02/04/2012
Automobile history…A must read!!!
• The first car with an actual refrigeration system was the 1940 model year Packard.
• In 1901, British inventor Frederick William Lanchester patented disc brakes.
• In 1929, American Paul Galvin, the head of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, invented the first car radio. The first car radios were not available from carmakers. Consumers had to purchase the radios separately. Galvin coined the name "Motorola" for the company's new products combining the idea of motion and radio.
• Daimler introduced electric windows in cars in 1948.
• In 1898, Louis Renault invented the first driveshaft.
• Canadian Thomas Ahearn invented the first electric car heater in 1890.
• Charles Kettering was the inventor of the first electrical starter motor ignition system
• On April 25, 1901 the state of New York became the first state to require car license plates by law. The very first license plates were called number plates - first issued in 1893 in France by the police.
• Ferdinand Porsche invented the first supercharged Mercedes-Benz SS & SSK sports cars in Stuttgart, Germany in 1923.
• Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber in 1844 that was later used for the first tires
• Buick introduced the first electric turn signals in 1938.
• Francis W. Davis invented power steering. In the 1920s, Davis was the chief engineer of the truck division of the Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company, and he saw first hand how hard it was to steer heavy vehicles. Davis quit his job and rented a small engineering shop in Waltham, MA. He developed a hydraulic power steering system that led to power steering. Power steering became commercially available by 1951.
Courtesy :www.about.com