Vehicle
Benz Patent Motorwagen
Also Known As Patent-Motorwagen Benz & Cie's own trade designation for the vehicle before c. 1900.
Automobiles
A three wheeled motor vehicle built by Karl Benz, granted German patent DRP 37435 in January 1886. Unlike earlier steam or muscle powered road vehicles, it was designed from the outset around its own internal combustion engine rather than adapted from a horse drawn carriage, and it is widely regarded as the first true automobile, though the question of what counts as the first is itself genuinely contested. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
SignificanceWidely regarded as the first true automobile, patented as such in 1886. 1 Manufacturer or Builder Connections
Exemplifies
Source Wikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
Invented By
Source Wikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
Preceded By
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's steam powered fardier a vapeur of 1769-1770 preceded the Benz Patent Motorwagen of 1885 as a self-propelled road vehicle; whether it counts as the first automobile proper, versus Benz's design, is a separate, largely definitional dispute already noted in the atlas's founding attribution disputes.
Source Wikipedia: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
WikipediaOverview
Benz Patent-Motorwagen ("patent motorcar") is used today to refer to the first cars produced by Benz & Cie between 1885 and 1893; these had three wheels, a single-cylinder four-stroke engine and belt-drive.
Assessment
When tested, it produced 0.68 PS (500 W; 2/3 hp) at 250 rpm, although later tests by the University of Mannheim showed it to be capable of 0.91 PS (670 W; 0.9 hp) at 400 rpm.
Lead section
Benz & Cie used the designation "Patent-Motorwagen" for their four-wheel cars until c.1900.
- Exemplifies: Road Transport
- Invented By: Karl Benz
View the Source Wikipedia: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
WikipediaPreceded By: Cugnot Fardier a Vapeur, Lead sectionQuote, Preceded By: Cugnot Fardier a Vapeur, Lead section
was a French inventor who built the world's first full-size and working self-propelled mechanical land-vehicle,
Open Questions (1 open question)
What counts as the first automobile: the Benz Patent Motorwagen, or an earlier self propelled road vehicle?
The Benz Patent Motorwagen is the vehicle most widely credited as the first true automobile because it was patented in 1886 and was designed from first principles around its own internal combustion engine rather than adapted from a horse drawn carriage. But self propelled road vehicles predate it by over a century: Nicolas Joseph Cugnots steam powered fardier a vapeur of 1769 is often cited as the first self propelled road vehicle, and various steam carriages operated in Britain in the early nineteenth century. The dispute is less about facts than definition: what counts as an automobile rather than merely a self propelled vehicle.
What would resolve this This is chiefly a definitional dispute rather than a factual one; it resolves only by the atlas stating its own working definition of automobile explicitly, which the entity descriptions here already do implicitly by scope, and by naming the earlier steam vehicles honestly as self propelled road vehicles rather than automobiles by the narrower definition.
History of technologyWikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
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