Vehicles
Benz Patent Motorwagen
Also Known As Patent-Motorwagen Benz & Cie's own trade designation for the vehicle before c. 1900.
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A three wheeled motor vehicle built by Karl Benz, granted German patent DRP 37435 in January 1886. Unlike earlier steam or muscle powered road vehicles, it was designed from the outset around its own internal combustion engine rather than adapted from a horse drawn carriage, and it is widely regarded as the first true automobile, though the question of what counts as the first is itself genuinely contested.
Facts
SignificanceWidely regarded as the first true automobile, patented as such in 1886. 1 Manufacturer or Builder Cross-Tradition Connections
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Open Questions (1 open question)
What counts as the first automobile: the Benz Patent Motorwagen, or an earlier self propelled road vehicle?
The Benz Patent Motorwagen is the vehicle most widely credited as the first true automobile because it was patented in 1886 and was designed from first principles around its own internal combustion engine rather than adapted from a horse drawn carriage. But self propelled road vehicles predate it by over a century: Nicolas Joseph Cugnots steam powered fardier a vapeur of 1769 is often cited as the first self propelled road vehicle, and various steam carriages operated in Britain in the early nineteenth century. The dispute is less about facts than definition: what counts as an automobile rather than merely a self propelled vehicle.
What would resolve this This is chiefly a definitional dispute rather than a factual one; it resolves only by the atlas stating its own working definition of automobile explicitly, which the entity descriptions here already do implicitly by scope, and by naming the earlier steam vehicles honestly as self propelled road vehicles rather than automobiles by the narrower definition.
History of technologyWikipedia: Benz Patent-Motorwagen
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