Michael Fallon - Self-Driving Cars: The New Way Forward

The American Whip Company, in 1879, later known as the United States Whip Company, once produced buggy whips for horse-drawn vehicles.

Westfield, Massachusetts, is still known as Whip City. But of the thirty-seven factory buildings that once stood in Whip City, only four are still standing. The National Register of Historic Places includes all four, and most serve new purposes. The Sanford Whip Factory building, for instance, offers affordable housing. The H. M. Van Deusen Whip Company is an apartment building, and the United States Whip Company Complex is a shopping center. The Westfield Whip Manufacturing Company, founded in 1887, is the only factory that continues to make whips. They are sold mostly to collectors.

After changes in driving technology and other areas of US culture, the American Whip Company building serves as a shopping complex.

The technology that became the automobile took centuries to develop. In 1478 the famous Italian designer, artist, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a self-propelled cart that moved according to a series of complex spring mechanisms. The design perplexed people, since they did not understand how springs could provide forward motion. Several years later, da Vinci described in his notebooks another propelled device, called the Architonnerre. Although da Vinci did not build this device in his lifetime, his design included a machine using compressed steam to fire a projectile through a metal tube.

Around the year 1500, artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci produced a pen-and-ink drawing for a device known as the Architonnerre. His design anticipated elements of the technology later used to create the automobile. Scholars examining the design have determined that da Vinci envisioned the Architonnerre using the power of compressed steam to propel a projectile forward.

Two centuries later, inventors designed another technology that used steam to create motion: the steam engine. The steam engine of 1712, developed by English inventor Thomas Newcomen, was an early form of internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engines burn fuel in confined spaces called combustion chambers. The resulting hot gases expand in the chamber, putting pressure on pistons (disks or cylinders) or rotors (a hub) to move the shafts to which they are connected. This process turns the wheels of an automobile. Most modern automobiles use a more advanced version of this type of engine.

In 1769 Nicolas Joseph Cugnot of France built the first working, self-propelled, land-based mechanical vehicle. A steam engine powered Cugnots vehicle. Both the Automobile Club of France and the British Royal Automobile Club recognize it as the worlds first automobile. Other historians argue that, in 1808, Franois Isaac de Rivaz of France built the first true internal-combustion automobile. His vehicle used a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine with an electric ignition.