The World's Motors. THEIR ENTRY INTO NEW ZEALAND.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 5, 1 March 1907, Page 161

The World's Motors. THEIR ENTRY INTO NEW ZEALAND.

Into this country the motor car came in a stealthy sort of way — crept in by ones and twos. And each, as it came out into the light carrying a blinking owner, failed to impress the spectators with the dignity of its appearance or the importance of its arrival. When we turned to the contemporary prints of Britain we found only enough references to the motor car to support a belief that the thing had been invented for the benefit of Opera Bouffe and the inveterate jokers who had become anaemic for want of subjects on which to sharpen their wit. Such lists of disasters, such tales of journeys interrupted, honeymoons extinguished in inextinguishable laughter, such prodigious bills of costs, such manifold failures, each with a touch of the ludicrous,

these were the staple of the reading devoted to the motor ear — a thing apparently mean to look at, poor to perform, unreliable, and above all essentially ludicrous — that was the opinion one seemed to be compelled to form from their first readings (not of course in the papers published by experts) about the motor car of commerce. Men were ready to laugh as much as they did when the Salvation Army first put in an appearance. That mood changed quickly. The ones and the twos of the importation became threes and fours, and soon it was understood that some of the four centres, particularly Chnstchurch and Auckland, had managed to accumulate a most respectable connection. Garages began to appear here and there, and the motor car was to be seen wheeling along the country roads. This was the stage of admiration. Every one wanted a motor car. The few who had ridden in them said there was no motion like it, and their talk was of speeds of sixty miles, as if it were the most common experience of the delightful novelty that had come so recently to stay. The third stage was the stage of discovery and envy. It was discovered that universality is not the destiny of the motor car, for the cars were dear and required, besides, a good deal of repairing which cost money. From that to the stage of distrust, hatred and ill will was but a single bound. We then began to read in the British papers things that convinced us the motor had got out of the stage of burlesque and left Opera Bouffe far behind. It had become a machine for the destruction of human life, the terrorising of country roads, and the perpetual frightening of that noble animal the horse, whosj

place on the planet it was threatening and preparing to take. Britain had combined for the control of this abomination, why not the colony too ? So the voices of the public went up into the political air and there met with the usual reception. The result was legislation for efficiently reducing to order this disorderly creature which had made our roads — we tried to persuade ourselves, and it proved vainly — unfrequented and dangerous. Progress however goes ever on. Therefore New Zealand soon reached the present stage, which is one of considerable admiration for the motor, of large appreciation of its services for both business and pleasure, and of deep respect for its future. The law still controls the motor, and quite right, too. But the law is reasonable inasmuch as it confines the speed to that which is reasonable under the conditions existing at any moment of the motor's career. If there is a road straight before it extending for miles without a curve and no person or animal in sight, then is sixty miles not unreasonable in the eyes of the law. If on the other hand the motor is in a street where the

very pedestrians are gasping for room, then will two miles render the motorist liable to legal process. Local bodies are recognising their duty with regard to the motorist. It is believed among them that he is actually entitled to attention and some sort of provision for his comfort, so far as it lies in the way of the public body to provide the same. Even among horse-men and horse-women — even those who take their pilgrimages in pony chaises — there are individuals who are ready to shake hands with the driver of a motor car. Horses themselves are beginning to understand the creature, and it is found not at all difficult to make them reconciled to the sight of it. The garage is everywhere and the toot of the horn; every newspaper publishes, by way of regularly recognised duty, all information obtainable about the new force, lays itself out for presenting the details of every event, fixture, road trial, and journey record. A much improved type of car is seen in the streets taking its ordinary place in the ordinary traffic, and the gliding pleasant motion of them is much admired. We read all about them also, many of us being familiar with such charming books as " The Lightning Conductor " and its pleasant sequel " The Princess Passes." The citizen who turned of old to steamboat and railway for his holiday often now takes out his motor and goes off on some pleasant trip with his better half, to return refreshed and invigorated by his travels, and a great industry is established. Accidents, alas, are not unknown, but their causes will be better understood directly, and their reduction to the irreducible minimum must inevitably follow. Such is the history of the motor with us, with whom it has now come to stay as a guest, on the whole welcome.

THE DAWN OF THE MOTOR CAR. In the year of grace 1619 there flashed into the public view in the streets of London a horseless carriage propelling itself by invisible means. The fact is on record, and therefore the chronicle of the first appearance of the motor car is authentic. But beyond the bare record theie is nothing in any of the bulky volumes of our histories. It is not known how the new-comer was received : whether the theological King (James — First of the name) noted the same in his book on Demonology, by reason of the invisible mystery of its propulsion ; whether the horse owners of the shires killed it with fables ; whether it carried any one besides the enterprising motorist ; how many wheels it had, and what were its powers, build,

wheel base, and appearance — all these things are in the sealed book to which no man ever will have access. Enough that England led the way in motoring. It is a barren honour, for to France belongs the credit of the development which has become the leading mechanical feature of the twentieth century. The best the patriotic Englishman can say of the matter is that four centuries ago we were leading, whereas now we are not very far behind. France came to the front a hundred and fifty years later, when, in the year 1770, M. Cugnot astonished Paris by running a three-wheeled vehicle by steam, carrying two people — probably owner and chauffeur. He maintained the giddy rate of two miles an hour. Whether this was the reason why the enterprise* was not heard of more, or whether the French Revolution, coming soon after, prevented any other kind of revolution, history has not recorded. In the year after Montgolfier's first balloon a Cornishman endeavoured seriously to deprive the French of the lead. Mr. Murdoch built a model for use on. the Cornish, roads, and. as the model never got any " forrader " we may presume that the state of the Cornish roads proved a fatal bar. At any rate the attempt appears to have been taken seriously, for this model was sought out years afterwards by the famous Mr. Tangye when he elected to become motorist, and preserved with care in his collection. An agitation is now on foot for placing the same in some museum of antiquities alongside 6i defunct pioneers of the railway and tramway services. Mr. Trevethick followed later with a machine which he launched on those same Cornwall roads at a speed of ten miles. Mr. Tangye had secured a model of this pioneer also before his death. The horseless began from that time to make progress in the land of its first adoption, and France was not heard of m the running for some time. In 1823 Gurney — Sir Goldsworthy Gurney — brought out the wonderful carriage of which we have the illustration on the last page. It ran to Bath and back sundry trips, and it attained

to a speed of 15 miles an hour There it> a tradition that the Wellers of the period denounced the creature as not only an interference with their privileges, but as dangerous to the lives and limbs of the sacred public ; which, if it was at all like its illustration, we have no doubt it was. It ran, however, a long time between Bath and Cheltenham. Later on Messrs. Maceroni and Squne ran a steam 'bus between London and Paddmgton. It was a carriage of compact type, it carried a multitubular boiler with a fan draught, and was altogether a rather imposing affair. In 1829 the James Anderson steam coach appeared on the Brighton road to the further astonishment of the disgusted Wellers of the period. The illustration gives it a most respectable appearance, setting off its orthodoxy as a mail coach of the ruling pattern. As for the stoker, or chauffeur, we should say that nothing less than a Royal Commission could find any clue of his whereabouts on the ciaft. This throws a doubt on the correctness of the likeness. As to the artistic success of the picture there can be but one opinion. All these gorgeous visions were doomed to be swept away by the railway era. England had made up its mind to lead the world with the iron horse, and everything horseless not allied with his equine majesty of iron had to go. The stoiy of how it was shoved out of the way m a free countiy is one of the most instructive chapters in history. Perhaps the nature of some of the patents applied for may account m part for the public rage against the whole body of the horseless One of these inventors, for example, took out a patent for a pair of iron poles to propel his machine somewhat in the style of a man walking It must have looked like a pile driver " on the " : no wonder the good folk were alarmed Be that as it may, a long series of persecutions by by-law and statute set m, culminating in 1836 in a law restricting the dimensions of the boilers of these motors out of all possible usefulness The great engineer who had cowed opposition to the iron horse with his celebrated retort about " so niiich the worse for the coo," put on his best fiown befoie a Committee of the House of Lords and gave forth the oracular

verdict " that steam carriages would never do at all on roads." To say that steam was worth anything anywhere off the iron road made for that power by the greatest of engineers was thought worse than burglary. The Committee lost no time in recommending the world to have nothing to do with the steam motor, which was not only a danger to itself, but an awful incentive to rash and speculative persons to ruin themselves and their too confiding friends. The motor of the street thus fell before the rush of the railway companies. The concentrative Briton looks only at one thing at a time. And considering the wonderful success he made of the railways on which he then concentrated his eftoits, there is not much reason for finding too much fault with him. Nevertheless the sacred flame which was later on to find such sparkling vent, through the ignitions of a more appreciative and successful era, was by no means allowed to die out. On the contrary, it was made to illuminate the whole Victonan period with a fitful and surreptitious light. Of those who kept that spark alive the most notable was Rickett of Stafford, wto turned, out in good order and condition a road steamer of 1£ tons weight, and soon after supplied one of 5 tons to the order of the Marquis of Stafford. In 1861 Garrett and Mitchell of Leeds (enterprising city) built one of nearly 7 tons for Sir Titus Salt of Saltair, better known as a weaver of alpaca then as a successful motor proprietor. Still he was bitten with the motor fury, and he spent his money like a man and a millionaire. But the combined terrors of the new system and of the laws and by-laws of the United Kingdom, to say nothmg of the police traps of the period, were too much for the man of alpaca, and the machine passed by purchase into the hands of that gay young spark Mr. Frederick Hodges, well known m the later fifties as the wealthy proprietor of a famous London distillery, and one of the brightest and fastest of the practical jokers of that practical jokmg age of which Sothern and Toole were the leading lights. This young gentleman took his new purchase out for many a tour through Kent and the southern counties, and made the pace hot for police and peasant and local governing body with equal impartiality. But he did not foster any business capacity of the motor race. Tangye made a success in 1862 with a vehicle which he drove at a speed of 20 miles an hour, but the fates were not propitious and it went the way of the rest, to the scrap heap or the museum, probably the latter in his case. The pneumatic tyre was not unknown m those days, having j^been invented by W Thomson, in 1845, but it wanted the modern developments with \\ hich our age is more familiar. Of these the pneumatic came in 1885, after 40 year of solid. The latter inventor was successful as a designer of horseless 'buses, of which he supplied a large number to the order of the Indian Government. They were constructed by Ransome and Sims, they were of 14 h,p., they worked regularly up to 14 miles an hour, their tyres were protected by linked steel shoes, and they regularly carried up to 65 passengers. It is always true that an inventor has more honour in other countries than in his own. During these years the traction engine had come to stay, but that is another story, except inasmuch as it doubled the pei seditions of the motor proprietors. In the same period the law kept pace with numbers of discouraging enactments The motor inventors also moved along, but the honours were with the men on the other side of the Channel.

DEVEI OPMENT. Regarding this portion of the story it is now generally accepted that the modern revival of the motor-car movement dates fiom 1885. In that year two horseless carriages made their appearance from the designs of Daimler of Deutz (near Cologne) and Benz of Mannheim. There was also a motor by Mr. E. Butler shown m the Exhibition of 1885. All these were of the tricycle order, belt-driven, and all carried limited supplies of fuel, up to some twenty miles only. The Butler type does not appear to have got much further. Benz's developed fhst into the well-known dog-cart form of which 4000 were sold in England after their introduction by Mr. H Hewetson into that country Daimler's developed at once into the four-wheeler, which proved the forerunner of the numerous types of the present day We give an illustration of the same as the piesentment of the first of the modern series, the root from which the motor world has developed to its present tremendou= and growing ramifications These developments followed each other with startling rapidity, the French makeis leading m all lines, encouraged by a public which took to the sport with the national verve. The names of Peugeot, Serpollet, Roger, De Dion, Bouton, Panhard, Mayarde, Levassor and otheis jostling one another in the race for fame and profit with startling frequency It was the greatest rush of invention the world had ever seen in any one direction.

The newspapeib were friendly, the nibtmct of journalism keeping as usual ahead of public opinion by just a nose. In 1893 the Petit Journal, the famous paper with the small name and the enormous circulation, announced its now famous Paris-Rouen race, -which took place in July, 1894, and in which forty-seven vehicles started The first to reach Rouen was the De Dion Bouton steam tractor which covered the 97-| miles at an average speed of 12 miles per hour. Five minutes after the steamer came a Peugeot carriage fitted with a 3J-b.p. Daimler- Panhard engine and solid rubber tyres, then a second Peugeot, and later a Panhard car which had wooden wheels and iron tyres. The first prize was divided between the Panhard and the Peugeot ; the De Dion steamer secured the second, and a Serpollet steam car the third prize. The great event of the following year, 1895, was the race from Pans to Bordeaux and back, a distance of 750 miles Sixteen petrol and seven steam vehicles started in the race, and eight petrol and one steam cars arrived back in Paris, the first being M. Levassor on a 4-h.p. Panhard, his time being 48 hours 12 mm. However the first prize was given to a Peugeot car, which arrived shortly afterwards, as the Peugeot was carrying four passengers, whereas M. Levassor's car carried only two. This event was notable as being the first occasion of the appearance of pneumatic tyres in connection with long-distance motor-travelling. The Paris-Marseilles-Paris race was the feature of the year 1896 in France. The contest was run off in September in five stages, the distance being 1076 miles. Of the thirty-two vehicles which started twenty-four were propelled by petrol, three by steam, and five were motor-tricycles. M. Bollee, on his voiturette, astounded the world by completing the first stage at an average speed of twenty miles an hour, Although it was not until November, 1896, that the motor-car became a legal form of conveyance

in Great Britain, reports of the great progress which had been made in self-propelled vehicles on the Continent had, of course, reached this country, and, in fact, specimens of the cars had also been brought over, the first one being a Benz, which Mr H. Hewetson received from Germany in November, 1894. The first public display was at the Agricultural Show at Turnbridge Wells in October, 1895 It was organised by Sir David Salomons, Bart., who had long been interested in the subject, having built an electrically propelled tricycle in 1874-75. The machines exhibited included this gentleman's Peugeot 3f-h.p. vis-a-vis, which Aveighed 13 cwt., and could attain a maximum speed of about fifteen miles per hour on the level ; the Hon. Evelyn Elhs's PanhardLevassor car of the Paris-Bordeaux type, a De DionBouton motor-tricycle, and a De Dion-Bouton steam tractor. The year 1896 was extremely fruitful as regards automobile exhibitions, all of which played a prominent part in " releasing the motorcar from the tyranny of the red flag." In May of that year an exhibition of motor-cars was held at the Imperial Institute, London, and at a special reception to members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons Mr. Evelyn Ellis had the honour of driving the Prince of Wales (now his Majesty the King) on his Panhaid car in the galleries and gardens of the Institute. The show was organised by the Motor-Car Club, of which Mr. Harry J Lawson was the chairman, and among the exhibits was a Bollee voiturette, two Benz cars, the Lutzman car belonging to Mr. H Koosens, of Southsea, a Roger car (a French cop}' of the Benz) several Hildebrandt-Wolfmulle motor-bicycles which, according to one who rode them, had practically only two speeds, " one was ml and the other twenty miles an hour "" — two 4-h p. German Daimlers, and two Peugeot cars with Daimler motors, a motoi tandem bicycle built on the Kane-Penmng-ton system, two De Dion motor-tricycles, an electrical vehicle built in accordance with the Bersey patents by the Universal Electrical Carriage Com-

pany, and an electrical dogcart by Messrs. Oflord and Son. During the same month an exhibition of motor vehicles was opened at the Crystal Palace at which Sir David Salomons, Mr. T. R. B. Elliott, Mr. John H. Knight, and others demonstrated their cars by running them in the Palace grounds. The first display of automobiles organised by Mr. C. Cordingley was held in conjunction with the Engineering and Laundry Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, in August, 1896. Naturally, it was but a small one, but it attracted considerable attention. It was located in the gallery, in which a miniature lake had been constructed in order to permit demonstrations of a motor-boat to be made by the now defunct firm of Messrs. New & Mayne. The automobile exhibits comprised the Hildebrandt- Wolfmuller motorbicylce, the Bersey electric carriage, already referred

to, and an electrical vehicle constructed in accordance with the designs of Messrs. Garrard (now of the Clement Talbot Company), and Blumfield. The latter machine, which was built by Messrs. Taylor, Cooper & Bednell, of Coventry, was notable if only for the 4-in. pneumatic tyres with which it was fitted, an unusually large size in those days. It was fitted with a l^-h.p. motor and chain drive, the necessary energy being furnished by a battery of twenty-four cells. The Bersey vehicle, which was the forerunner of the electric cabs which made their appearance in the London streets a year or so later, was designed to seat four persons ; it had a 2£- 3-h.p. motor, and carried thirty-two I.E.S. accumulators. About this time Colonel H. C. L. Holden brought out a motor-propelled bicycle which contained many interesting features, among which were a four-cylinder engine, synchronised ignition, and mechanical lubrication.