SIEGFRIED MARCUS AND THE INVENTION OF THE AUTOMOBILE

 Most people have no idea who invented the gasoline powered automobile.  Popular thinking is that Gottfried Daimler and Karl Benz in Germany were the first persons to create the automobile, but that was the result of a propaganda blitz by the Nazis.  Daimler and Benz were the first to build a car commercially, but they didn't invent it.

Americans think that the Duryea brothers invented it.  Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, after observing the meat packing industry, but he didn't invent it.  While his name was lost in history for many years, Siegfried Marcus (1831-1898), born in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Germany before there was a Germany, and living in Vienna, is now being credited with the invention. 

Marcus's car, which he built around 1870, can be seen today in the Vienna Technical Museum. In about 1875, he drove the vehicle from Vienna to Klosterneuberg, a distance of 7.5 miles.  He had built an earlier gasoline powered vehicle in 1864, according to Brittanica.  The car wasn't very comfortable or safe--it had no brakes, steering or seats, but it did have an internal combustion engine, a carburetor and 4 wheels.

The internal combustion engine is the key.  Essentially, it uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder which turns a crankshaft that turns the wheels.  The fuel would be gasoline, diesel or kerosene.  

Marcus was a prolific inventor who held 131 patents in 16 countries.  These included an 1872 device for mixing fuel with air, an 1883 improved gas engine, and an 1884 electrical igniting device for gas engines.  To Marcus, the motor car was a hobby and he never obtained a patent.  Karl Benz got the first patent for a gas fueled car in 1886.

Marcus's first automobile was a simple handcart with an internal combustion motor attached which ran on liquid combustibles (petrol/gas).  To start the vehicle, he needed a strong man to lift the drive wheels off the ground and spin them.  Marcus recognized that was not a practical solution, so he later dismantled the original vehicle.

His 1883 design for an ignition with a "rotating brush carburettor" was a major step forward.  That engine was innovative and successful, and in fact was used by the German Navy in its torpedo boats.

By the time of his death, Marcus was hailed worldwide as the inventor of the automobile.  However, 40 years later, in the late 1930's, the Hitler regime came to power and made a concerted effort to remove Marcus's name from the history books.  They removed his memorial statue from the Vienna Technical University and directed German encyclopedias to remove his name and replace it with Daimler and Benz as the inventors.   Not surprisingly, Marcus's religion was the issue.  Although he was of Jewish descent, he was originally buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Vienna.  After the war, his remains were later moved to an "Honorary Tomb" in Vienna's Central Cemetery.  

When the Germans took over Austria in 1938, one of the first things they did was go to the Vienna Technical Museum to get Marcus's car.  The museum curator anticipated that, and in a heroic gesture, he spirited the car into a far corner of the museum and constructed a brick wall, thus hiding the car from the Nazis.  The Nazis did obtain and destroy every document, patent and blueprint relating to Marcus's inventions, largely erasing him from history.  Because of that, the above dates cited are not certain.  In the 1960's the car was rediscovered when the museum was remodeled.  

Other early inventors created significant inventions to further the development of the modern automobile.  For example, in 1876, Nicholas Otto invented an effective gas motor engine.  It was a four stroke engine that was the prototype for all later automobiles.  He built his engine into a motorcycle.

Two Springfield, Massachusetts bicycle manufactures, Charles and Frank Duryea built their first motor vehicle in 1893.  They achieved fame by winning the first automobile race, held on a snowy Thanksgiving Day in Chicago in 1893.  First prize was $2000.  

The story is not complete without the efforts of Henry Ford.  A Rochester, NY patent lawyer named George B. Selden obtained a patent on a "road engine" which allowed him to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from all American car manufacturers.  He based the patent on an 1873 engine built by George Brayton which was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  Selden filed for the patent in 1879 to include not only the engine but its use in a 4 wheeled car which he never built.  His witness on the patent application was a guy named George Eastman who later achieved fame in the camera business.  

Selden was able to shake down car makers for years until Henry Ford decided he wasn't going to take it anymore.  With four other car makers, Ford challenged the Selden patent.  The case dragged on for 8 years, generating 14,000 pages of testimony.  Among them was Ford's statement, "It is perfectly safe to say that George Selden has never advanced the automobile industry in a single particular...and it would perhaps be further advanced than it is now had he never been born."   The trial court found in favor of Selden, but Ford appealed and the appeals court overturned the verdict.   Ford's actions opened the automobile market for the building of affordable cars.  

As you can see, the car, as we know it, has a complicated history dating back to the original efforts and creativity of Siegfried Marcus.