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Francois Isaac de Rivaz designs the first internal combustion powered automobile.
After inventing an internal combustion engine using hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, Rivaz designed a car for that engine, which was, unfortunately, a very unsuccessful design. -
Samuel Brown briefly powers a vehicle.
Samuel Brown, an English engineer, adapts an old Newcomen steam engine to power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London. -
Jean JosephEtienne Lenoir invents an electric-spark ignition engine.
Fueled by coal, this engine, attached to a three-wheeled wagon completed a historic fifty-mile road trip. -
Siegfried Marcus designs a vehicle that runs at 10mph.
Siegfried, an Austrian engineer, built a one-cylinder engine, proceeding to attach it to a cart for a 500ft drive. Years later, he designed a vehicle that ran at 10mph, considered the forerunner of the modern automobile. -
German engineers improve engine designs.
Eugene Langen and Nikolaus Otto improve upon earlier designs of an engine, inventing a more efficient gas engine. -
George Brayton designs the first two-stroke engine.
George Brayton develops an unsuccessful two-stroke kerosene engine, which was considered the first safe and practical oil engine. -
Wilhelm Maybach builds the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.
After many years of improving the engine, Maybach builds the first engine to have four cylinders.
