Known as cars or motor vehicles in many countries, automobiles are four-wheeled passenger vehicles designed to travel principally on road systems. They are powered by internal combustion engines fueled most often by gasoline, a liquid petroleum product. Among the most universal of modern technologies, automobiles provide access to work and leisure activities as well as to many places in between.
The first automobiles were developed in the late 1860s. Siegfried Marcus, a German, built the world’s first automobile in 1870. It had no seats, steering, or brakes but used a two-stroke internal combustion engine that combusted gasoline and produced power. Other inventors and engineers perfected automobile technology throughout the nineteenth century. Karl Benz, Emile Levassor, Gottlieb Daimler, and Nicolaus Otto are the major innovators who laid the foundation of today’s modern automobile.
By the 1920s, the automobile had transformed American society. It became the backbone of a new consumer goods-oriented economy. Its demand for petroleum and other industrial products caused the development of ancillary industries. Its need for large production increased the efficiency of manufacturing and introduced assembly line techniques. It also demanded heavier outlays of capital and a larger volume of sales from manufacturers, making it difficult for small producers to compete.
By the 1980s automobile ownership was virtually universal in America. But as this century has progressed, the automobile is losing its position as a progressive force for change. Other forces are now charting the future, as this era of the Automobile Age melds into a new age of Electronics.