This article about automobile motors was published in 1902, right during the earliest days of the automobile, and it was written by the legendary Henri Fournier. What a treat! —fadedpages.com

Of all the owners of automobiles, few, very few, have any idea of what it is that makes the wheels go round. And yet this is the most important consideration in the purchase of a vehicle. Men go to an automobile show, look at the enameled carriage, remark the nickel plated fittings, feel the air cushions, and test the means of ingress and egress. Of the mechanism, if they observe it at all, they are contented with the measure of its horse power. The most profound investigators stop with inquiries as to the amount of odor, the danger of explosion, and the ease of repair. They purchase their automobile without an idea as to its manner of construction. This is alike unfair to the manufacturer and to the aspiring automobilist.

The development of automobiles has been left almost entirely to France. Within the last few years the United States has entered the market, and a recent exhibition in New York revealed the astonishing extent to which the industry has been pushed in this country. However, it is still at the experimental stage in the United States. It stands where France stood five years ago, but it has made in two years the advance France made in ten. From America—from the new storage battery of Edison, from the young engineers interesting themselves in automobile manufacture—the development of the immediate future is most likely to come.

Automobile motors are adaptations of engines long familiar to the mechanical world. There is a small stationary engine, known as the Bentz motor, which has long been familiar in the workshops of Europe. It is a small gas engine, used to produce power in small factories. This was taken and placed upon a carriage, and by the manipulation of gears and chains was found to produce motion. The automobile was a practicable vehicle. Unfortunately, it was clumsy, heavy, and devoid of speed. The motors were eccentric to a degree. At times they would work, and work well; at others they developed an embarrassing obstinacy.

THE EXPLOSIVE MOTOR.

In those engines, motion was communicated to the piston by alternate admission and condensation of gas in a closed cylinder. This was effected by means of the explosion of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, or of coal gas and air. The ignition came from a tiny gas jet or, in the more recent machines, from an electric spark.

To adapt this engine to the automobile, it was necessary to secure a compact reservoir and a ready means of ignition. To secure a compact fuel, gasoline, the lightest volatile liquid product obtained from the distillation of petroleum, was used. For its ignition a series of dry batteries was utilized, communicating an electric spark at regular intervals to the volatilized gasoline. Beyond that point, except in matters of detail, the gasoline motor has not developed. Yet today it remains the best of all motors, although one devoid of much less prospective development than the electric motor.

The great difficulty to contend with is the weight of all motors capable of generating a sufficient power for the production of a high rate of speed. Vehicles have to be built like gun carriages to carry the propulsive machinery, and a wagon designed to take the place of a brougham or a coupé has the weight of a brewer's dray. To obviate that is one of the essentials of automobile development.

HYDRO CARBON ENGINES.

As matters stand today, my own preference is for one of the hydro carbon engines. It should be vertical, of the four cylinder type, and should be located forward. On May 29 last I rode from Paris to Bordeaux, a distance of three hundred and forty eight miles, with eighteen miles through cities, in six hours, forty four minutes, and forty four seconds. That is the world's record, and my motor was such a one as I recommend.

The three hundred and thirty miles along open roads my automobile covered at an average speed of fifty three miles an hour, and for some of the way I was traveling at seventy miles an hour. The famous Sud express, said to be the fastest train in Europe, requires an hour longer to make the same trip. Through the cities, I could travel at a speed of only seven and a half miles.

Last June, in the race from Paris to Berlin—a distance of seven hundred and forty four miles—through Reims, Aix la Chapelle, Cologne, Münster, Hanover, Magdeburg, and Potsdam, I covered the distance in sixteen hours and six minutes. That is the extent to which French mechanism has carried automobiling. My time was something over thirty nine miles an hour, and established a world's record over the distance.

THE VERTICAL MOTOR.

The motor was of the description I have recommended. My preference for the vertical motor is founded upon the ease with which one obtains good and constant lubrication without endangering the ignition. The four cylinder variety I like because the vibration in each cylinder is to some extent neutralized by that in the other, consequently the one great objection to the explosive motor—its vibration—is reduced to a minimum.

The motor should be carried well forward of the machine, because it is there more easy of access than in the body of the automobile. There is less vibration on the fore pair of wheels than on those behind. It is easier to control and to lubricate the motor in the front of the machine than when placed further back. When in front, the rush of air acts as a cooling agent, and so assists in preventing the heating of parts which would result from a covering up of the motor in the interior of the carriage. So far as appearance goes, it is better to have the motor forward, as the general effect is that of an automobile—a road engine—not a horseless horse carriage. There is no reason why designers should strive so strenuously after maintaining in the automobile the lines of the old fashioned carriage. The modern vehicle is of a distinctly different type of migratory mechanism to the carriage drawn by horses, and the distinction should be maintained in the design.

If the motor be placed forward, there is much greater opportunity given to the carriage builder to make an attractive and serviceable body. He is relieved of the responsibility of housing a mechanism of which he knows nothing. There is an absence of dirt and grease in the body of the vehicle—the most serious of all the enemies of the designer of an esthetic automobile.

THE STEAM MOTOR.

One motor which has practically completed its time of usefulness is the steam motor. Originally an adaptation of the old fashioned steam engine, the steam motor has been found useful over short distances, but has never had a place in high speed or long distance automobiles. The fuel is gasoline, benzine, sometimes naphtha, and the great objection has been found in the necessity of carrying a reservoir of considerable dimensions to maintain a sufficient supply of water.

As gasoline is consumed much more rapidly in a steam motor than in an explosive motor, the difficulty of using this type of machine away from city streets becomes apparent.

The engine that has been used is the marine engine, slightly modified from the one in use in small steam launches. The boiler is the ordinary vertical tube boiler. The heat, after serving its primary purpose in producing steam, is passed through the water tank in coils in the manner made familiar from its use in locomotives and steamships. Against its use as an automobile motor is its liability to explode in the hands of an inexperienced chauffeur, in addition to the weight and clumsiness of its mechanism and supplies, the unpleasant odor of the gasoline boiler, the whizz of the escaping steam, and its ability to terrorize horse traffic by the long wake of condensing vapor.

The steam motor is only good over short distances, and the rate of speed attained is but little over twenty miles an hour. The probability is that before long those motors will be replaced by explosive or electric mechanism.

THE ELECTRIC MOTOR

The great potential development in automobile mechanism lies in the direction of electricity. At present it is restricted by the excessive weight of the batteries now necessary to the conveyance of the motive power. So soon as Mr. Edison has demonstrated the practicability of his new storage battery, a great advance may be expected in electrical machines. The electric motor is noiseless and clean, it lacks the unpleasant odor of the gasoline machine, as it does the noise and terrifying adjuncts of the steam motors. Although extremely difficult of repair to the layman, it is superior to the other motors in that it is free from the danger of explosion—a serious consideration in steam driven road cars. At present, however, the weight of an efficient electric motor is almost prohibitive.

Except for city work, indeed, the electric motor is of comparatively little use, since recharging stations are so few outside of towns. Until a portable generator is invented, all hope of the development of electric motors rests upon the storage battery. Until that can be made light and capable of carrying sufficient power to last over a somewhat more extended period than is at present the case, the electric motor will not be seen far away from the smooth streets of cities.

As at present constituted, an automobile fitted with an electric motor can run, at the most, forty miles on each charging. That renders it useless for prolonged touring, for endurance work, or for the ordinary operations of the road.

THE RACING AUTOMOBILE.

To the racing automobilist the inside of his machine is of an importance altogether superior to that it attains in the commercial mind. His life depends upon the integrity of a screw, the resistance of a bolt. When one embarks upon a speed contest he must have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of his machine. Otherwise is he doomed to failure. Nowhere in the world of sport does a man's nerve, his endurance, count for so much as in automobile racing. The strain on a rider in a steeplechase is nothing compared to that of a man riding alone and unattended for hours along a road at the speed of an express train, where a stone or a rut may hurl him, at any moment, into destruction. A ton of steel traveling at the rate of a mile a minute, meeting with a chance obstacle, is turned into a mass of broken and twisted ironwork. The chauffeur, unless Providence intervenes, is bruised and battered beyond recognition. Already there has been a sufficiency of deaths upon the automobile race track to relieve the sport of the charge of tameness which at first assailed it.

Breaks occur most frequently in the cogged gears. As the road cars are used over a rough and ready surface designed for ordinary traffic, without anything of special preparation, it is impossible to avoid sudden jolts and jars. These rack every joint of the delicate machinery within. A cog flies off. Then there is another jolt. Another cog gives way. The smaller gear loses a tooth. The wheels revolve for a time with little loss of power. Then the two plain surfaces come together, the wheels lock, and—chaos follows.

Warning - This information has been transcribed from a source that is well over 100 years old. It may be incorrect or outdated in some cases. It is also possible that errors were made during the transcription process. This information is being made available for entertainment purposes only.