Horseless Vehicles; Automobiles, Motor Cycles Operated by Steam, Hydro-carbon, Electric and Pneumatic Motors

This book was published in 1900.

A practical treatise for automobilists, manufacturers,
capitalists, investors and everyone interested in the
development, use and care of the automobile.

Including a special chapter on how to build an electric
cab, with detail drawings.


PREFACE.

The rapid advance in the industry appertaining to me-
chanical appliances for locomotion on common roads seems
to need a better representation than it has yet had in book
form, especially in its relation to the automobile industry in
the United States.

It is hoped that the numerous inquiries in relation to
motors and vehicles that have been received by the author
will find a fair and satisfactory reply in the pages of this
work.

Then there need be no apology for the publication of a
work to meet the wants of seekers for information in this
new line of industry which exemplifies a new phase in the
ways and means of a people for gratifying their desires for
new modes and economies in travel for pleasure or business.

In the development of new modes of power resources and
in the improvement of well-known powers for automobile
uses, is involved a vast business aspect and comparatively a
new departure in business lines.

There has been as yet but little published in book form
that has proved satisfactory to the general reader or in-
quirer on the subject of the mechanism and motive power
for common road locomotion.

The technical press in the United States seems to have
been the only source of information and illustration in re-
gard to this newly developed industry, and to this the
author is much indebted for details and illustrations.

It is proposed in this work to bring the practical working
details of the horseless vehicle as clearly as possible to the
understanding of the general reader.

Personal inspection and critical examination of the
mechanism of the motive power and running gear is the
best method of arriving at the facts as to the operation and
durability of so important an element as their power factor.

To some extent this has been afforded and has contributed
much to the detailed description that has been given and
illustrated in this work. A free reference to patent illus-
tration and description does not always give a true concep-
tion of a mechanism that becomes a manufacture after a
patent has been issued ; improvements and changes sug-
gested by trials and experience take the place of the patented
exhibit, when the patented feature in a measure is greatly
changed and sometimes lost.

The theoretical consideration of power and its mathe-
mathical expressions are so fully treated in technical works
on steam, explosion motors, electricity and compressed air,
that a repetition of such topics in this work will not, it is
thought, increase its interest for the general reader or for
the user of the automobile.