Recalling the past of automotive careers that developed its technology, its events that led to the development of combustion engines began when human beings discovered mechanical devices that made work, such as moving objects and people, easier or faster. Wheels and axles were used for vehicles such as carts, wagons, and carriages for thousand of years before the first century B.C. when the Romans discovered ball bearings and how to hitch a front axle to a wagon to provide flexible steering. Another milestone was reached by Hero of Alexandria, who developed the first crude steam engine in the first century A.D. However, it was only about 400 years ago that Leonardo da Vinci and other European machine designers discovered how to modify wheels into gears. Da Vinci envisioned an automobile powered by an engine and foresaw the principles of transmissions with gear rations that would control power speeds. He also saw the need to smooth bearings to overcome friction. In 1769, James Watt and Nicolas Cugnot who devoted their lives to jobs in automotive development both built usable steam engines that were subsequently refined and applied to transportation, manufacturing, and other industrial uses. Meanwhile, in England, France, and Germany, steam buses for transporting people became fairly common. One of the first buses was built in England by Sir Godsworthy Gurney in 1829 and could carry eighteen people on a regular schedule from London to Bath, a distance of 170 kilometers. In time, the steam automobile evolved from such buses.
By the 1880s the basic principles of electricity were discovered and electric-motor-driven automobiles were developed and on the market. They were quiet and comfortable but never very important, because the batteries that drove the motors were too heavy and had to be recharged too often to be widely accepted. By the early 1880s, engineers who had been into trials on auto jobs and development in Europe and the United States- had learned enough about wheels, shafts, gears, steam cylinders, hydraulic pumps, and elementary electrical sparking devices to attempt to combine them into an automobile. Experience with steam-driven buses and other machines had taught them much that would apply to automobiles. Gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, and benzene were also available as cheap fuels for internal combustion engines. Eventually, the first successful high-compression engines grew out of the research of Daimler and Benz in Germany and Peugeot and Renault engines and built automobiles. In the United States, Henry Ford, Eli Olds, and Frank Duryea were working on gasoline engines and automobile development. Wagons with engines were also developed, and the way was made clear for modern trucks to become the hauling vehicles of the twentieth century. By the 1890s, the western world saw a need for better land transportation. The newly created automobiles promised unprecedented personal mobility if they could be made more powerful, less noisy, safer, more comfortable, and more dependable to operate. In the United States, there were thousands of people who lived on farms and in small cities. They needed a cheap way to travel from home to town or to larger cities. They needed trucks for hauling, especially for taking farm and forest products to market. Hence, automotive employment during this time was in high demand.
The auto mechanic jobs of automotive engineers and automotive technicians both came into being in the period between 1880 and 1910. In Europe and the United States, the fierce competition to develop faster, fancier, and cheaper automobiles caused many small companies to develop and produce successful automobiles. The challenge to build automobiles that pleased the public and that could be sold at a price many people could afford brought to light the special genius of Henry Ford. He, along with engineers and technicians, designed , built and marketed thousands of his first “Model A” Fords beginning in 1903. From 1903 until 1903, they designed and built 18 different models, and finally their Model T, which was enormously successful. It was the first mass market car - so simple, roomy, dependable, and very affordable. More than 15 million were built during the next two decades. Worldwide automobile racing began in 1898, only a few years after the first autos were built. The competition to set records for the fastest automobile became a way for auto makers to prove the quality of their machines. Henry Ford personally drove his Model 999 to win the 1903 fastest car record at a speed of 147 kilometers per hour. Their success in races popularized Ford cars and helped to sell them to a growing market. It also helped Ford designers and technicians to develop important new technology, such as use of alcohol fuel for racing cars and many more. As a whole, Ford’s efforts and achievement have eventually evolved into what we have some of the latest models of cars, today.
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