Steam car

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacquot steam car , 1878
First commercial steam car London Steam Carriage by Richard Trevithick , 1803
L'Obéissante by Amédée Bollée (photo 1875)

A steam-driven vehicle , a short steam car or steam automobile is a motor vehicle , by means of the steam engine , the steam engine or steam turbine by a steam generator (usually boiler ) is driven ( heat engine with external combustion engine, unlike the internal combustion engine ). Cheap fuels such as firewood , coal , coke or tar oil can be used as fuel to generate steam .

Steam trucks were the very first motor vehicles: Nicholas Cugnot started with an artillery tractor ( French: Fardier = truck) in 1769 . The La Mancelle , developed by Amédée Bollée in 1878, was the first steam car to be built in series with 50 units (a good 10 years before Carl Benz presented his Benz patent motor car number 3 to a wide audience at the Paris World Exhibition in 1889 ). In 1906, Fred Marriott set a world speed record for steam-powered automobiles at 205.5 km / h on the Daytona Beach Road Course with the model Stanley Rocket Steamer .

Until around 1920 the steam drive competed with gasoline engines and electric cars (e.g. La Jamais Contente was the first car to drive over 100 km / h), until the internal combustion engine finally prevailed with technical improvements and a growing network of filling stations . Steam buses and occasionally steam-powered trucks , tractors and road rollers were in use as  commercial vehicles for a long time until the 1950s .

Demarcation

Lena steam tractor from Wallis & Steevens, built in 1905

This article describes steam cars, so cars and commercial vehicles with steam propulsion, the people - or goods transport were built, unlike steam machines , steam tractors , steam rollers and other equipment. Locomobiles , also known as portable engines or portables for short , are, on the other hand, only steam engines that can be towed to different locations with their chassis, i.e. usually not motor vehicles without their own propulsion .

Early developments

Fardier by Nicholas Cugnot , 1769

Beginning in the 17th century in China

In the 17th century, Ferdinand Verbiest in China built and described the operational model of a steam car for the first time, but without a picture. See also history of the automobile .

Fardier by Nicholas Cugnot (1769)

A steam car was first presented to the European public by Nicholas Cugnot in Paris in 1769 . Previously, wagons were moved by humans or animals, or rarely, by the wind. The steam engine built into the Fardier corresponded to that of the Russian Iwan Iwanowitsch Polsunow from 1763. Presumably through publications in the Siberian letters of the explorer Laxmann , information flowed to France. The Fardier was unsuccessful from the start, however, because the vehicle drove into the surrounding wall of the military barracks during a demonstration in front of high military officials and broke through it; Cugnot had forgotten to put brakes on the steam truck.

The original Fardier was initially kept in the Arsenal and has been in the Musée des arts et métiers in Paris since 1800 . A working replica belongs to the DB Museum in Nuremberg and is on display there after it was shown on loan at the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum in the USA from 2005 to 2011 .

Richard Trevithick's models from 1797, 1801, 1803

Puffing Devil street locomotive by Richard Trevithick , 1801 (replica)

The British inventor , engineer and mechanical engineer Richard Trevithick built his first steam car model in 1797. The boiler was heated with the help of a glowing cast iron rod which was inserted into the flame tube instead of the real furnace. In 1801 he set up one of his new small steam engines on wheels in Camborne . This “street locomotive”, known as the Puffing Devil , carried passengers at a speed of 8 km / h even over inclines.

After building the world's first steam train locomotive in 1802 , he constructed another self-propelled vehicle in 1803, the London Steam Carriage , which was basically a stagecoach equipped with a steam engine . It caught the attention of the public and the press, but was much more expensive to operate than an ordinary horse-drawn carriage and therefore could not prevail.

Ground drives with stilts and push rods

At the beginning of the 19th century, vigorous research began to get to grips with the fundamental problems of steam-powered automobiles. In 1811 the British engineer William Brunton (1777-1852) patented a drive for steam cars that was based on the forelegs of horses. A steam engine on wheels drove this stilt-like frame and reached walking speed with the equivalent of two horsepower. "Brunton's mechanical traveler" did not get beyond the prototype stage; the steam boiler exploded, killing several spectators.

In December 1824, the Scottish inventor David Gordon (1774–1829) filed a patent that was supposed to use push rods to move the “Steam Carriage” even on inclines. The Times described the problem in 1825:

“A big problem are the wheels that slip on the road without moving as soon as the slightest incline or a heavy load makes the friction on the axle greater than that between the edge of the wheels and the ground; all the power of the machine is then only used to spin the wheels without the car moving even an inch. "

The minibuses that Gordon and his competitor Gurney built almost simultaneously were driven by several push rods that were connected to the steam engine via axles. To accelerate, the driver lowered the tips of the rods downwards; when it went down the mountain, he raised the construction. Gordon's car, unlike Gurney's, was front-wheel drive. Six push rods were in use. To make steering easier, the automobile only had one wheel at the front. The passengers sat in a row, one behind the other.

First steam buses as public transport

Replica of Walter Hancocks Enterprise , the first steam bus designed for regular service, 1833
Sir Charles Dances steam car and trailer before departure for Brighton; London, The Strand, Wellington Street, 1833

First omnibuses: Gurney 1826, Hancock 1827, Dance 1833

In 1826 the Englishman Sir Goldsworthy Gurney constructed a steam bus . He was followed by his compatriot Walter Hancock (1799-1852), who began manufacturing steam buses from 1827, with which regular services were operated until the 1830s. In 1829 the line from Fulham to Brompton was started with an eight-seater car that was 12 mph (just under 20 km / h). His steam car Infant , built in 1829, was a more compact ten-seater, which from 1831 initially served the route from Stratford to London - Whitechapel in trial operation . This was established in 1833 as the second public steam car connection. At the premiere, however, the car is said to have been pelted with stones by spectators. The first line had recently been set up by the London and Paddington Steam Carriage Company . It ran from London Wall via Islington to Paddington and was operated with Hancocks Enterprise , the first motor vehicle specially built for public transport. In 1836 there were already 700 trips.

Sir Charles Dance acquired three Gurney tractors in 1831, which were fitted with kettles according to Dance's plans. They pulled passenger trailers with 16 seats. Dance operated so from February 21, 1831 a bus route with trips every four hours from Cheltenham to Gloucester , a distance of about nine miles. Operations ran smoothly six days a week until June 22, 1831. During this time, over 4000 passengers were carried and 3640 miles were covered. According to the timetable, 50 minutes per trip were required, but the cars occasionally made it in under 40 minutes. Investors for another line from Glasgow to Edinburgh jumped off when one of the Cheltenham-Gloucester type tractors was overwhelmed.

technology

English designers at this time solved some fundamental problems in chassis technology: In 1825, William Henry James (1796–1873) patented a drive with one steam engine per rear wheel, which avoided difficulties with a differential - a solution that Amédée Bollée (1844– 1917) fell back in 1873 and used the De Dion, Bouton & Trépardoux until the end of the 19th century. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) had already invented the stub axle steering earlier, but not patented it. Unaware of this, it was later reinvented and patented three times: in 1816 by Georg Lankensperger (1779–1847) and Rudolph Ackermann (1764–1834), in 1873 also by Bollée père and in 1891 by Carl Benz . The Ackermann control - or A-control avoided another fundamental problem of every motor vehicle.

Boom and setback in England

Dr. Church's steam carriage (1835); the somewhat transfigured illustration from 1900 mentions a wrong date
First Burstall & Hill steam car, 1824

In the 19th century there were just in England a number of steam engines, such as from Bishop & Sons , which also Omnibus - structures were provided.

Numerous accidents, especially broken axles and steam pipe explosions clouded the euphoria and also led to legal restrictions in the second half of the 19th century, above all the Red Flag Act of 1865, which forbade steam car drivers to drive around freely.

The German engineer Joseph Ritter von Baader criticized in his 1835 book The Impossibility of Introducing Steam Cars on Ordinary Roads with Advantage as a General Means of Transport, the alleged English successes with “Chaussee-Dampfwagen”, ie road-going, steam-powered automobiles or buses. He thought the idea of ​​transferring the success of the steam train to normal roads was technically impracticable, mainly because of the bumps. He calculated the force that such a steammobile had to use to move a wheel out of a depression and compared it with the considerably lower force that a horse would need for the same process due to the leverage effect. With satisfaction he quoted English failures with steam wagons, such as this one in July 1827:

“The inventors tried their steam car. After walking around the perimeter of their courtyard across from New Bedlam "(somewhat ominous!)" He came out, and, making a slight turn to get onto the great road, one of the wheels stayed in one Stuck tracks from soft ground. Thereupon the kettle jumped with a powerful explosion. Only a small service boy and a machinist were seriously wounded, although around twenty people tried to get the bike out of the track. "

Timothy Burstall (1776-1860) was a railroad engineer who held various patents on road transportation. The car in the accident was his second steam car, a three-axle vehicle with a car body separated from the boiler.

Around 1840 interest in steam car connections decreased. In addition to the official resistance, high road tariffs and the lobbying of truck drivers and landed gentry contributed to this. A boiler explosion as a result of an operator error, which Infant destroyed in 1840, had a fatal effect . As a result, the steam buses lost their approval. After that, a lot of specialist knowledge was lost, which the pioneers of the second generation (who mainly came from France) had to acquire again. Infant was able to climb a 5 percent incline on frozen ground as early as 1831 where horse-drawn carts failed.

More steam cars in the UK

Robert William Thomsons Road Steamer, ca.1867
Grenville Steam Carriage (1875), probably the oldest working steam car

Tricycles remained the preferred design. They were willing to accept the disadvantage of lower stability and to avoid problems with complicated and possibly vulnerable steering. Coal was the preferred fuel until the 1880s. This was the reason why most steam cars had to be built large and heavy. In order to be able to transport the minimum number of people required for economic operation, a correspondingly large amount of coal had to be carried along, which required a strong (and again consumption-intensive) machine.

The Scottish engineer Robert William Thomson developed a turntable machine . As early as 1845, 43 years before John Boyd Dunlop's invention, he had patented a pneumatic tire , which, however, was not suitable for steam cars for reasons of cost and the weight of the vehicles. In 1867 he presented a steam tractor of his own design that had been developed for the transport of sugar bowls on Java. He went back to his old idea with elastic tires and in 1867 patented a wheel system with solid rubber tires that were held on the rim by friction force ; The deformation of the tire due to the weight of the vehicle resulted in a larger contact area and thus better driving characteristics on soft surfaces. Other designers also used Thomson's elastic wheel . His cars were also well designed, exported to the Far East and built under license in both the UK and the USA.

Another British representative of this second generation was Thomas Rickett from Buckingham (Buckinghamshire) , who built light steam tricycles from 1858 and was able to sell some. Catley and Ayres from York built a very simply constructed steam tricycle in 1868. The boiler could probably only be heated when the vehicle was stationary. It was steered with a lever and the power was transferred to a rear wheel by means of a chain. Because the other turned freely, the vehicle did not need a differential . In return, the car with the two-piston engine mounted horizontally and the standing boiler in the rear was light and beautifully finished. Robert Neville Grenville built a steam car in 1875 with George Jackson Churchward , later head of the locomotive division of the Great Western Railway , which still exists and is even driven occasionally.

French pioneers

Amédée Bollée père La Mancelle (1878); View diagonally from behind of the position of the heater.
The driver's seat is in the front, the passengers sit opposite each other in the middle; the convertible top should also protect against sparks and coal dust
Serpollet steam tricycle , reproduced under license by Peugeot in 1888 as Type 1
De Dion-Bouton steam bus, similar to that for a London transport company in 1899
; Georges Bouton on the handlebars

Amédée Bollée and the first series steam car La Mancelle

Amédée Bollée (1844–1917), son of the bell founder Ernest-Sylvain Bollée, was a French bell founder and automobile pioneer from Le Mans who constructed his first steam car , the obedient ("l'Obéissante"), in his company in 1873 . In 1875 he drove it from Le Mans to Paris in 18 hours, for which he received 75 police warnings on the way. He named other vehicles “the ones from Le Mans” (“ La Mancelle ”), the fast ones , the new ones . The La Mancelle from 1878 is with some certainty the first motor vehicle in which the drive was housed at the front under a hood and with a power transmission by means of a cardan shaft to spur gears and from there with chains to the rear wheels. In addition to the missing gear, this is the arrangement of the pioneering Panhard system invented by Emile Levassor in 1891 . With 50 copies, La Mancelle was also the first steam car to be built in series.

A heavier advancement was La Marie-Anne , a huge 100 hp machine that could pull 35 tons over a 6 percent incline. It had a three-speed gearbox and a tender for coal and water, the wheels of which were additionally driven. Bollée also used it to design an artillery tractor , which the French army was not interested in. Amédée Bollée père left the car production to his sons Léon and Amédée fils in 1880 . Only the latter built a few steam cars until 1881, after which both cars were built with gasoline engines.

The engineer Léon Le Cordier acquired a license from Bollée to evaluate the drive technology of "l'Obéissante" . He planned the establishment of public connections with steam cars based on the English model, but the project failed early on, not least because of local official resistance.

Together with A. Dalifol , Bollée designed a rail bus with all-wheel drive by means of a cardan shaft for the Compagnie des Omnibus de Paris , which could drive short distances without rails with a device for removing and locking the rails as well as all-wheel steering . Dalifol mainly built trams, but from 1895 to 1899 also built road vehicles. From 1895 to 1900, Dalifol worked on a further development of Heinrich and Wolfgang Hildebrand's steam motorcycles .

Gardner-Serpollet steam engine

Henri Serpollet (1848–1915) and his brother Léon Serpollet (1858–1907) founded the Gardner-Serpollet company in 1881to manufacture steam cars, which increasingly focused on commercial vehicles. In 1888 an improved boiler was patented which initially only heated as much water as was needed to start up. The remaining water was only evaporated on the way, which greatly shortened the start-up time. In 1896 another improvement came with the automatic metering of the petroleum furnace. The company also produced trams cars and increasingly buses and other commercial vehicles , from 1900 as Gardner Serpollet. Production ended in 1907 with the death of Léon Serpollet. The first Peugeot from 1889 was a Serpollet licensed steam tricycle.

De Dion, Bouton & Trépardoux

The mechanic Georges Bouton (1847–1938) and the engineer Charles-Armand Trépardoux (1853–1920), with financial support from Count Albert de Dion , succeeded in developing a compact, safe and quickly heatable boiler that could be used universally. In 1884 the three of them entered into a partnership to market it and manufacture steam vehicles, which eventually resulted in De Dion, Bouton & Trépardoux . Her La Marquise was the only participant in the reliability drive from Neuilly to the Bois de Boulogne and back, which is considered the first motorsport event in history. The Count won the Paris – Rouen race in 1894 with a five-person Remorqueur à vapeur with a “Victoria” trailer, almost like a drive in front of two gasoline vehicles, but was relegated to second place because of the “awkwardness” of the vehicle . The company also built heavy commercial vehicles and buses, including for London transport companies, before gradually switching to gasoline engines. The Sociéte de Chaudières et de Voitures à Vapeur in Paris built their heavy commercial vehicles with steam drive of the Scotte brand until 1917; the formerly overpowering competition from De Dion-Bouton and Serpollet had long since changed or given up.

Other French manufacturers of steam cars were H. Brulé et Cie , Gillet-Forest , Jacquot and Secrétand steam cars .

Development in other countries

Germany and Austria-Hungary

Replica of Josef Božek's steam car (1815)

The Czech-born Josef Božek (1782–1835) had built a functional steam car as early as 1815. There was little interest in it.

Regardless of the aforementioned writing by the engineer Ritter von Baader, the everyday suitability of steam cars was also tested in Germany. A Weimar master locksmith Roese presented his "Chaussee steam car" on May 13, 1846 in downtown Eisenach .

The F. Wöhlert'sche engineering institute and iron foundry in Berlin acquired père 1879 replica rights to two constructions of Amedee Bollee, namely at the Dampfdroschke "La Mancelle" and the commercial vehicle "La Marie-Anne"; the latter indirectly through the engineer Le Cordier and together with Berthold Arons , who had connections to the Arons banking house . Le Cordier and Arons founded the Dampfwagen Centralgesellschaft , which was supposed to set up a public bus transport system in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Sweden.

From 1879 to 1880, 22 Wöhlert-Bollée steam cabs and some buses and a steam tug were built in Berlin. The experiments ended after the city authorities had banned the use of public roads because the almost 5-ton buses and tractors damaged the pavement. As a result, the Dampfwagen Centralgesellschaft and Wöhlert had to close - previously posted.

The Kingdom of Saxony's first steam-powered automobile , the Schöche Steam Car No. 1 , was produced in 1895. The copy has been preserved and is in the Dresden Transport Museum .

Thury-Nussberg steam tricycle, 1877

Switzerland: Thury and Nussberg

In 1877 the Swiss Thury and Nussberg built a steam tricycle . The vehicle has been preserved.

United States (USA)

Patent drawing of the Long steam tricycle from 1883
Roper Steam Velocipede , 1868; Drawing from 1921; the year of construction is not confirmed.
Locomobile Spindle Seat Runabout, 1900; one of the cheapest "steamers" built in the USA

The construction of individual steam-powered road vehicles has been documented in the USA since the late 1850s. One of the pioneers is undoubtedly Richard Dudgeon (1819–?) The talented mechanic and owner of a workshop in Long Island built his first steam car from 1853–1857, which was lost in a fire at an exhibition in New York in 1858. In 1866 he built a second, which looked not dissimilar to a locomotive and carried up to eight passengers reliably. John J. Grant also built a functioning steam car in Cleveland in 1864 . After a woman and a child were injured in an accident, Grant never used the vehicle again. Sylvester H. Roper (1823–1896) from Cambridge (Massachusetts) experimented 1867–1869 and 1886–1896 with steam motorcycles (and had a fatal accident). Because there is no patent, the exact date is difficult to determine. However, fair demonstrations in the 1860s and 1870s are documented. 1880–1883, George A. Long built a working steam tricycle , which he patented in 1883.

Production on an economic basis began in the 1890s.

The basis was provided by Francis Edgar and Freelan O. Stanley , who around 1897 had developed a thin-walled and therefore very light boiler. They achieved the required compressive strength by reinforcing the outer shell with a mesh of piano wire. They later developed a machine to make this wickerwork. The steam engine weighed only about 23 kg, the boiler 22 kg. This allowed the construction of lighter steam cars and thus inexpensive production. In these early steam mobiles, the driver literally sat on top of the boiler and the burner below it. The steam engine was located in front of the boiler and drove the rear axle via a chain arranged lengthways in the middle . Only the front axle was sprung, but it had three transverse leaf springs attached above the axle. In 1898 the Stanleys sold their company and its patents for the astronomical sum of US $ 250,000, but retained the rights to the name. This resulted in the Locomobile Co. of America, whose products, however, did not enjoy the best reputation due to their negligent processing. At least the suspension was improved so much that there were now two longitudinally arranged leaf springs at the rear and a single transverse leaf spring at the front. A large number of small and very small companies copied the Stanley principle with and without a license.

The record holders: Francis Edgar and Freelan O. Stanley and their Stanley Motor Carriage Company

Stanley Gentleman's Speedy Runabout, 1906
Fred Marriott with the Stanley Rocket, the first vehicle to go over 200 km / h

The Stanley brothers continued to work on a new steam car even after they sold their company. In 1902 they re-founded a company to manufacture it. It was significantly more developed than the Locomobile, so that your Stanley Motor Carriage Company could offer it without fear of violating Locomobile licenses. The machine was attached directly to the rear axle in a lying position and transmitted the power by means of a spur gear . The suspension was conventional with four leaf springs. In the same year they bought back their old patents from Locomobile - the company switched to gasoline engines and then became known for one of the most exclusive cars in the USA - to pass them on to the White Motor Company . The Stanleys themselves no longer needed them. A new generation of passenger cars with the boiler in the bow appeared in 1905.

On January 23, 1906, Fred Marriott set the speed record for land vehicles to 205.5 km / h on the Ormond Beach Racecourse (in the immediate vicinity of Daytona Beach ) with the Stanley Rocket , which is powered by two steam engines . The absolute world record did not last long, but for steam-powered automobiles it remained until 2009, over 100 years. At the same time, Marriott set four other world records, including those for the fastest mile (28.33 seconds) and those for 5 miles. The latter fell in the course of a race. The following year "Rocket" also had a serious accident in Ormond ; Marriott suffered injuries and the vehicle was destroyed.

From 1914 Stanley also relied on capacitors . The brothers sold the company three years later. After the First World War , Stanley vehicles were fitted with capacitors that looked like the water coolers of conventional cars. Stanley steam cars continued to be built until 1927 with steadily dwindling sales figures. In advertising, the company proudly stated that a Stanley cauldron never exploded.

White Motor Company

Advert for a White from 1905

Thomas H. White founded the White Sewing Machine Co. in Cleveland , Ohio in 1876 . The sewing machine manufacturer began producing automobiles with two-piston steam engines and chain drives in 1900, when White's sons Windsor, Rollin and Walter joined the company. Vehicle manufacturing was made legally independent in 1902 under the name White Company and developed very successfully. In the next few years around 10,000 steam-powered automobiles were produced, with a growing proportion of gasoline and commercial vehicles. The Stanley patents acquired did not play a major role; Rollin White was a skilled designer himself. In 1905 Walter White qualified with a 40 HP White Steamer for the Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island ( New York ), but he retired with tire problems.

In 1906 White was ranked 9th among the largest US automakers, Stanley followed in 11th place. In 1909, the switch to vehicles with gasoline engines began. When US President William Howard Taft (1857–1930) ordered the first three automobiles for the White House in 1909 - one gasoline, one electric and one steam vehicle, his driver chose a White Steamer Model G for the latter Steam propulsion was made in 1911. The White Motor Company was not founded until 1914. In 1918 it gave up building passenger cars and concentrated on commercial vehicles.

Battle of engine technologies

Stanley Steamer on Mount Washington : Climbing this mountain in 1899 was a remarkable achievement.
Waltham Steam 6 HP Stanhope , around 1902 already with condenser and reverse gear, weighed only about 300 kg
White Steamer Model G Touring , 1909: one of the first three automobiles in the White House

Until the 1910s it was by no means clear whether electric, steam or combustion engines (petrol, diesel, gas) would prevail for road traffic. Each drive had specific advantages and disadvantages:

  • Steam cars not only accelerated better than gasoline vehicles and also performed very well in other respects (they were often even excluded from races because of their superiority), were reliable and had the simplest possible refill option: water was available everywhere from wells or cattle troughs. Another innovation was the condenser , which was widely introduced around 1910 , which cools the used steam into water and returns it to the cycle: It increased the initial range of the water filling considerably and also made the vehicle quieter. The burner also worked with practically any fuel; Most recently, easily available kerosene or heating oil was mainly used. The disadvantage was the often long preheating time: it took up to half an hour for the boiler to reach operating temperature. In addition, steam cars were usually heavy, expensive to manufacture and required more hand movements when driving. Although boiler explosions practically no longer occurred, there was still mistrust of the technology among the population and handling the burner could certainly lead to injuries.
  • Electric vehicles were quiet and very easy to use, but because of by the battery capacity limited scope to use only in cities. They asserted themselves as taxis in metropolitan areas, where there was a network of service stations, where mostly discharged batteries were exchanged for full ones instead of waiting for a long recharge. The system made owning an electric car uneconomical. The widespread rent , which included a certain number of replacement cycles per month, did not catch on with private customers.
  • Gasoline-powered vehicles were comparatively reliable and economical, but on the other hand they were also loud and smelly. In addition, both the fuel supply and its quality were often problematic in the beginning. Not to be underestimated is the impact of the Selden patent dispute by it was about a universal patent on automobiles with internal combustion engines: the promoters to the lawyer and inventor George B. Selden (1846-1922) threatened not only the manufacturers of such vehicles with patent lawsuits, but buyers too . That may well have induced one or the other to switch to steam or electric propulsion, which were not threatened by the lawsuit. The dispute was bitter for years and severely damaged the auto industry.

Around 4,200 automobiles were built in the United States in 1900. Of these, 1572 were operated with electricity, 1600 with steam and 1028 had an internal combustion engine or another drive concept. Of around 200 manufacturers who had a more or less mature concept to offer, only a handful survived until 1920.

The fight for supremacy was ultimately decided by two developments in favor of the gasoline engine:

  1. The electric starter, which Charles F. Kettering had developed into a functioning system from 1909, increasingly replaced the cumbersome starting of the engine with a crank: In 1912 it was used by Cadillac for the first time in a production car. The electric starter was established in the USA by 1920, and a little later in Europe.
  2. the gradual development of a network of filling stations was a major factor in favor of the internal combustion engine.

Steam cars also had to struggle with often high administrative hurdles and different legal situations: anyone who operates a steam boiler needs a permit. In Germany, the Society for the Monitoring and Insurance of Steam Boilers was founded as early as 1866 , from which the TÜV emerged ; in Great Britain such a facility existed before. The state of New York , for example, was one of the strict exponents, which made no difference when it came to licensing whether it was a system for an industrial company, a boiler for a steam locomotive, or a steam automobile. There was also a psychological obstacle: Many people were afraid of a steam boiler explosion , although this risk hardly existed for vehicles built after 1890.

Steam trucks in Europe

Sentinel DG 4

In commercial vehicle construction and agriculture, the steam drive lasted longer than in passenger car construction. This development became apparent early on. In 1906 Serpollet entered into a joint venture with Darracq for the production of steam trucks and, above all, buses, which were also sold in the United Kingdom. Other French manufacturers were Scotte and Chaboche .

In the 1920s, steam-powered trucks were used in England a. a. by Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd. , Shrewsbury , Shropshire, as well as Richard Garrett & Sons , Leiston, Suffolk and on the European continent (under license from Sentinel) by Škoda- Pilsen. They were characterized by their high robustness and low operating costs and were used until the 1950s.

Doble brothers

Doble Series E Phaeton , 1924, in the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn

Abner Doble (1895–1961) in particular perfected the steam car , partly with the help of his brothers John and Warren. From 1910 prototypes and very small series were created. The Doble brand name can be found on various projects and has been used by several companies in which Abner Doble was involved. The best known are the Series E built by Doble Steam Motors Corporation in San Francisco and especially in Emeryville ( California from 1923 to 1931. However, these vehicles were very expensive (about 30 times the price of a Ford T ) and there was a market for them Practically not. Production was supposed to really start in the summer of 1929, just before the big stock market crash that lost the majority of potential customers. Only 45 vehicles were made, of which four or five are still roadworthy The most sophisticated vehicles of this type. The Doble brothers eliminated all the disadvantages of the steam drive (only 30 seconds preheating time even at temperatures below 0 ° C) and built luxury vehicles weighing around three tons that could accelerate from 0 to 100 km / h in 15 seconds with practically no noise It is also worth mentioning that the Dobles are still roadworthy today because of the very clean external combustion in steam systems n Be able to comply with the latest exhaust gas regulations - and that without catalysts or soot filters. The US film and aircraft entrepreneur Howard Hughes was one of the Doble owners .

Warren and Abner Doble later worked as consultants for steam systems in the USA and Europe, including at Henschel & Sohn in Kassel.

Steam cars in Germany and France from the 1930s

In 1931 Henschel & Sohn bought an American steam car of the type Doble F-35 and in 1932 signed a contract with the Doble company for the development of a steam truck and a steam bus. After the steam engines had been tested in boats and rail vehicles, the first steam engines with 110 and 150 hp were built for trucks. The first buses were ready in 1934 and were tested by the transport companies in Wuppertal and Dresden .

The omnibuses were hooded vehicles , the steam boiler with a heating surface of 9 m² was located under the engine hood, the steam engine was attached to the rear axle . The boiler could be operated with all types of oil. These buses operated successfully for several years. In 1935 three more buses were built, this time as front control vehicles with the boiler in the rear. These buses were delivered to Kasseler Transport AG , Bielefelder Stadtwerke and Bremer Vorortbahnen AG . The buses reached a top speed of 110 km / h.

In 1934, Henschel delivered ten steam trucks to the Deutsche Reichsbahn , one of which was three-axle with two 150 hp engines and a boiler with a 15 m² heating surface. These vehicles were in service until 1942. In total, Henschel built thirteen steam trucks.

After 1945, the graduate engineer A. Simon in Berlin developed a truck with a four-cylinder boxer engine, the steam boiler, which was fired with coal, was arranged above it. From 1945 to 1949, the Lenz and Butenuth company in Berlin built four test vehicles, including a Ford BB . A converted Ford engine served as the drive.

After the steam car project at Henschel was discontinued, mainly due to the expiring subsidy for the fuel lignite tar, a further development of the Doble system started at De Dietrich in Reichshoffen in Alsace , driven by the former Henschel engineer Erwin Schwander (son of the former Strasbourg mayor Rudolf Schwander ). This involved the development of a drive system for railway railcars , in competition with that of Bugatti sold for the same purpose to the French railway Bugatti-line eight-cylinder engines. A Bugatti 50T with an in-line eight-cylinder engine with a displacement of five liters served as the reference vehicle. It is known that the steam car covered 40,000 test kilometers in just one year (1938) and that its consumption was 18 liters of heating oil per 100 kilometers, compared to 25 liters for the Bugatti. The two units were very similar in terms of their power and weight (150 HP steam / 160 HP petrol, 560 kg steam / 520 kg petrol). It is one of the very few known serious comparisons in which equivalent technology was compared with one another and not old steam technology with modern combustion engines. The developments were stopped during the war, a practically finished railcar was dismantled, distributed all over France and reassembled after the end of the war. However, the French State Railways canceled an order for over 60 vehicles at short notice in 1948, so that one prototype remained. The test vehicles were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on Reichshoffen in 1944.

In addition to the rapid evaporators (30 seconds from the cold state to the required operating pressure, applications mainly in the chemical industry), the automatic controls for oil heating systems, which go back to the Doble brothers' patents, have saved themselves into the present day.

Decline and long survival in small niches

Powerful steam tractors for heavy transport
Model of the 1949 Soviet NAMI-012

In the period from around 1890 to 1920, steam cars were a serious competitor to gasoline-powered automobiles, as they were more reliable and managed without the transmission, which was difficult to operate at the time, or a clutch that was prone to wear . Only then did the high fuel and water requirements, the high weight and the waiting times for pressure build-up have a negative effect compared to gasoline-powered automobiles. Even before the Second World War , self-propelled locomobiles  - steam-powered tractors - were common vehicles for transporting circus , fairground and showman equipment. In the 1930s, light oil-fired steam cars were occasionally built. From the outside, the special drive could hardly be seen. The technology originated in the American oil vapor cars of the Doble brothers . The developments were licensed from the Henschel & Sohn company from Kassel in the later 1930s . Steam trucks and steam buses were manufactured there until 1936 , but due to rising heating oil prices there was no future for them.

After the war, the steam engine became interesting again for internal combustion engines due to the tense fuel situation and there were some new designs. In 1951, the comparatively modern street steam tractor DW 65 was constructed in the GDR , which no longer had anything in common with the traditional locomobile and caused an international sensation. It was hoped that steam engines would improve the local and heavy goods traffic on roads. However, due to, among other things, flying sparks that could not be controlled, these vehicles could not be used on public roads. In the Soviet Union , after the war, the NAMI-012 steam truck was developed, which was fueled with roughly prepared wood. The driver could cut the fuel himself in the forests of Siberia if necessary. Steam cars were used even longer as road rollers . The last steam wagons in Germany were built by the B. Ruthemeyer company in Soest in the form of steam rollers until the 1950s .

Steam trucks were built longest in Great Britain, for example by Leyland Motors , which also manufactured vehicles with internal combustion engines. In 1951, about 100,000 steam trucks were used for haulage services in England.

Modern steam car

Unrealized vision of the era of atomic euphoria: the Ford Nucleon

During the time of the nuclear euphoria of the 1950s, the idea arose to operate not only ships and submarines, but also locomotives, aircraft and road vehicles with small nuclear reactors. Because of the need for shielding from neutron radiation, which requires around 100 tons of material, this was unrealistic for cars, but in case better shielding should be found, Ford devised the Ford Nucleon , in which a nuclear reactor was to provide the heat for a steam drive .

At the time, Ford was also experimenting with a conventional steam engine. At least one, supplied by Williams Engine Co. , ran in a Ford Fairlane . The program was apparently abandoned in connection with the financial turmoil in the group at that time.

Attempts at resuscitation

In the late 1960s, real wonders were ascribed to the steam car: Without a carburetor , muffler, clutch or gearbox, it would also be more energy-efficient and produce less smoke, since combustion is more complete. There were discussions regarding test runs with several high-performance steam cars at the California Highway Patrol, but there is no evidence that these were actually carried out and steam cars were never used in the California Highway Patrol.

Even General Motors (GM) led at that time by experiments. The construction of at least two steam cars is documented. One (SE-124) was based on a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle . The steam engine came from Besler Developments . It was a further development of the Doble and made 50 bhp (37 kW). The concept was geared towards everyday suitability. The Chevrolet had the usual comfort features in the USA; As many components as possible from the production vehicle were used. A second vehicle (SE-101) was provided by the Pontiac Division . The Grand Prix of the same model year received a 160 bhp (116 kW) machine from GM Research . Both vehicles were built for research purposes only. GM noted that the system used in the Grand Prix was over 200 kg heavier than a Pontiac V8 engine, would cost three times as much as the said V8 even to mass-produce, while delivering less power and having a number of problems with water freezing, water consumption as well Susceptible to corrosion.

Steam car speed record from 2009

At the beginning of the 21st century, the steam car made the headlines again with the speed record of 205.5 km / h set by the Stanley Rocket Racer in 1906 : attempts to break the speed record began around 2005, which was achieved in 2009.

Steam car and steampunk

The steam wagon experienced a certain revival in the course of the steampunk movement in the form of artistically reconditioned individual pieces. The Kinetic Steam Works group has been repairing steam-powered tractors and locomotives since 2005 and is presenting them to the steampunks present at the Burning Man Festival in the USA, for example .

Illustrations

  • De Dion-Bouton Remiorqueur à vapeur with "Victoria" pendant (1893), taken on the occasion of the Paris – Rouen race in 1894

  • Toledo Steam dos-à-dos (USA, 1902)

  • White Model G Touring (US, 1909)

  • Stanley steam car from 1912

  • Stanley steam car from 1923

  • British Foden steam truck, built in 1930

  • Steam boiler of a Stanley Steamer Series 740 from 1924, on the right the condenser

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ These two aspects can be found in: Thomas E. Bonsall : More Than They Promised: The Studebaker Story. Stanford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3586-7 , pp. 46-47. The author explains the reasons that Studebaker made electrics and gasoline, but not steam cars.

literature

  • Max JB Rauck: Cugnot, 1769–1969: the ancestor of our car drove 200 years ago. Münchener Zeitungsverlag, Munich 1969.
  • Bruno Jacomy, Annie-Claude Martin: Le Chariot à feu de M. Cugnot. Nathan / Musée national des techniques, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-09-204538-5 .
  • Louis Andre: Le Premier accident automobile de l'histoire. In: La Revue du Musée des arts et métiers. Numéro 2, 1993, pp. 44-46.
  • B. Roes: L'Agriculture à toute vapeur: le monde fascinant des tracteurs à vapeur et des locomobiles hier et aujourd'hui. DT media, 2002, ISBN 0-86111-127-3 .
  • Beverly Rae Kimes (Eds.), Henry Austin Clark, Jr.: The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 2nd Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1985, ISBN 0-87341-111-0 . (English)
  • Lord Montague of Beaulieu : Nice old automobiles. Gondrom, Bayreuth 1978, ISBN 3-8112-0070-4 .
  • The Automobile of 1904. In: Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. January 1904. Americana Review, Scotia NY 1904 (also covers imports, English)
  • Beverly Rae Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X . (English)
  • The Steam Automobile . (Magazine). Steam Automobile Club of America ( 1959–1986 editions as PDF [accessed July 8, 2011]).
  • Richard J. Evans: Steam Cars (Shire Album). Shire Publications, 1985, ISBN 0-85263-774-8 . (English)
  • Anthony Bird, Edward Douglas-Scott Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970. Littlehampton Book Services, 1971, ISBN 0-304-93707-X (English)
  • Floyd Clymer, Harry W. Gahagan: Floyd Clymer's Steam Car Scrapbook. Literary Licensing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-258-42699-6 . (English)
  • John Headfield: American Steam-Car Pioneers: A Scrapbook. 1st edition. Newcomen Society in North, 1984, ISBN 99940-65-90-4 . (English)
  • Anthony Bird: De Dion Bouton - First automobile Giant. (= Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Car marque book. No. 6). Ballantine Books, New York 1971, ISBN 0-345-02322-6 , No. 02322-6. (English)
  • GN Georgano (Ed.), G. Marshall Naul: Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles. MBI Motor Books International, Osceola WI 1979, ISBN 0-87341-024-6 . (English)

Web links

Commons : Steam Car  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From the history of the development of the automobile. In: Automotive Technology . 4/1954, p. 97.
  2. ↑ Mr. D. Gordon's New Steam Coach. In: The Times . December 31, 1827, p. 3. For William Brunton and David Gordon see also http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/William_Brunton and http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/David_Gordon in Grace's Guide to British Industrial History .
  3. ^ Dale H. Porter: The Life and Times of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney: Gentleman Scientist and Inventor 1793-1875. May 1998.
  4. ^ Bird, Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970 (1971), p. 47.
  5. ↑ Bird, Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970 (1971), pp. 46-47.
  6. ^ Bird, Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970 (1971), p. 52.
  7. ^ Bird, Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970 (1971), p. 56.
  8. ↑ Timothy Burstall and John Hill
  9. ↑ Quoted by Baader and translated here a message from the Morning Chronicle of July 30, 1827 and from the Bulletin des science technologiques of October 1827. Joseph Ritter von Baader: The impossibility of introducing steam wagons on ordinary roads with advantage as a general means of transport and the The inconsistency of all projects to make the railways unnecessary. Riegel and Weißner, Nuremberg 1835.
  10. ↑ Grace Guide: Walter Hancock.
  11. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 56, George Clement Boase: Thomson, Robert William (DNB00).
  12. ↑ Grace's Guide: Robert William Thomson.
  13. ↑ Grace Guide: Thomas Rickett
  14. ↑ Evans: Steam Cars. 1985, p. 11.
  15. ↑ WordPress: History of steam road vehicles / Catley and Ayres of York.
  16. ↑ uniquecarsandparts.com: Lost Marques: Bollée
  17. ^ National Automobile Museum (ed.): The Greatest Cars of the Century. Edition Belles Terres, Strasbourg 2005, ISBN 2-913231-12-8 , p. 125.
  18. ↑ a b c gazoline.net: Bollée [Amédée], à toute vapeur vapeur!
  19. ↑ Gazoline: Bollée [Amédée , à toute vapeur! ]
  20. ^ Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Paul Caron: Guide de l'automobile française. Solar, Paris 1988.
  21. ↑ Jan Spies: The Braunschweiger Hildebrand & Wolfmüller. Publications from the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig. Volume 57, Braunschweig 1988, p. 9 ff.
  22. ↑ Roger Hicks: The International Encyclopedia. Motorcycles. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-02660-0 , p. 148.
  23. ^ Bird: De Dion-Bouton. 1971, p. 51.
  24. ^ Bird: De Dion-Bouton. 1971, chap. Steam Carriage Days.
  25. ↑ Karl Kahle: From Eisenach's good and bad days (1841-1850) . In: Contributions to the history of Eisenach . Book IX. Hofbuchdruckerei Kahle, Eisenach 1908, p. 69 .
  26. ^ Steam and electricity in the service of public transport . In: Administrative report of the Royal Police Presidium of Berlin . tape 1881/1890 . Berlin 1892, p. 562 ( zlb.de ).
  27. ↑ Smithsonian: Dudgeon Steam Car 1866 (accessed February 9, 2015).
  28. ^ Kimes: Standard Catalog. 1996, p. 652.
  29. ↑ * Smithsonian: Roper steam wheel around 1869 (English; accessed February 9, 2015).
  30. ^ Smithsonian: Long Steam Tricycle 1883 (accessed February 9, 2015).
  31. ^ The Steam Automobile Club of America
  32. ↑ a b Lord Montague of Beaulieu: Nice old automobiles. Gondrom, 1978, p. 23; Retrieved February 5, 2012.
  33. ↑ Evans: Steam Cars. 1985, pp. 11-13.
  34. ↑ Evans: Steam Cars. 1985, p. 13.
  35. ↑ Evans: Steam Cars. 1985, p. 19.
  36. ^ Evans: Steam Cars (1985), pp. 23-24.
  37. ↑ vanderbiltcupraces.com
  38. ↑ Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels. (Hardcover), p. 183.
  39. ^ Kimes: Standard Catalog. 1985, p. 1487.
  40. ↑ Evans: Steam Cars. (1985), p. 23.
  41. ↑ kcstudio.com: History of the Selden Patent.
  42. ^ Kimes: Standard Catalog. 1985, p. 1331.
  43. ^ GN Georgano (Ed.), G. Marshall Naul: Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles. MBI Motor Books International, Osceola WI 1979, ISBN 0-87341-024-6 , p. 176.
  44. ^ Kimes: Standard Catalog. (1996), pp. 458-459.
  45. ↑ The steam and gas turbine vehicle compared to the diesel vehicle. In: Automotive Technology . Issue 3/1955, pp. 74-78.
  46. ↑ a b The LOWA road steam tractor DW 65. In: Motor vehicle technology. Issue 5/1951, pp. 108-110.
  47. ↑ The steam and gas turbine vehicle compared to the diesel vehicle. In: Automotive Technology. Issue 3/1955, pp. 74-78.
  48. ↑ castor.de
  49. ^ Alan Bellows: The Atomic Automobile. August 27, 2006; http://www.damninteresting.com/the-atomic-automobile/
  50. ^ Bird, Montagu of Beaulieu: Steam Cars, 1770-1970 (1971), p. 209.
  51. ↑ Power from the camel . In: DER SPIEGEL . No. 32 , August 1969, ISSN  0038-7452 ( spiegel.de [accessed July 6, 2011]).
  52. ^ William C. Williams: California Highway Patrol Seeks Smogless Steam Auto With High Performance . In: The Steam Automobile . tape II , no. 2 . Steam Automobile Club of America, 1969 ( PDF, 750 kB [accessed July 7, 2011]). PDF, 750 kB ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.steamautomobile.com
  53. ^ Daniel Strohl: Who killed the steamturbine-powered car? In: Hemmings.com Blog . May 2010 ( hemmings.com [accessed May 17, 2012]).
  54. ^ Jan P. Norbye and Jim Dunne: GM Takes the Wraps Off iIts Steam Cars . In: POPULAR SCIENCE . July 1969.
  55. ↑ Manfred Dworschak: Power plant behind the seat . In: DER SPIEGEL . No. 35 , September 2005, ISSN  0038-7452 ( HTML [accessed July 6, 2011]).
  56. ↑ Spiegel Online: Steam Engine Record - The fastest tea kettle in the world. Retrieved August 27, 2009.
  57. ↑ Steampunk: Science fiction with a difference. In: Tracks. ARTE GEIE, November 12, 2009, accessed May 25, 2011 .