ABSTRACT
Britain pioneered the development of the steam locomotive: she lagged behind Germany, France and the USA in the development of motor transport. In Germany Nikolaus Otto devised the four-stroke internal combustion engine as early as 1876, Karl Benz constructed a successful petrol-driven motor car in 1885 and Gottlieb Daimler, working quite independently of Benz, produced another in 1886. Three years later the Parisian engineers, René Panhard and Emile Levassor, acquired the right to use the Daimler patents in France and completely reorganised their factory to concentrate on the production of motor cars. Their second vehicle, made in 1894, represented the first serious attempt to get away from the pattern of the horse-drawn carriage. It is true that, in England, Edward Butler produced a motorised tricycle as early as 1885 but modifications, taking four years to complete, were needed to make it at all reliable and the inventor lacked the capital for commercial production. It is generally agreed that the first British-built motor car was that made by John Henry Knight of Farnham in 1895, more than two years after an American, Frank Duryea, assembled the first motor car made in the USA.1
