Diverse Forms of Power in 1894

Opened: 7 Feb 2011

In 1894, the Parisian magazine Le Petit Journal organised what is considered to be the world's first car race from Paris to Rouen, a distance of 79 miles. The race was run on the 22nd of July. These were of course very early cars and they showed a fine diversity in their means of power.

Below is a contemporary list of the means of power generation used by the competitors, which has always intrigued me. The order appears illogical but is retained from the original list. I have added a translation to English. Some of the means are clearly impractical, and others are obscure. I have added a few notes on my interpretations.

ORIGINAL FRENCH	ENGLISH TRANSLATION	NUMBER OF ENTRANTS	NOTES
Moteurs à pétrole:	Petrol	30	Note 1
Moteurs à vapeur:	Steam	8	.
Moteurs à gazoline:	Gasoline	7	Note 2
Moteurs automatiques:	Automatic engine	5	Note 3
Moteurs électriques:	Electric motors and accumulators	4	.
Moteurs à air comprimé:	Compressed-air	4	Note 4
Moteurs à leviers:	Lever engines	13	Note 5
Moteurs hydrauliques:	Hydraulic	3	Note 6
Moteurs à balanciers:	Engines with beams	2	Note 7
Moteurs à eau comprimée:	Compressed water	1	Note 8
Moteurs à gaz comprimé:	Compressed gas	1	Note 9
Moteurs à essence minérale:	With mineral oil	1	Note 10
Moteurs à pétroles combinés:	With combined petrols	1	Note 11
Moteurs à systèmes de leviers multiples:	With systems of multiple levers	1	Note 12
Moteurs mécaniques:	With mechanics	1	Note 13
Moteurs à liquides combinés:	With combined oils	1	Note 14
Moteurs à vapeur combinée:	With combined liquids	1	Note 15
Moteurs à électro-pneumatiques:	Electro-pneumatic	1	Note 16
Moteurs à gaz et pesanteur:	With gas and gravity	1	Note 17
Moteurs à pédales:	With pedals	1	Note 18
TOTAL:	.	87	.

Note 1
Even at this early date the petrol-fueled internal combustion engine was the definite favourite.

Note 2
Why this is a separate category from "petrol" is not clear.

Note 3
This certainly does not mean automatic transmission, which is not a power source. What it does mean is quite obscure, but it smacks of perpetual motion to me.

Note 4
Certainly practical (See compressed air vehicles) over short distances, but surely unable to go 79 miles without refilling with compressed air.

Note 5
This is a real puzzler. "Powered by levers" sounds like some sort of perpetual motion, but there were 13 entrants using this form of power. Possibly it refers to some sort of connecting-rod arrangement in an IC engine?

Note 6
A hydraulic engine is wholly practical, but it requires a continuous supply of high-pressure water, which is going to be hard to arrange on a moving vehicle. Possibly compressed-air was use to pressurise water that drove a hydraulic engine, buy this is pure speculation.

Note 7
This can also be translated as "Engines with outriggers" but either way this entry is completely obscure.

Note 8
This sounds even less practical than the putative hydraulic engine. Water is almost incompressible, and heavy. A big tank of compressed water wouldn't get you very far.

Note 9
We already have an entry for compressed air, so I would guess this refers to compressed carbon dioxide, or carbonic acid, as it was called then. On the other hand it might have been a gas-engine fueled with a compressed inflammable gas.

Note 10
Presumably some sort of heavy-oil engine.

Note 11
Some kind of dual-fuel engine?

Note 12
What "systems of multiple levers" means is anybody's guess. Smacks of perpetual motion even more than "Powered by levers" to my mind.

Note 13
Powered by mechanics? Lots of chaps in overalls pedalling hard?

Note 14
A dual-fuel heavy-oil engine?

Note 15
Wholly obscure. Something to do with reacting two liquid chemicals together?

Note 16
Tantalisingly terse, but presumably referring to a compressed-air system topped up by a battery-powered electric motor running a compressor. The energy losses in the air compression make this a hopeless concept, but it was tried again in 1934 in The Boyette compressed-air railcar.

Note 17
I can only assume this means using a gas-fuelled engine to go up hills and then coasting down them.

Note 18
You're going to pedal 79 miles to Rouen? That would be quite a feat even with a very light quadracycle. And hardly in the spirit of a motor race.

It is perhaps surprising that nobody tried clockwork.

THE RACE
102 people paid the 10 franc entrance fee, (more than the 87 cars listed above) but only 69 cars started the 50 km (31 mile) intial selection event to determine which entrants would run in the main event, some potential competitors having no doubt discovered that their perpetual motion schemes did not work too well. The entrants ranged from established manufacturers such as Peugeot, Panhard and De Dion to amateurs with one-off vehicles. Of the 69 only 25 were selected for the main race, which shows some pretty ruthless pruning.

The race started from the Porte Maillot in Paris. Count Jules-Albert de Dion reached Rouen first after 6 hours and 48 minutes at an average speed of 19 km/h. He finished 3'30" ahead of Georges Lemaître (Peugeot), followed by Doriot (Peugeot) at 16'30", René Panhard (Panhard) at 33'30'' and Émile Levassor (Panhard) at 55'30". The official winners were Peugeot and Panhard as cars were judged on their speed, handling and safety characteristics, and De Dion's steam car needed a stoker which was apparently forbidden by the rules. It is hard to understand why he was allowed to start at all; perhaps being a Count helped. After De Dion the next 13 finishers were all petrol-IC powered, and the next steam car, driven by Le Blant, came in 15th.

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