What we now call “cars” or “cars”, there are already more than a century. We use these names, do not know the other, but it could be much worse. Colleagues from Jalopnik followed the history of all the manufacturers who have begun to work on the car. Everyone who used four wheels and a motor to move, gave the invention its name.
In 1897, in the pages of the New York Times has the headline: “the new mechanical wagon with the awful name automobile has come to stay.” As it turned out, the name “car” was not so horrible.
In 1792 Oliver Evans applied for registration of the patent on the prototype car. He called his Oruktor Amphibolos. Very well, that this title never appeared.
In 1879, George Selden, too, has patented an invention that was never made. He called it a “road car”, which is not as scary as Oruktor Amphibolos. Thanks to its patent, he was able to receive payments with American car companies. In 1904, Henry Ford called George Selden in court. The court decided that to obtain contributions Selden must make your “road car”, but to do he could not.
In 1895 brothers Charles and Frank Doody patented “motorized trolley” and Henry Ford in 1896 patented “ATV”. Unlike older patents, these become something more than sketches on paper, but the names the inventors gave the machines did not catch on.
Newspapers were forced to exercise in wit and creativity in order to call the car somehow. They managed to come up with:
- Autobahn
- Autokinetic
- Automaton
- Engine horse
- Bagget
- Diamat
- Horseless carriage
- Mocol
- Motor coach
- Motorig
- Motorcycle
- Oleo-locomotive
- Track
The word “car” was just one of a large list. It’s hard to say why exactly, but the headline in the New York Times played a huge role. It is believed that the author of the word can be called the Italian artist and inventor named Martini, who in 1300-ies drew a cart with four wheels and a man. He combined the Greek word auto (self) and Latin word mobils (the movement).
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Today we call them “cars”, as they were called earlier
Ernest Vasilevskiy