HOW CARS CONQUERED THE WORLD
The car is an inescapable fact of modern life. Along with other motorised road vehicles, it can be used for personal journeys, as a means of income, can power economies and move entire armies. In transportation terms, it has completely changed the way humanity has administered, laid out and policed itself since it was invented in the 1880s.
The car’s ubiquity has been revolutionary, transforming the human experience in just over 100 years. Its presence has had both a significantly positive and – as climate change makes increasingly clear – negative impact on the world. Today the relationship between people and cars is under ever-increasing scrutiny. However, compared to the current debate the car’s origins are less well known, and its early history is intriguing and often surprising.
Tom Standage, the author of the recently published A Brief History of Motion, is an expert on historical engineering and technology. His book explores the confusing and bumpy road that led to the invention of the car and how it became an essential part of the modern world’s development. He discusses steampowered road vehicles; why the inventions of cars, bicycles and railways are inextricably linked and how smartphones could shape the future of transport.
How old is the concept of the car?
The word ‘car’ has meant different things at different times. At the end of the 19th century a car was a ‘streetcar’, or a tram. Before streetcars there were ‘horse cars’, which were omnibuses pulled by horses on rails. The word ‘car’ became applicable to what was previously called a ‘horseless carriage’ or possibly a motor car. The ‘automobile’, as they call it in America, was itself an import from the French.
The history of this is deep and has
