Ch.5 INVENTIONS The Motor Car

There were a great deal of Inventions during the Victorian Era, some have stayed with us, others have disappeared. I'm looking at the Edwardian Era though, and some of the objects or items we use today (and possibly could not live without) come directly from this time.

For example, the motor car. The first petrol-driven car appeared in 1885, just before Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. However, it wasn't until King Edward VII was on the throne, that the motor car really came into It's own and started to look like the cars we have seen in the old photographs, which have developed into the cars we have today. History tells us that the year 1886 is regarded as the birth of the modern  automobile, by the Benz Patent-Motor-Wagon, by the German inventor Karl Benz (we know this name well, even today --- Mercedes Benz). In the series Downton Abbey, there are a few motor cars that are used, whether driven by a chauffer or by the young masters. Many times we have seen old photographs of these historical cars, which, apparently, were quite difficult to drive, their driving mechanisms being quite different to the cars we have today.