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Show Just How the Automobile Began 1 TORTUNATE that it was an apple that dropped upon tho head of Sir Isaac Newton. If it had been a rock (or his occiput had been more bony), we might never have heard of the law of gravitation. With this discovery his name is associated by every schoolboy. But r.obody ever thinks of connecting him with the Invention of tho automobile. Yet the latter was originally his idea- He never built one, but ho made drawings of It, and left behind him a full description, so that rccenth a working model was constructed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Its main feature, as you may see from the picture, is a steam boiler Tho first automobile that really ran, however, was built and operated by a French artillery engineer named Cugnot, in 1769, which was seventy-nine seventy-nine years later than Sir Isaac's Invention. In-vention. This remarkable machine somewhat icrombled a modern motortruck, savo that it had only ono wheel In front. At its forward end it carried a steam holler that looked llko a huge covered cooking pot. The ste-am generated in this pot energized the pistons of two cylinders, which acted alternately upon tho front wheel of the vehicle, causing tho latter to revolve A man seated amidships on tho car steered it with a handle-bar that controlled the front wheel. Tho car ran at a rate of three or four miles an hour. Ono day, whfU tearing at this breakneck speed through Paris, it upset in turning a corner, with a great crash. This ac- ent convinced the municipal authorities au-thorities that it was too dangerous to bo at largo; and so it was grabbed by tho polico and Interned in the arsenal. It is interesting, however, to consider con-sider that this was tho first vehicle of steam locomotion ever seen on land 1 cr sco. jfl Firt motorcar thst ever really ran, the Cugnot, A. D. 1769. Sir lanc tfcwtoua aufcffiwbac, A. D. 1690. Copyright, leih. bTuiiic Lrvctn Company .. |