Charles Duryea claimed the first U.S. patent for a gasoline automobile in 1895. Henry Ford sold his first “Quadri-cycle” in 1896. At the turn of the century, about 8,000 vehicles shared mostly unpaved roads with horses and wagons. Of the 4,200 automobiles sold in the United States in 1900, gasoline powered less than 1,000. In November, America’s first national automobile show opened in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

An innovative assortment of electric, steam, and “internal explosion” engines powered these horseless carriages. New manufactures like Olds Motor Works of Lansing, Michigan, built models of each kind to compete in the developing market.

In 1906, a "Stanley Steamer" (above) set the world land speed record at 127.7 m.p.h. – still officially recognized as the land speed record for a steam car.

The manufacturers presented 160 different vehicles at the first national automobile show – and gave driving and maneuverability demonstrations on a 20-foot-wide wooden track that surrounded the exhibits. A 200-foot ramp tested hill-climbing power.

Automobiles powered by internal combustion engines at the 1900 National Automobile Show were primitive. The most popular models proved to be electric, steam, and gasoline…in that order.

About 48,000 show visitors paid 50¢ each to see the latest automotive technology. The most popular models proved to be electric, steam, and gasoline…in that order.

New Yorkers welcomed electric models as a way to reduce the estimated 450,000 tons of horse manure and 15,000 horse carcasses removed from the city’s streets each year.

Hundreds of “Hansom” cabs built by the Electric Vehicle Company worked well, but heavy lead-acid batteries, muddy roads, and lack of electrical infrastructure confined these early electrics to metropolitan areas. Thomas Edison spent years working on battery power for automobiles, but abandoned the effort.

This advertisement for the Winton motor carriage – often identified as the first American automobile advertisement, according to the Henry Ford Museum – appeared in a 1898 issue of Scientific American magazine. Automobiles would help reduce the annual removal of 450,000 tons of horse manure from New York City streets.

Consumers favored “steamers” over their gasoline-powered competitors. Steam-powered automobiles traced their roots back to 1768, when a French military engineer, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, built a self-propelled steam tricycle to move artillery.

By 1900, manufacturers like Bridgeport, Connecticut-based Locomobile (from the words locomotive and automobile), Stanley Motor Carriage Co., Tarrytown, N.Y., and others boasted of their products’ safety and touted the virtues of simple steam power over “complex and sinister” internal combustion engines.

Locomobile produced 750 steamers in 1900, second in sales only to Columbia & Electric Vehicle Co. of Hartford, Conn., but consumers complained of the time required to heat boilers and the necessarily frequent stops for water. Progress in the development of internal combustion engines soon outpaced steam technology.

At the turn of the century, about 8,000 vehicles shared mostly unpaved roads with horses and wagons. At the 1900 auto show, an innovative assortment of electric, steam, and “internal explosion” engines powered the latest designs in horseless carriages.

Automobiles powered by internal combustion engines at the 1900 National Automobile Show were primitive, noisy and cantankerous. Most were based on Nikoulas Otto’s 1876 four-stroke design and ran on a variety of “light spirits” such as stove gas, kerosene, naphtha, lamp oil, benzene, mineral spirits, alcohol, and gasoline.

One early critic complained that the internal combustion engine was, “Noxious, noisy, unreliable, and elephantine. It vibrates so violently as to loosen one’s dentures. The automobile industry will surely burgeon in America, but this motor will not be a factor.”

The critic was wrong. Gasoline, once an unwanted byproduct of kerosene refining, cost only about 15 cents a gallon in 1900 and produced dramatic increases in engine horsepower. Despite the absence of “filling stations,” gasoline was readily available in a market where electric lights were making kerosene obsolete.

The refining industry needed a product to replace kerosene and gasoline was it. In 1901, Olds Motor Works sold 425 models of a gasoline-powered “Curved Dash Runabout” for $650 each. Four years later, when the model was discontinued, almost 19,000 had been sold. America’s consumer preference for gasoline-powered internal combustion engines was thoroughly established.

When New York City hosts its next International Automobile Show, more than 1,000 different vehicles will be on display for an expected one million visitors. Internal combustion and hybrid gasoline-electric automobiles will be well represented. No steam-powered vehicles are expected.

From Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2008 Petroleum Age