It Started With da Vinci

There’s a good reason for that, though: there is no single inventor. Many different people designed and built precursors to modern automobiles. Some may say the idea should be credited to Leonardo da Vinci, who made models of various transport vehicles. However, because he never successfully built a full version, it’s harder to say he “invented” it. Da Vinci merely laid the groundwork for others to follow.

In 1769, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot from France built the first self-propelled, steam-powered vehicle. It was a three-wheeled tractor meant for military use and reached a top speed of 2.5 MPH. While not a car, it was an automobile that could be driven on the roads. Cugnot was followed by Robert Anderson, a Scotsman who created an electric carriage sometime between 1832-1839. During that period, American Thomas Davenport worked on his own electric vehicle.

Three Wheels or Four?

However, all three men are largely overshadowed by Karl Friedrich Benz, who unveiled his gas-powered vehicle in around 1885-1886. This is largely considered the first “real” automobile, with an internal combustion engine that is still widely used today. It had three wheels, four cycles, and the engine and chassis formed a single unit. In other words, it most closely resembled what we consider to be a modern car, just minus one wheel.

Around the same time, also in Germany, Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built their own gasoline-powered automobile. This one did have four wheels and was named the “Cannstatt-Daimler.” They would reuse the engine for many other vehicles over the years, including trolleys and the world’s first motorboat. Eventually, Benz and Daimler merged their companies, becoming what is today known as Mercedes-Benz.

From that point onwards, most early automobiles used gasoline as fuel. For instance, George Baldwin Selden patented a carriage with a built-in combustion engine in 1895. It was never manufactured, but Selden did collect royalties. Two years prior, Charles and Frank Duryea made the first successful gas-powered car and set up America’s first car manufacturing company.

Henry Ford and the Future

Of course, all these men have been greatly overshadowed by Henry Ford and his Model T. While Ford did not invent the automobile, he’s widely considered to have perfected it (for the time) and made it accessible to the greater public. The Model T itself was awarded Car of the Century in 1999, and standardized many features we now take for granted, like different speed gears and parking brakes. For this reason, fairly or not, Henry Ford is believed to be the father of the modern automobile.

Plenty of other advancements have happened in the world of automobiles. Pickup trucks and vans became available and eventually commonplace. Station wagons grew in prominence before falling out of fashion. Peugeot produced the first hardback convertible in 1934. Tesla has released a line of plug-in, all-electric vehicles, with the Tesla Model S being named the new Car of the Century. (Time will tell if it’ll keep that title.)

The history of the automobile is complex, with no one person behind it. Perhaps that’s why it has evolved and changed greatly over the years. Whether you credit its invention to Ford, Benz, da Vinci, or somebody else, one thing is agreed upon: the world would be drastically different without it. For that, we have a long list of names to thank.

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1. Tesla’s mother always encouraged his career in science; his father, on the other hand, only allowed it after a near-death experience.
Tesla’s mother, Georgina Djuka Tesla, was his biggest inspiration and responsible for sparking his love of working with electricity. When he was growing up, she would invent small electrical appliances in her spare time, including a mechanical egg beater. Tesla’s father, a talented writer and poet, was a priest and insisted his son follow in his footsteps to pursue the priesthood. It was only when Tesla was 17 and became extremely sick with cholera that his father promised his son if he survived that he could attend university and study engineering.

2. He gave all of his own money to his research and was a terrible entrepreneur; he was, at his base, an environmentalist and humanist.
One of Tesla’s larger concerns was, “the fact that people consume the Earth’s resources too fast.” Because of this, he studied different ways to gather energy from the earth naturally, including the creation of artificial light in his lab. Tesla never cared for making money through his research (as opposed to his rival, Edison). To pursue inventing he moved to the United States in 1884 with little-to-no money. When he died, he died with empty pockets and more than 275 patients in 26 different countries. His goal was to invent things to make human life better, not to make money.

3. He created an “earthquake machine.”
The machine was actually called a high-frequency oscillator, which was a piston set underneath a platform, and caused his lab and the building which he was in to shake violently. This machine didn’t cause the neighborhood to collapse or the buildings to fall down, but reports say that it did cause close friend Mark Twain to panic and helped to solve Twain’s recurring digestive problem. This was one of the only inventions that wasn’t seized later by The Office of Alien Property. Most of the other inventions were later returned to join the high-frequency oscillator in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Other inventions that were returned included his attempts at creating a particle gun and a death ray.

4. Tesla had some very famous friends.
  Besides Twain, Tesla’s friends included French actress Sarah Bernhardt, English poet and journalist Rudyard Kipling, Wilhelm Conrad Roengen, who discovered X-rays, and financier and banker J.P. Morgan. Another poet, Robert Underwood Johnson, penned the poem “In Tesla’s Laboratory.” Also, though Edison was seen as his rival to many, the two were far from not being on speaking terms and eventually found a great respect for one another.

5. He was amusing and generally pretty catty.
People knew Tesla as many different things: weird, committed, highly opinionated…but everyone agreed that he had a great sense of humor. Tesla wrote to one of his close friends in 1901 to talk about how Rudyard Kipling invited him to a rundown hotel for dinner saying: “What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair in cockroaches in the soup.”

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At Inventionland, we know first-hand what it’s like to have a cool office space. That’s because our 61,000 square foot invention factory is comprised of 16 uniquely-themed sets where our Creationeers work to turn ideas into inventions.

So, when we discovered that Tesla was touting a cool office of its own, we had to explore!

Over the past 10 years, Tesla has continually been in the news as the company grows and expands its innovative efforts.

Located in Fremont, California, Tesla’s assembly plant is manned by more than 150 robots. It’s this type of creativity that left us craving more!

As a side note, this is the last major car factory that remains in California, so obviously being on its own, the Tesla plant had to be something special.

Let’s get right to the facts that build Tesla’s case as a cool office. First and foremost, the facility occupies 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing space. Yes, you read that right, 5.3 million square feet!

As soon as you enter this enormous plant, visitors are greeted by a row of Tesla prototypes, which is a true testament to the innovation that lives within the walls of this facility! Now, these prototypes range in characteristics. Some are wooden composites, others are the original iterations and, of course, this row of cars wouldn’t be complete without the first drivable Model S prototype.

Given that this is such an expansive space, rather than walk, Tesla employees navigate their way around the plant on bicycles – something our Creationeers can relate to as you’ll often see them zipping around Inventionland on scooters!

Before, we mentioned that the assembly line at the Tesla plant is run largely by robots – more than 150 to be exact. Well, these robots play an important role in the creation of Tesla products. For instance, they put together Tesla’s powertrain and some actually pick up the cars. The latter is known as the Mystique and these large robots are named after characters from Marvel’s X-Men.

The naming convention continues as two other robots that work in conjunction with one another were given the names Wolverine and the Iceman. Here’s how their system works:

A Model S approaches the robots; from there, the Wolverine is activated and lifts and rotates the car 180 degrees. It’s at this point that the Iceman is put into motion and receives the car from the Wolverine. The car, again, is turned 180 degrees by the Iceman and the car continues on its merry way down the production line.

Talk about precision!

We could go on and on about the Tesla plant; but, sometimes descriptions just can’t do it justice. Here’s a quick clip to give you an inside look at the Tesla assembly plant.

From one cool office to another, we give this space the Inventionland seal of approval!

Copyright Inventionland, 2016

Sources:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tour-of-the-tesla-factory-2015-9

Media:

https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6211/6858583426_39dbf3910f_o_d.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lfxPI5ObM

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