Automobiles are a means of transport on land that is used to transport people and goods. They have been a huge part of the development of society as they have allowed us to travel faster and spend less time waiting for buses or trains. They are a necessity for many people as they can help them get to work and school, visit their friends, go on road trips, or just run errands. As with any invention, there are both advantages and disadvantages to automobiles.
The invention of the automobile sparked many changes in society and was one of the most influential events of the 19th century. It influenced economics, politics, and the way we live our daily lives. It created new industries, such as those that manufacture the parts of the cars and make fuels to power them. It also impacted the economy in other ways, such as creating more jobs. It also helped to develop better roads, and it gave more people more freedom of movement than ever before.
In the early days of automobiles, they were powered by steam or electricity and later by gasoline internal combustion engines. Steam and electric vehicles competed for decades until the gasoline automobile came to dominate in the 1910s. The advent of the automobile was a major force of change in twentieth century America as it became the backbone of a consumer-goods-oriented society. It was the main source of revenue for petroleum and steel manufacturers, and it generated the most jobs in American industry.
Henry Ford was the first to perfect automobile manufacturing using mass production techniques at his Highland Park, Michigan plant that opened in 1910. His Model T was a hit and became the standard that other car makers tried to match. By 1920, the Big Three automakers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, dominated the market.
In 1870 Siegfried Marcus invented the first internal-combustion automobile engine. It was a two-stroke engine that ran on both petrol and kerosene. The two-stroke engine was a major improvement over the earlier designs that were only fueled by petrol. Later, Daimler and Benz independently developed four-stroke engines that were more efficient than the two-stroke engine.
The name automobile comes from the French word auto, meaning self, and the Latin word mobility, or moving. In fact, a 14th century Italian painter and engineer, Martini, designed plans for a self-propelled vehicle with four wheels, but never built it.
As the demand for automobiles rose, the industry experienced rapid growth throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. Then, market saturation coincided with technological stagnation and automobile production slowed to a crawl. After World War II, automakers shifted production to meet war demands. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the issue became nonfunctional styling of American cars and concerns over dwindling oil reserves and pollution prompted a return to more functionally designed, well-built small automobiles from Germany and Japan. This ended the dominance of American made cars and gave rise to a global automotive industry that is shared with Japan as the largest automobile producer.