First horseless carriage in Vancouver BC?

[nzcarnerd]

This photo turned up on a facebook page. It didn't take long to find a link to one source of it.

 

The strange part of the story is - how does it drive? There is no sign of any mechanism.

 

Another odd thing - a steering wheel in 1890??

 

 

 

[The first horseless carriage in Vancouver] - City of Vancouver Archives

[John_S_in_Penna]

That car looks well beyond the "state of the art"

for 1890.  Perhaps 1895, more likely circa 1900,

in my estimation.

---------------------

Edit:  Looking at your link, I see a date of 1899

attributed to the picture.  That makes sense.

 

Edited January 21, 2021 by John_S_in_Penna (see edit history)

[JamesR]

Interesting photo. Obviously posed. Seeing eight grown men in one car together makes me think it might've been some sort of project that they all were involved in. Maybe they were at the start of the project rather than the end.  Yes, I see no drive sprocket or chain, but it's kind of hard to tell from that photo.

[CarlLaFong]

Photographer's prop????

[1937hd45]

I'm calling photoshopped steering wheel on a horse drawn wagon. Bob 

[nzcarnerd]

55 minutes ago, 1937hd45 said:

I'm calling photoshopped steering wheel on a horse drawn wagon. Bob 

Certainly something odd about it.

[dictator27]

34 minutes ago, nzcarnerd said:

Certainly something odd about it.

It is definitely horseless - no way to attach a horse.  Don't see any sign of steering linkage.

[Fossil]

4 hours ago, nzcarnerd said:

The strange part of the story is - how does it drive?

One person drives while the other 7 push. 

 

 

[41 Su8]

Packard invented the steering wheel in 1903.  Vehicle and picture post date that.

[AHa]

Best I can tell, the front wheel attaches to a spindle that is then attached to the full elliptic spring. There is a steel rod tie with a swivel joint between the two wheels, so no axle. The axle is actually above the wheels. The steering is attached to the tie rod in the middle. The tie rod swivels, moving the wheels. Not sure how the thing is driven but there are louvers under the front seat.

 

The picture looks like it was taken at a lumber yard. There are wood shingles bundled behind the car.

Edited January 22, 2021 by AHa (see edit history)

[wayne sheldon]

I have spent a good twenty minutes staring at that photo. Got me. 

It is somewhat unusual for any horse drawn carriage or wagon to have full elliptic springs like that on the front axle. I have seen a few, with swing axles pivoted in the center. However, this clearly is not one of those for a few reasons. One obvious one is the location of the front seat step plate. No room for the whole axle to swing! That coupled with no fifth wheel pivot in sight pretty much settles the horse drawn question. I 'think' I can make out what may be the upper king pin of the left front wheel.  Otherwise, I cannot see anything that appears to part of the steering. (I am so confused!) 

Like others have said, I see no sign of motor or attachment to the rear wheels. No electric motors hidden in oddly oversize hubs, no chains , no sprockets (although the rear wheel spokes do have enlarged spots on the spokes that may have been intended for sprockets or brake drums?).

 

Photoshopped? Could be. But it has details I would not expect almost anyone that adept at computers in general and photoshop in particular to have included. And if someone were that well informed and capable, why didn't they include steering and driving details???

 

I find myself wondering if someone or a couple were trying to build such an automobile or wagon, perhaps for commercial use, maybe they took pictures to help promote their ideas before working out the powering of it? But then, I think like a design engineer, and think "Shouldn't they have done that before finishing the body?"

 

This thing has several characteristics in common with my early gasoline carriage project. Axles and wheels are very similar. The aforementioned full elliptic springs also.

 

 

41Su8 snuck in while I was typing.

Someone may have claimed Packard was first with a steering wheel, and they may have had related patents. However, they were far from the first. Autocar has often been claimed as the first. That also is not true. Numerous experimental cars of the late 1890s had steering wheels in this country. A few production cars predated 1903. According to Wikipedia (not entirely reliable, but my memory seems to recall this also) Thomas B Jeffery used one on one of his experimental cars about 1898. Panhard in France was using steering wheels on production cars in the latter half of the 1890s. One of the first reported uses was on a Panhard racing car, (a modification) in 1894.

[Locomobile]

Walter Hancock 1830 steering wheel

[Locomobile]

1 hour ago, wayne sheldon said:

I find myself wondering if someone or a couple were trying to build such an automobile or wagon, perhaps for commercial use, maybe they took pictures to help promote their ideas before working out the powering of it?

I agree, it's doubtful this ran and was just a project, as you point out the enlarged areas in the rear spokes were most likely added to attach sprockets that aren't there. As low as that floorboard is, there would be some engine bits like a flywheel visible and there is nothing. Could have been electric maybe.

 

Ron

 

This is a Buffum, lots of bits underneath. I have no idea on the year.

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by Locomobile (see edit history)

[PFindlay]

The vehicle in the picture was a locally made one-off and was steam powered.  It was built in the shops of Armstrong & Morrison, which was a local engineering and bridge building company.  They were a very significant player in the early road-building days of Vancouver.

 

The following comes from https://onthisspot.ca/cities/vancouver/cars#footnote-3-1

 

Vancouver's first car was home-made as well, a carriage that was given a steam-engine by the Armstrong and Morrison machine shop. The car, or 'charabanc' as it was called, wasn't a success and later scrapped. A reporter who took a ride in it certainly liked it enough. He wrote: "The beautiful horseless carriage answered the steering gear to a hair's breadth as with rubber tires it noiselessly rolled along the asphalt with a motor power entirely hidden from view like some graceful animal curving its way in and out of traffic."²

 

^Peter

[wayne sheldon]

1 hour ago, PFindlay said:

The vehicle in the picture was a locally made one-off and was steam powered.  It was built in the shops of Armstrong & Morrison, which was a local engineering and bridge building company.  They were a very significant player in the early road-building days of Vancouver.

 

The following comes from https://onthisspot.ca/cities/vancouver/cars#footnote-3-1

 

Vancouver's first car was home-made as well, a carriage that was given a steam-engine by the Armstrong and Morrison machine shop. The car, or 'charabanc' as it was called, wasn't a success and later scrapped. A reporter who took a ride in it certainly liked it enough. He wrote: "The beautiful horseless carriage answered the steering gear to a hair's breadth as with rubber tires it noiselessly rolled along the asphalt with a motor power entirely hidden from view like some graceful animal curving its way in and out of traffic."²

 

^Peter

 

Speculation, as some of us have been engaging in can be a tricky, and sometimes risky, thing. Some amount of factual history always helps. I would still like to know how power could be connected from a motor (clearly not seen, as you say, up under the body) would have been connected to the rear wheels. It could be possible for a chain to a single sprocket near the center of the rear axle to be hidden behind the step, brake and wheel sections. However, that appears unlikely to me.

Another thing that bothers me, is having a boiler with its burner up under the body and seat that way. Boilers had a nasty habit of flaring up from time to time. Still, early experimental vehicles often did things that were later found unsafe.

 

"Charabanc" as I recall from numerous discussions with some Australian friends on another forum is basically a British term that loosely translates to USA English as a bus. Nations separated by a common language.

 

Thank you P Findlay.

[Locomobile]

1 hour ago, wayne sheldon said:

 

Speculation, as some of us have been engaging in can be a tricky, and sometimes risky, thing. Some amount of factual history always helps. I would still like to know how power could be connected from a motor (clearly not seen, as you say, up under the body) would have been connected to the rear wheels. It could be possible for a chain to a single sprocket near the center of the rear axle to be hidden behind the step, brake and wheel sections. However, that appears unlikely to me.

Another thing that bothers me, is having a boiler with its burner up under the body and seat that way. Boilers had a nasty habit of flaring up from time to time. Still, early experimental vehicles often did things that were later found unsafe.

 

"Charabanc" as I recall from numerous discussions with some Australian friends on another forum is basically a British term that loosely translates to USA English as a bus. Nations separated by a common language.

 

Thank you P Findlay.

Sometimes these historical societies match up pictures to newspaper articles that don't belong together. This picture was accredited as being a ''Locomobile'' on a historical society's website. I can state with utmost certainty it's not.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by Locomobile (see edit history)

[Ozstatman]

7 minutes ago, Locomobile said:

 This picture was accredited as being a ''Locomobile'' on a historical society's website. I can state with utmost certainty it's not.

Picture taken in the state of Queensland, Australia from the advertising on the wall.

[Angelfish]

.....

Edited January 22, 2021 by Angelfish (see edit history)