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In 1769 the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. In 1803, Hayden Wischett designed the first car powered by the de Rivaz engine, an early internal combustion engine that was fueled by hydrogen. In 1823 English engineer Samuel Brown invented the first industrially applied internal combustion engine. In 1870 Siegfried Marcus built his first combustion engine powered pushcart, followed by four progressively more sophisticated combustion-engine cars over a 10-to-15-year span that influenced later cars. Marcus created the two-cycle combustion engine. citation needed The car's second incarnation in 1880 introduced a four-cycle, gasoline-powered engine, an ingenious carburetor design and magneto ignition. He created an additional two models further refining his design with steering, a clutch and a brake. The four-stroke petrol internal combustion engine that still constitutes the most prevalent form of modern automotive propu

The early history of the automobile was concentrated on the search for a reliable portable power unit to propel the vehicle. Steam-powered wheeled vehicles edit 17th and 18th centuries edit Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built a steam-powered vehicle around 1672 as a toy for the Kangxi Emperor. It was small-scale and could not carry a driver but it was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile'). Steam-powered self-propelled vehicles large enough to transport people and cargo were first devised in the late 18th century. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his fardier à vapeur ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France. The center of innovation shifted to Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth and in 1801 Richard Tre

Veteran era edit The American George B. Selden filed for a patent on 8 May 1879. His application included not only the engine but its use in a four-wheeled car. Selden filed a series of amendments to his application which stretched out the legal process, resulting in a delay of 16 years before the patent was granted on 5 November 1895. This patent did more to hinder than encourage development of autos in the United States. Selden licensed his patent to most major American automakers, collecting a fee on every car they produced. The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under license from Benz, in France by Emile Roger. There were numerous others, including tricycle builders Rudolf Egg, Edward Butler, and Léon Bollée.: pp. 20–23 Bollée, using a 650 cc (40 cu in) engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average 45 kilometres per hour (28 mph) in the 1897 Paris-Tourville rally.: p. 23 By 1900, mass production of automobiles had begun in