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Leonardo da Vinci invents the self-propelled car. This happens many years before anyone else is even thinking about automobiles. However, the car remains a sketch on paper and is never actually made. This self-propelled car is not a car like the ones we see today. It is more similar to a cart and does not have a seat.
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Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot builds the first self-propelled road vehicle in France. This vehicle is a tractor for the French army. It has three wheels and moves at about 2.5 miles per hour
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American Oliver Evans receives the first US patent for a steam-powered land vehicle
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An internal combustion engine which uses a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is invented by Francois Isaac de Rivaz in Switzerland. He also designs a car for the engine, the first automobile powered by internal combustion. However, his design turns out to be very unsuccessful
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An internal combustion engine which uses a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is invented by Francois Isaac de Rivaz in Switzerland. He also designs a car for the engine, the first automobile powered by internal combustion. However, his design turns out to be very unsuccessful
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English engineer and inventor Samuel Brown invents an internal combustion engine. It has separate combustion and working cylinders, and is used to power a vehicle
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Robert Anderson invents the first crude electric carriage in Scotland. It is powered by non-rechargeable primary power cells
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Belgian engineer Jean-Joseph-Etienne Lenoir invents the “horseless carriage.” It uses an internal combustion engine and can move at about 3 miles per hour. This is the first commercially successful internal combustion engine
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American George Baldwin Selden invents a combined internal combustion engine with a carriage. It is never manufactured
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Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach invent the first four-wheeled, four-stroke engine in Germany. It is known as the Cannstatt-Daimler
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Henry Ford invents the Model T Ford car
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Brothers Frank and Charles Edgar Duryea invent the first successful gas-powered car in the United States
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The Duryea brothers start the first American car manufacturing company in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is called Motor Wagons
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A steering wheel is designed to replace the steering tiller
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Alabama sets a state maximum speed limit of 8 miles per hour
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Ford’s Model T production rockets from 7.5 cars per hour to 146 cars per hour, thanks to the utilization of the assembly line
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The car radio is introduced
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U.S. Route 66 also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the Main Street of America or the Mother Road, was one of the original highways in the U.S. Highway System. US 66 was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year
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The first four-wheel drive, all-purpose vehicle is designed for the U.S. Military. It becomes known as the Jeep
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Airbags become a new car safety option
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The Interstate Highway Act creates a network of highways which connects all parts of the United States
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The car Global Positioning System, or GPS, is introduced
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Due to the rising cost of gasoline and impact of global climate change, zero-emission electric vehicles come back to auto showrooms. The first electric vehicles had been designed in the early 1800s