could buy them. By 1908, He had the car in production that put America on wheels. This was the Model T Ford were sold.