We kept the four wheels, steering, and even the dashboard (you know where that term comes from, right?). The only thing replaced was the prime mover.
That's admittedly an oversimplification, but if you look at early cars, the were called ... what was it again? Oh yeah: horseless carriages.
Neat stuff: rack and pinion, you know, we use it for steering? Leonardi da Vinci used it, though it dates from far before then.
The real innovations for the car were incremental increases in metalurgy (allowing creation of efficient engines), machining, and the availability of cheap, plentiful, portable, and dense energy sources (petroleum).
Much of the advances of the 19th and 20th century is attributable to increased available energy, compounded and confounded with technological increases allowing better and more useful use of that energy.
We kept the four wheels, steering, and even the dashboard (you know where that term comes from, right?). The only thing replaced was the prime mover.
That's admittedly an oversimplification, but if you look at early cars, the were called ... what was it again? Oh yeah: horseless carriages.
Neat stuff: rack and pinion, you know, we use it for steering? Leonardi da Vinci used it, though it dates from far before then.
The real innovations for the car were incremental increases in metalurgy (allowing creation of efficient engines), machining, and the availability of cheap, plentiful, portable, and dense energy sources (petroleum).
Much of the advances of the 19th and 20th century is attributable to increased available energy, compounded and confounded with technological increases allowing better and more useful use of that energy.