Emile Levassor - architect of the automobile

தமிழில் இந்த கட்டுரை

This was first published as an essay in the New Indian Express

Buildings have architects. Do cars have architects too? But think about it! A car has doors, windows, a floor, a roof, seats, air conditioning, radio, television.. a car is a room designed to move! But also - it has an engine, a petrol tank, a steering wheel, gears, speedometer, headlights, wheels…

Isnt a car just bullock cart or a horse carriage with an engine? Did bullock carts or horse carraiges have architects? In fact, in ancient times, chariots, called rathas in Sanskrit, were made by a caste of people called rathakaaras – also called taksha in Sanskrit or thachcha in Tamil; this word also means sculptor. Sthapathis who built temples in Darasuram and Konarak shaped them like.. rathas. And sthapathis are architects!

Horseless carraiges

We saw how Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, independently fitted the petrol engines they designed to horseless carriages. Benz called his vehicle the Patent Motorwagen. Daimler named his motorcycle Motoren Gesselschaft. Daimler also fitted engines to horseless carriage and sold them.

But neither Benz nor Daimler’s vehicles were really cars as we think of them today; they were horseless carraiges. Like bicycles, they had a chain based transmission. The seats were on top of the engines. Their brakes were nominal, operated by leather cords, but effective at the low speeds they were driving. At best, their vehicles were glorified fish carts!

Neither vehicle had a proper steering mechanism. There was no steering wheel, just a rod-like tiller, which demanded great physical strength to operate. Horses and bullocks were steered by whips. Trains ran on rails, their steering needs were very different. Benz and Daimler invented the mechanical working parts of the car, but a lot of things had to be invented to make them usable.

A Marriage, A License, A Newborn

Both Benz and Daimler’s companies successfully sold a few hundred vehicles every year and they exhibited their vehicles in the 1889 Paris World Fair.

Two Frenchmen Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor, who worked for a company that manufactured engines for saw mills, were intrigued by Daimler’s engines. They formed a company Panhard et Levassor and negotiated rights to build Daimler engines in France, with Edouard Sazarin, who handled Daimler’s patents on his engine. When Sazarin died, his widow successfully negotiated with Daimler and won the license to build vehicles with Daimler engines. Then she married Emile Levassor – never have the words marriage and license been simultaneously so romantic and businesslike, in society or business!

But this marriage resulted not only in both a family and business – it gave birth to the automobile as we know it today.

The mindset of engine manufacturers like Benz and Daimler was to adapt an engine to a carriage, made traditionally by artisanal communities. Panhard et Levassor was the first company that decided to make automobiles with no reference to horse-drawn traditions.

Emile Levassor

Levassor experimented with one model called vis-à-vis (face to face) and later, another called dose-a-dos (back to back), which had passengers seated with their backs to the engine, one seat facing forward, the other backward. Then Levassor chose to move the engine forward. Says, Vaclav Smil, “Levassor deserves the honor of having led the development of the motor-car. He moved the engine from under the seats and placed it in front of the driver, a shift that placed the crankshaft parallel with the car’s principal axis rather than parallel with the axles.” Larson adds: “Placing the engine up front under its own enclosure, protected it from dirt and pollution.”

He also designed the clutch, gear box and transmission which mechanisms still drives cars today. In their next model, a windshield and side curtains. This model built in 1892, was called the Cabriolet. Like the word car originated as a contraction of carriage, the word cab comes from this innovation.

The successof Levassor’s innovation can be guaged from this fact : Panhard et Levassor’s cars sold more successfully than the cars built by Daimler or Benz, even in Germany!

Car Races and Accidents

When cars are invented, can car races be far behind? In Paris, in the world’s first car race in July 1894, four cars with Daimler petrol engines did very well coming second to fifth. But the first place was won not by a car, but by a De Dion and Bouton tractor which had a steam engine!

This is one of the other amazing things about the history of the automobile. In this period, steam engines and electric motors were actually more popular and successful than petrol engines in the experimental street vehicles of the day. In the United States, concurrently, Thomas Edison was experimenting with a battery operated electric car, after having amazed the world by inventing the phonograph and the incandescent electric light bulb.

A year later, though, Levassor himself drove his test model in the 1200 km Paris Bordeaux round trip race, his car won. We may not call this competition a race today – the average speed was only 24 km / h. Chennai autorickshaws go through red lights faster than that. But races made cars popular and a number of sportsmen were soon buying and racing cars.

Sadly, in 1896 Levassor was seriously injured while driving in the Paris Marseille race. He died of wounds caused by this accident, the next year. It seems tragic and ironic that the architect of the car would die of a racing accident

But the fundamental model of the car that Levassor gave us continues to serve us today.

The success of the Levassor design so enamored an Austrian businessman living in France, Emile Jellinek, that he asked Daimler to make bigger engines with better design, like Levassor’s. Daimler’s partner Wilhelm Maybach joined Jellinek, who then named this design after his daughter – Mercedes.

Not long after, in the USA, a young engineer refused Edison’s offer of a job designing electric cars and started his own experiments with petrol engines : Henry Ford.

References

1.      Dreams to Automobiles Len Larson

2.      Creating the Twentieth century, Vaclav Smil

My blog essays on Inventors and Discoverers
Contents Page for this blog

Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz

Bertha and Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler
Portrait : New Indian Express

James Watt watched a tea kettle boil, and built a steam engine. This is what we read in school. But England imported tea from China; the Chinese have boiled tea for a thousand years before the English. Why didn’t some Chinese James Watt invent the steam engine?

Karl Benz built the first petrol engine car in Germany, a hundred years after Watt. Nobody boils tea in petrol, so what inspired Karl Benz?

From Steam to Petrol

James Watt’s steam engine, was NOT inspired by a tea kettle, but by earlier steam engines by Thomas Savery and William Newcomen. But theirs were inefficient engines – Watt’s major breakthrough took twenty years of hard work and several incremental improvements, mainly in measuring devices. His crucial breakthrough was an external condenser. Watt’s stationary engine, powered cotton mills and mechanical presses in the 1780s. The railway steam engine, was invented forty years later by Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson in the 1820s. In the intervening period, scientists discovered several laws of  heat and power – the field of thermodynamics. Petroleum was discovered only in the 1850s. But it was primarily used for lighting lamps or stoves.

But some tinkering engineers saw great potential in petrol, as a substitute for steam engines. Coal was hard to mine, slow to ignite, difficult and dirty to handle and caused a lot of smoke and grime; petrol on the other hand, flowed from oil wells, could be stored in tanks, flowed through pipes and had a much lower ignition point.

The Engine

The petrol engine was invented by Nikolaus Otto, a travelling salesman for a food company! He had been inspired by an engine designed by Lenoir that ran on coal gas; Otto experimented with a copy of a Lenoir engine that another skilled mechanic built for him in 1861. He created an engine fueled with an alcohol air mixture. Eugen Langen, owner of a sugar refinery, invested in a new company that  Otto started, and he built an improved engine. At the 1867 Paris exhibition, his engine won the first prize. He expanded this company, reorganized as Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz AG. This was not a car engine, but more like a mechanical power device for workshops, like printing presses.

Otto hired Gottlieb Daimler and William Maybach to improve it; they made it smaller, quieter, more efficient. But when Daimler proposed fitting Otto’s engine to power a horseless carriage, Otto showed no interest.

Horseless Carriages

So Daimler and Maybach quit Otto’s company in 1882, rented a house in Canstatt and started a car company. Daimler experimented, first fitting a bicycle with a petrol engine – the world’s first motorbike, called the Motoren Gesselschaft. Daimler’s seventeen year old son Paul test drove it – the ultimate teenager fantasy!

This public demonstration provoked amazement and curiosity. But a local newspaper, Canstatt Zeitung was quite critical, calling it a “repugnant diabolical device, dangerous to citizens.” Paul test drove the bike at nights, in secret. He even replaced the front wheel with a skid, and drove it on a frozen lake!

Offended by media criticism, but not discouraged, Daimler then tested the engine on a boat. He disguised it with wires to pretend it was electric. After it proved successful, he revealed he had used a petrol engine!

In 1886, for his wife Emma’s birthday he ordered a magnificent horse carriage – delivered secretly at night. He planned to build a car, with that carriage.

Ringing in a New Era

Parallely, in Mannheim, a nearby city, Karl Benz tried to build a petrol engine. His earlier business failed. But his wife Bertha had great faith in him and her dowry was useful for his experiments. After many failures, he successfully ran a stationary two stroke petrol engine on the last day of 1879.  In his own words:

After supper my wife said, “Let us go over to the shop and try our luck once more.” My heart was pounding. I turned the crank. The engine started to go “put-put-put”, and the music of the future sounded with regular rhythm. We both listened to it run for a full hour, fascinated, never tiring of the single tone of its song. The longer it played its note, the more sorrow and anxiety it conjured away from the heart. Suddenly the bells began to ring – New Years Eve bells. We felt they were not just ringing in a new year, but a new era.

He mounted his engine on a three wheel carriage, calling it the Benz Patent Motorwagen. The local newspaper Mannheimer Zeitung attacked Benz’s idea calling it, “useless, ridiculous, indecent. Who would buy it when there are horses for sale?” But in 1885 he drove the Motorwagen on the streets and it became a sensation! But not many people actually bought his Motorwagen.

Bertha’s Benzene Yatra

Bertha, Karl’s wife is the great romantic heroine of what followed. In August 1888, one morning, she asked her fifteen year old son Eugen “Can you drive it?” 

The right answer was “No, mother, my Dad put an engine with a steering rod on a horse carriage. Nobody knows how to drive it.” 

But Eugen said, “Of course!” 

With Eugen’s brother Richard, the family drove to visit Bertha’s family in Pforzheim. There were no petrol bunks then. So they refueled with benzene, sold at apothecaries (pharmacies!). Bertha fixed a short circuit in the engine, with her hairpin. Eugen repaired the chains when they slipped. Karl was annoyed, but when Germans realized that a mother and children could safely drive a car a hundred km, they became national celebrities. Bertha’s drive is as famous in Germany as Gandhi’s Dandi yatra is in India.

Teenage drivers, dowry money, media critics, a daring cross country journey, ushering in a new era – sounds like a mega serial, but this is real history!

Shoulders of Giants

Darwin and Wallace, independently discovered evolution while living on different continents; Wallace’s letter to Darwin forced the latter to publish; after this they became friends and mutual admirers. Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler independently invented the petrol based car, but never met each other, even though they lived in the same country! Oddly, several years after Daimler died, the companies they started would merge as Daimler-Benz.

But they shared history, by standing on the shoulders of giants who came before them. Otto’s engine, was inspired by Lenoir, who  was inspired by James Watt, who was inspired by Newcomen and Savery!

Note Today, March 17 is Gottlieb Daimler's birthday. This essay was originally published in New Indian Express under the title Changing History's Gears as part of a series about scientists.

If you liked this essay, you might also like reading these

How Diesel and Benz changed agriculture

The Art and Aesthetic of Driving 

"Indians are such wonderful drivers"

Emile Levassor - architect of the car

Ford Lenin Hitler Chaplin

Lenin admired Ford as one of the great contributors to the twentieth century revolution and it was not unusual to see portraits of  Ford and Lenin hanging side by side in Soviet Union factories.

Adolf Hitler also revered Ford. He proclaimed, "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" and modeled the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the model T. In the USA, capitalists like John Rockefeller acclaimed Ford and described his production facilities as the "Industrial Marvel of the Age ." US President Woodrow Wilson asked him to run for Senate as a progressive Democrat.

Leftist artists denounced his impact on  society. Charlie Chaplin satirized mechanical labor in the movie, "Modern Times." Aldous Huxley dated the beginning of "degeneration" on "the year of our Ford."

Yet a survey of American workers found they ranked him above Franklin Roosevelt and Walter Reuther as the modern American leader "most helpful to labor."

--------
The above extract is from the book The Peoples Tycoon by Steven Watts.

The contrast between how intelligentsia (journalists, artists, writers) perceived him - as an idiot and a traitor - and how capitalists, politicians and workers perceived him, is striking. Today, Henry Ford is mostly ignored. Most writers and artists continue think of the car as a perverse polluting dinosaur while ungratefully and hypocritically wanting their own.

I have also been reading Henry Ford's autobiography My Life and Work. It is stunning for its insights on three different fields - engineering, economics and human psychology. I will blog on them shortly. From his autobiography, it seems that Ford was keen on making farming simpler and less brutal and wanted to make efficient machines like tractors for the job. But farmers took no interest in his efforts. It was the general public buying cars in large numbers that eventually persuaded farmers, that internal combustion engines were good for farming. It is Ford, not Diesel and Benz, therefore who should get the credit for what I call the Second Green Revolution.

Related Blogs

Henry Ford - idiot, traitor
Traffic - LMS
On Charles Parsons and turbines

எமீல் லெவஸார்

எமீல் லெவஸார்

இன்று ஜனவரி 21 எமீல் லெவஸாரின் பிறந்தநாள்.

யார் அவர்? கேள்விப்பட்டதேயில்லையே! 

இருக்கட்டும் : ஆசீவகம், வாலஸ் போன்று தான் இவரும். ஜனவரி 8 வாலஸின் பிறந்த நாள். புணேவில் இருந்ததால் தவறவிட்டுவிட்டேன், அடுத்த வருடம் எழுதுகிறேன்.

எமீல் லெவஸார், காரின் மூத்த முதல் தச்சன். டீஸல் எஞ்ஜினை உருவாக்கி அதற்கு பெயர் கொடுத்த ருடால்ஃப் டீஸலை அறிந்துளோம். காரை உலகிற்கு அறிமுகம் செய்த கார்ள் பென்ஸ் கூட தெரியும் – அவர் பெயரில் பொறியியல் திறனுக்கும் சொகுசுக்கும் புகழ்பெற்ற சிறந்த ஜெர்மானிய கார்களை உலகமே அறியும்.

பென்ஸ் செய்த கார் என்ன? பழைய குதிரைவண்டியில் குதிரையை கழட்டிவிட்டு மூன்றாவது சக்கரத்தை பொருத்தி, ஆசனத்துக்கு கீழே (விசையை) எஞ்ஜினை பொருத்தி, பிரேக்கில்லாத, கியரில்லாத, (அதனால் க்ளட்சும்மில்லாத) சைக்கிள் சங்கிலி வண்டியைதான் படைத்தார் கார்ள் பென்ஸ். இதை கார் என்று சொல்வது குறுநில மன்னரை திரிபுவன சக்கரவர்த்தி என்று புலவர்கள் புகழ்ந்தது போலாகும். உலகின் முதல் மீன்பாடி வண்டியை உருவாக்கினார் பென்ஸ்.

அவரை விட அவரது திறமையில் அதிக நம்பிக்கை வைத்திருந்த அவரது மனைவி பெர்த்தா, தனது வரதட்சணை செல்வத்தால் கணவர் கார்ளின் வியாபாரத்தை காப்பாற்றியது போதாது என்று, தன் மகன்களை ஏற்றி, கணவருக்கு ஒரு கடிதம் எழுதிவிட்டு, காரை 65 கிலோமீட்டர் ஓட்டி உலக சாதனை படைத்தார். சுவாரசியமான கதை – ஆங்கிலத்தில் இங்கு படிக்கவும். 

மேடுகளில் ஏற இந்த வண்டி பட்ட கடினத்தால், அதை சரி படுத்த கியர் அமைப்பை காரில் சேர்த்தார் பென்ஸ். 

இந்த மீன்பாடி வண்டிகளையே “கார்” என்று சொல்லி பிற்காலத்தில் ஜெர்ம்னியின் டெய்மலர் கம்பெனியும் விற்று வந்தது. ஒரு வருடத்திற்கு சில நூறு கார்களே இவர்கள் தயாரித்தனர்.

லெவஸார் இன்றைய காரின் அடிப்படை வடிவம் அமைத்தவர். ஆசனத்தின் கீழே இருந்த எஞ்ஜினை முன்னே வைத்தார். இதனால் டிரான்ஸ்மிஷன் ஆகஸல் அமைப்புகள் ஒரு முக்கிய வடிவமும் மாற்றமும் பெற்றன. கியரை ஒன்றிணைத்த கியர் பெட்டியை அறிமுகம் செய்தார். கியர் அமைப்பை சரியாக வேலைப்படுத்த கிளட்ச்சை அறிமுகப்படுத்தினார்.

எஞ்ஜின் பொருத்திய குதிரைவண்டியாக நினைக்காமல் காராக முதலில் கருதி படைத்தவர் எமீல் லெவஸார் என்கிறார் வஷ்லவ் ஸ்மில், Creating the Twentieth Century என்ற நூலில். 

ஆங்கிலமும் காரும் தெறிந்தவருக்கு வஷ்லவ் ஸ்மில்லின் வாக்கியங்களை ஆங்கிலத்திலேயே தருகிறேன்.

Says Vaclav Smil: “Emille Levassor, designed the first vehicle which not merely a horseless carriage. He also designed the clutch, gear box and transmission which mechanism still drives cars today, and “so must be give the honor of having led the development of the motor-car”. Leavassor, moved engine from under the seats and placed it in front of the driver, a shift that placed the crankshaft parallel with the car’s principal axis rather than parallel with the axles.”

பெட்ரோல் எஞ்ஜினை படைத்த நிக்கலஸ் ஆட்டோவின் நினைவு நாள் ஜனவரி 26. 

ஒத்த பதிவுகள்

1. எடிசனின் வால்மீகீ - வஷ்லவ் ஸ்மில்

2. டிசம்பர் 31 - செல்வத் திருநாள்

3. டீஸல் பென்ஸ் செய்த பசுமை புரட்சி

4. எடிசனும் பென்ஸும் 

5. பொறியாளர் மாதம்

The Art and Aesthetic of Driving

I saw the movie Rush on TV last weekend, while Narendra Modi was orating in Madison Square Garden in New York. The movie is about the Formula One racing – particularly the contest between two drivers, Niki Lauda of Austria and James Hunt of England. Racing is the only thing they have in common – their characters are diametrically opposite.

James Hunt is a womanizer, aggressive, muscular, handsome, utterly contemptuous, a bag of testosterone that artists decry in life and celebrate in art.

In one scene, Lauda is given a lift by a woman, Marlene. He hasn’t told her that Ferrari just signed him up. He makes remarks about various aspects of the car. When the car breaks down, she tries to use her sex appeal to get a lift. A passing car stops – not for her, but recognizing Niki Lauda – and they ask him to drive their beat up old car. This is how Marlene discovers who he is. “You cant be a Formula One driver,” she says. “They have long hair, they are sexy, shirts open upto here...” she pauses. “Besides, you are driving like a old man.” Lauda merely smiles!

“Why don’t you drive fast?” she asks.

“There is no need to drive fast,” he retorts. “It increases the percentage of risk. Right now, there’s no reward, no incentive.”

Lauda’s reply is astounding, for any driver. Formula One driver, it is totally unbelievable.

In the brilliant cinematic moment, that every race fan waits for, Marlene challenges him, when he calmly asks, “Why should I drive fast?”

“Because I am asking you to.”

It’s brief, all cuts and flashes and sound effects, but for the next few seconds of film, there’s shifting of gears, the roar of the engine and the uncontrolled excitement of the guys who gave Niki Lauda a lift as he careens their ordinary car through the Italian country side. And Marlene for the first time, discovers acceleration. We have seen far better scenes of car racing, and some terrific driving and road stunts, in movies like Ronin or Iron Man, with far larger budgets. Considering how much time is devoted in movies to races and chases – in bikes, cars, planes, trains, boats etc., the general opinion is that driving fast is the ultimate skill on the road. It is exactly this aspect, and that of living fast, that the movie’s other character, James Hunt displays.

In this context, it is utterly amazing, that the philosophy of driving as espoused by Lauda, actually made it to a film on car racing! I have only known about Lauda’s name – and all I have seen of car racing is mostly Formula 1 or CART on TV. Other races like Nascar, Le Mans etc don’t interest me, and bike racing rarely does either.

Alistair MacLean’s The Way to Dusty Death is a terrific book about the racing world, is a terrific read. But it is a crime story and about racing, not driving. Reader, if there are any books you know about driving – please let me know.

Lauda’s philosophy is about driving. Anyone who takes pleasure in driving a car, derives pleasure in how it responds, how it growls, how it takes curves, the feel of accelerational gravity, how the car eats tarmac, how it glides smoothly sideways, the pleasure of overtaking a whole bunch of cars, the recognition of other drivers or the mild envy or admiration when they see you do something special on the road – such a person knows the pleasure of driving, not just the pleasures of the scenery on the road. Few of us ever drive a racing car or on a race course. For those few of us lucky enough to have driven a sports car, with an engine that can growl and squeal and slice through the wind and delight and exhilarate and put a grin on your face, philosophy is something that you place in the back seat, assuming your car has a back seat.

But : it isn’t really – when you come up very quickly on the tails of a much less powerful car, and its driver pulls over in fear or irritation, you know you have done the wrong thing, the road is not a race course. That philosophy, Do no harm, is part of the basic principle of driving. 

For most of us driving is a skill. For professionals like cab or truck or bus drivers, it is a craft. I wonder whether professional drivers have developed a sense of art about driving.

But truly, truly, truly, for those who enjoy driving, it is an art, and it has an aesthetic. The aesthetics of the art of driving varies from person to person, car to car, place to place, perhaps even with age and company and music and mindset.

Thomas Edison and Karl Benz

December 31, 1879 is famous as the day Thomas Edison showcased his electric light bulb in Menlo Park, New Jersey, triggering in the Age of Electricity. But, it is also the day, according to Valcav Smil, that Karl Benz first drove a carriage fitted with his internal combustion engine. Surely then, one of the most significant dates in history.

I stumbled upon it, when I was reading Smil's book "Creating the Twentieth Century." It is a fascinating book, by a terrific author, but not an easy read for the general public. It requires a decent knowledge of engineering, and also a passion for understanding the most understated impact of engineering as a force in history, far surpassing politics, philosophy, art or economics.