On March 2 (February 19, old style), 1779, the Saint Petersburg Vedomosti reported that Ivan Kulibin had invented a searchlight — the first prototype of the modern searchlight. A talented inventor, a tireless self-taught mechanic, Kulibin invented many devices and mechanisms. He left only 2 thousand drawings: from drawings of optical, navigational, mechanical and other devices to grandiose projects of bridges, machines, ships and buildings. The name Kulibin has long become a household name: this is how enterprising and resourceful people are often called.
SPOTLIGHT
In 1779, Kulibin designed his famous lantern with a reflector that gave powerful light from a simple candle. The parabolic reflector consisted of the smallest mirrors and redistributed the light, providing an angular concentration luminous flux. A candle was placed near the reflector, and the reflected light could easily be directed to the right place when the searchlight body was turned. The invented searchlight made it possible to see a person in the dark at a distance of more than 500 steps. In the daytime and in clear weather, the light of Kulibin's searchlight was distinguishable at a distance of 10 km. The Kulibinsky floodlight surprised the people of St. Petersburg when, on a dark night, a bright ball suddenly appeared on Vasilevsky Island, illuminating the entire street. The ball was taken for a sign, but it turned out that it was the light of a lantern hung by Kulibin from the window of his apartment. The projector lamp did not find application in the time of Kulibin; a century later, searchlights and searchlight traffic lights were invented on its basis.
LIFT CHAIR
In 1793, Kulibin created a lift chair, the prototype of the modern elevator. lifting mechanism chairs operated with the help of one or two people who raised the cab special nuts moving along two vertically mounted lead screws. Such an armchair was mounted in the Winter Palace, where it was used for three years, mainly for the entertainment of the courtiers. After the death of Empress Catherine II, the elevator was forgotten, and lifting device laid with bricks. Only at the beginning of the 21st century, during the restoration, fragments of the lifting device were discovered.
OPTICAL TELEGRAPH
In 1794, Kulibin invented and built a "long-range warning machine" - an optical semaphore with a lantern invented earlier with a reflecting mirror. Thanks to the flashlight, the machine could be used at night and in a slight fog to transmit information at a decent distance. To compose combinations of telegraph signs, Kulibin used a design of three boards borrowed from the French: one long and two short. However, the inventor himself invented the drive structure for moving parts of the apparatus and the code: the code consisted of one table, and the words were divided into single-valued and double-digit syllables and transmitted in parts. The Far-Notifying Machine made an impression on the Academy of Sciences, but there was no money for the construction, and the machine was deposited in the Kunstkamera.
FOOT PROSTHESIS
The medical prosthesis owes its appearance to Kulibin: in 1791, the inventor developed the design of “mechanical legs” for officer S.V. Nepeitsin, who lost his leg in the battle of Ochakovo and was forced to walk on a piece of wood, leaning on a cane. The Kulibinsky prosthesis practically replaced the lost leg: with the prosthesis, Nepeitsin walked with a cane, sat down and stood up, and later began to move freely without a cane. The metal prosthesis consisted of separate blocks connected by hinges, tires and wheels, made it possible to flex in the knee joint and imitated the human leg. In addition to Nepeitsin, other battle veterans began to turn to Kulibin, among them was Valerian Zubov, the brother of the last favorite of Catherine II, Platon Zubov. Later, Kulibin came up with a prosthesis to replace a leg amputated above the knee. It consisted of a foot, a lower leg, a thigh and a strengthening device with belts. At the same time, the movement mechanism made it possible to reproduce the movements of the thigh and lower leg, close to natural. In addition, when the number of disabled people in Russia increased dramatically at the beginning of the 19th century due to the Napoleonic Wars, Kulibin decided to improve his models of prostheses: he wanted to make the prosthesis lighter by replacing metal with wood.
CREW-SCOOTER
Self-propelled carriage Kulibin developed in 1791. At first he conceived to make a four-wheeled stroller, then, trying to make the crew light and easy to manage, he created a three-wheeled scooter. The three-wheeled mechanism could reach speeds of up to 16.2 km / h and contained the basis of the chassis of the car: gearbox, brake, flywheel, rolling bearings. The carriage was designed for one or two passengers and was set in motion by pedals on which a person stood, alternately pressing them with his feet. The pedals drove the flywheel, which made the movement smoother and kept the wheels in continuous motion. The drive wheel could rotate at different speeds. The change in speed was provided by a drum with three rims - large, medium and small. The steering consisted of two levers, a rod and a turntable attached to front wheel. Having accelerated, the person pressing the pedals could afford to rest a little: then the scooter rolled by inertia for some time. Also, without human intervention, she went downhill well. The scooter went slower downhill than uphill, due to the action of the braking device.
Drawing of the navigable machine by Ivan Kulibin.
The famous mechanic Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was born in 1735 in Nizhny Novgorod. He died in the same place in 1818 - having returned from St. Petersburg, where he worked for 30 years in the workshops of the Academy of Sciences: he polished mirrors and lenses of telescopes and microscopes, arranged fireworks for the nobles, pored over the creation of an optical telegraph based on his famous (sung by Derzhavin himself!) mirror searchlight , designed bridges and made chronometers.
Against her current
Undoubtedly, Kulibin had a rare love of life - what is worth at least his third marriage at the age of 70! But fate did not spoil him: in St. Petersburg - intrigues and disgrace, in Nizhny - fire and disease ... However, Kulibin did not lose heart - the idea of \u200b\u200bwork for the public good settled in his soul forever. Moreover, if in St. Petersburg, in the years of creative maturity, these works were very diverse, then in Nizhny, already at the end of his life, Kulibin settled on only two topics - navigable machines and perpetual motion machine.
While still working at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Kulibin created a working model of a vessel with wooden wheels that rotated over the river and wound a rope on a drum that ended in an anchor. Before that, the anchor was brought in by boat up the river and fixed on the shore. The river turned the wheels of the ship, this rotation was transmitted through a series of gears to a drum winding a rope with an anchor, and the ship slowly but surely went up the river against its current.
Actually, in order to create a new mechanical fleet, Kulibin decided to return from the banks of the Neva to the Volga, abandoning the capital's amenities, as well as his other activities, which he considered secondary by that time.
In 1798, Kulibin sent to the name of the Prosecutor General Prince Kurakin “Description of the benefits that could be from machine ships on the Volga” and “Plan and location, how it was more convenient and treasury without burdening to put into use machine ships on the Volga”. Kulibin assumed “... in the first case, build two engine ships ... and then established pattern build other such ships and put them into shipping. The inventor requested from the treasury mutually 30 thousand rubles. for eight years without interest, of which 6 thousand before his departure from St. Petersburg, 9 thousand - for the construction of the first ships, 15 thousand - for the construction of other ships as needed.
In an effort to provide the future fleet with an adequate business task, Kulibin offered Kurakin to provide him with the delivery of salt from the Elton salt lake (near Saratov) to Nizhny Novgorod. Kurakin rejected the project, saying that it “represents more loss for the treasury than profit,” and suggested that the inventor himself find partners. But where could they be found in Russia of that time, in “a country without capital, without workers, without entrepreneurs and without buyers,” as Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov wrote about the first half of the 19th century in 1898 in Essays on the History of Russian Culture.
Kulibin was ready to transfer the drawings and advise for free: “Everyone who wants to use my invention can see it, copy the drawings,” writes Kulibin. “In case of bewilderment, at any place of this or that drawing, I will help, as much as my strength can get to that.”
But in vain, no one was willing. Only the treasury, in the person of the emperor and several top dignitaries, took part in the projects of the Nizhny Novgorod self-taught person - in 1801 Alexander I granted Kulibin's request for 6 thousand rubles. to pay off debts and an additional 6,000 for a pension and let him go to the Volga.
Kulibin arrived in Nizhny and immediately began measuring the speed of the river using a device he had designed in St. Petersburg: “The very first test on the Volga was on the first day of my arrival on October 27, 1801 against the Borovsky crossing ... On November 9, it was tried on Strelka ... and on November 12 it was tried near Barmina, 120 versts from Nizhny.
The summer of 1802 catches Ivan Petrovich "behind the detour of the local rivers Volga and Oka to test their fast and quiet waters." The son of the inventor Semyon Ivanovich wrote: “... he spent 1802, 1803, 1804 in this exercise, worked, sparing neither strength nor health, enduring cruel winds, dampness and frosts, zealous to speed up the fulfillment of his ardent desire; in a word, he lived almost all this time on the water.
The first test of the navigable machine took place on September 28, 1804 and was generally considered quite successful. But here is what the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Rukovsky, who was present at the trials, reported to Count Stroganov: “However, I cannot hide from Your Excellency that both for building such machine ships, and for managing and repairing them on the go, there must be people who are knowledgeable at least a little in mechanics and carpentry, without the help of which ordinary pilots and working people will neither manage the machine nor repair it in case of damage along the way.
This remark hides the answer to the question why Kulibin did not try to use a much more advanced steam engine on his ship.
To gain gift power
I must say, Kulibin was aware of the work with steam engine his Englishman peer James Watt and planned to use steam engines on river boats. He wrote himself a “reminder” in his diary in 1801: “Over time, try to arrange in pairs an operating machine with a cast-iron cylinder so that it can operate ... with oars on a ship that would be loaded with about 15 thousand pounds.”
However, he never took up the design of steam engines, because he understood: if for the maintenance of a wooden mechanical system there were no self-propelled ships, according to the governor, people “knowledgeable at least a little in mechanics”, then what can we say about a much more complex steam engine ... Kulibin managed to make sure that society was not ready to pay for access to new technology even the not very high price that he asked for his water-carrying machines (this, of course, is not about money, about efforts). The then Russian society was ready to accept new technologies only for free - or at the expense of the treasury. And the "perpetual motion machine" began to seem to Kulibin the only way out.
For 40 years (with interruptions) Kulibin thought about a perpetual motion machine and kept these thoughts a secret. In his declining years, he wrote that he intended to “occupy himself in finding such constantly moving machines by making various experiments secretly, because some scientists consider it impossible and laugh with reproach at those who practice in the search for this invention.”
Kulibin was not alone among domestic mechanics in a stubborn desire to gain free power. In their book "Ivan Petrovich Kulibin", historians of technology V. Pipunyrov and N. Raskin write that in 1780 the future academician of natural sciences (and for now an adjunct) Vasily Zuev mentions the Tula mechanic Bobrin, who was busy creating a "perpetually moving machine" in for five years, spending on it all personal funds. The St. Petersburg Academy has long refused to accept perpetual motion projects for consideration, and, describing another invention of Bobrin - a mechanical seeder, Zuev added: "This machine shows that there is still some reason left in the master."
Knowing the attitude of academicians to perpetual motion machines, Kulibin, in his own words, nevertheless decided to consult with Leonhard Euler: he thinks about the machine, and in response he received that he does not refute this opinion about the creation of such a machine into action, but told me that maybe in due time some lucky person would make such a machine and open it. This same man was then revered by learning in all of Europe as the first.
One must think that Euler did not try to convince Kulibin, just as Count Orlov could not convince him, urging the mechanic to shave off his beard and enter the ranks and other palace relations. The hereditary Old Believer Kulibin, with his search for Perpetum Mobile, is like fellow believers here, who are looking for a blooming fern on the shores of Lake Svetloyar on the night of Ivan Kupala - "to some lucky ... and it will open."
More like on Lucky case there was nothing to look forward to. In the then Russian society, the complex of fundamental knowledge, applied skills and free initiative that was required for technical innovation. Innovation in such a society becomes too risky and too expensive. So it was with steam engine Ivan Polzunov, so it was with Kulibin's water machine: they worked until the first breakdowns - and stopped forever.
Kulibin's water machine stood in one of the river bays, fell into disrepair and was eventually sold in 1808 for scrap at auction to collegiate assessor Zelenetsky for 200 rubles.
Russian factors
The explosive nature of technical innovations occurred in Russia only in the 1860s. And it was based on the "leakage" of their own science into their own technologies, and not just on the import of Western technology, whether it be steamships or looms.
Vasily Kalashnikov, an excellent engineer and designer (designed and redesigned several hundred steam boilers and steamships on the Volga), as well as a teacher and educator (organizer of the river school in Nizhny Novgorod, publisher of a specialized magazine) - this is Kulibin's "indirect heir". And after Kalashnikov, Shukhov will appear - and his joint work with Alexander Bari and the Nobel brothers, and with the participation of Mendeleev himself!
This is already a classic financial-scientific-engineering link, completely in sync with its era. We then found ourselves at the forefront of science and technology. Alas, not for long: other Russian factors (lying in the field of politics and history) became fatal, which led to a social catastrophe and, accordingly, to a technological catastrophe. It was necessary to get out of this pit in the 1920s-1930s by way of total technological imports, when entire car factories were bought in one fell swoop for requisitioned church gold and for royal painting collections.
Already after the Second World War, the country managed to implement several extremely complex and resource-intensive scientific and technical programs, primarily nuclear and space projects. In the wake of these advances, several other striking engineering innovations have emerged. In Nizhny Novgorod, in the homeland of Kulibin, there are hydrofoil ships and ekranoplans designed by Rostislav Alekseev. Or, let's say, a number of lesser-known projects in the field of applied radiophysics: gyrotron complexes for plasma heating, radio astronomical testing grounds, and the unique Sura stand for heating the ionosphere.
Once again, the policy of isolation and confrontation did not allow these projects to become sustainable, despite the fact that almost all of them are just offshoots on a stocky weapon barrel, a traditional priority in Russia, which suddenly experienced a dramatic “reset” in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, almost all of these offshoots have withered away - ekranoplans are rusting on the shore, river "rockets" and "meteors" have grown old and settled in backwaters, radio astronomy ranges are abandoned and overgrown with young forest, and the institutions that gave rise to all this have largely degraded or simply disappeared.
Now (or later) we will have to start anew - and it is obvious that breakthroughs should be expected in areas where high science, high-quality education and at least some production have been preserved. Perhaps, microbiology or biophotonics, lasers and accelerators will turn out to be promising for us. It is possible that here we will be late or not cope. And then the plans that seem attractive today will remain in the category of paper "projects" - as happened with the Kulibino Volga mechanical flotilla.
Indeed, by the time Kulibin tested the “water machine” in 1804, the American Robert Fulton had already built his first steamship - Kulibin's projects were becoming obsolete, as they say, on the stocks. However, the motto of Ivan Petrovich Kulibin, formulated by him in a letter to Emperor Alexander I, has not become obsolete at all: “I am attracted by the incessant desire and zeal to use all my strength in order to do a noble service in my life ... for the good of society.”
Nizhny Novgorod
H For most of its history, mankind has used the power of animals to move two-, three- and four-wheeled vehicles: bulls, horses, mules, donkeys. But in recent centuries there have been more and more inventions of the so-called "self-propelled carriages", which moved without the use of the draft power of the above animals. In Russia, such an inventor was the self-taught mechanic Ivan Petrovich Kulibin, who invented a large number of various mechanical devices.
Kulibin began his work on a self-propelled carriage, or as its inventor called it a "scooter", in the 80s of the 18th century and completed it in 1791. This scooter can rightly be considered the great-grandfather of the car. At first he worked on a four-wheeled sidecar, but in an effort to make the crew lighter and easier to manage, he created a three-wheeled scooter. It was a very light crew for one or two passengers and several tens of kilograms of cargo. Behind the passengers on the pedals, or, as Kulibin called them, "shoes", a man stood and alternately pressed them with his feet. The pedals set in rotation a large flywheel, which, being untwisted, facilitated the work of the person moving the scooter, and made the crew move evenly. It was necessary to control the scooter with the help of a "swivel", like a ship's steering wheel connected to the front swivel wheel.
According to eyewitnesses, Kulibin's "scooter" ran quite quickly, it reached speeds of up to 16 km / h, which for that time is a decent speed. Despite such a high speed for its time, the stroller moved quite smoothly. The scooter went slower downhill than uphill, which was achieved by the action of the braking device.
Kulibin, on his invention, was the first to use rolling bearings that facilitate movement, steering, pedal transmission of efforts. He designed the prototype of a modern car, which included such parts as: a cardan mechanism, a gearbox, an elastic coupling, a brake, a steering wheel and rolling bearings. With the help of the pedals, the driver spun the flywheel, which transmitted the forces to the wheels and could rest on the move, because thanks to the flywheel and the clutch, the crew drove by inertia for some time.
Scooters were made in the mechanical workshops of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, led by Kulibin, and were quite widely used for walks by aristocrats who really liked this invention.
According to the surviving drawings of Ivan Kulibin, a working model of a self-propelled pedal carriage was designed, which, in this moment located in the Polytechnic Museum of Moscow.
Initially, human muscular strength was used to move weights and loads.
Over time, people began to tame various draft animals, which were harnessed to carts or sledges.
Various devices were also invented that helped a person overcome distances.
Antique steam engine.
Roman land sailing cart. Old medieval engraving.
Baroque carriage. XVII - XVIII centuries.
Carriage - (from lat. "carrus" - wagon)
- a closed passenger wagon with springs.
Most often they were used for personal comfortable transportation and no more, although from the late Middle Ages
in Europe, they began to be used, including as public transport.
In the understanding of modern man, the word "car" means a vehicle that is equipped with autonomous engine(this could be the engine) internal combustion, and an electric motor, and even a steam boiler).
A couple of centuries ago, all “self-propelled carts” were called a car.
People used mechanical means of transportation long before the invention of the automobile.
They tried to use both human muscles and free resources as a driving force. For example,
in ancient China were land wagons with sails
that were propelled by the force of the wind.
Such an innovation came to Europe only in the 1600s, thanks to the designer and mathematician, the great scientist Simon Stevin.
Nuremberg watchmaker I. Hauch was built mechanical wagon , the source of movement of which was a large clock spring. One plant of such a spring was enough for a 45-minute drive. This cart did move, but there were skeptics who claimed that two people were hidden inside it, setting it in motion. But, despite this, it was nevertheless bought by the King of Sweden, Charles, who used it to travel around the royal park.
According to a book published in Paris in 1793, authored by Ozanam, for several years now a carriage had been driven through the streets of Paris, driven by a footman who pressed the footboards located under the body.
In Russia (XVIII century) two designs of mechanical carriages were invented:self-running carriage
L.L. Shamshurenkov (1752) and scooter
I.P. Kulibin (1791). Detailed Description the self-running carriage has not been preserved, but it is known that its tests were successfully completed on November 2, 1752. According to the invention of I.P. Kulibin was preserved where more information: it was a three-wheeled pedal carriage with a flywheel and a three-speed gearbox. Idling pedals was carried out due to the ratchet mechanism installed between the pedals and the flywheel. The two rear wheels were considered to be the driving wheels, and the front wheels were considered to be driven. The weight of the stroller (together with the servant and passengers) was 500 kg, and the speed it developed was up to 10 km / h.
Later, the Russian inventor E.I. Artamonov (a serf locksmith of the Nizhny Tagil plant) in 1801 built the first two-wheeled metal bicycle.
The next step in the development of the automotive industry was the appearancesteam engines.
Mechanical self-propelled cart designed by Leonardo da Vinci. 1478.
The main mechanism of Leonardo da Vinci's self-propelled cart.
Leonardo designed self-propelled cart- a prototype of a modern car!
Self-propelled wooden cart equipped with gears and springs
became one of the most famous inventions of Leonardo da Vinci.
It was supposed to be driven by the energy of two flat springs.
The device measures approximately 1 x 1 x 1 meter.
Difficult crossbow mechanism transfers energy to the drives connected to the steering wheel.
rear wheels had differentiated drives and could move independently.
At the back of the cart is steering gear.
The fourth wheel was connected to a steering wheel, with which you can steer the cart.
Of course, this device was not intended to transport people, but served only
How decoration moving tool during royal holidays.
A similar vehicle belonged to a number of self-propelled vehicles created by other engineers.
Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Italian scientists managed to collect, real size,
self-propelled carriage, reproduced according to the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci.
The reconstruction of the Leonardo project was successful.
The launched wagon model reached an acceleration speed of 5 km / h.
Wooden trolley equipped with a spring motor and steering gear,
able to move independently!
The force of the springs is used as a mover in the wagon, the power reserve is small - about 40 meters.
It is now on display at the museum.
Engraving depicting a land sailing yacht by Simon Stevin. Netherlands. 1599 - 1600 years.
Image of Simon Stevin's wheeled sailboat.
Wooden scale model of the 28 local sailboat of Simon Stevin.
Stevin's Land Yacht.
Around 1600, Stevin demonstrated his invention to fellow citizens.
(a land sailing yacht on wheels) and took a ride on it
prince along the coast faster than on horseback.
In addition to all of the above,
Stevin wrote works on mechanics, geometry, music theory,
Invented double-entry bookkeeping (debit/credit).
In 1590, he compiled tables that indicated the time of the onset of the tides.
anywhere depending on the position of the moon.
Self-running carriage designed by a peasant of the Nizhny Novgorod province Leonty Shamshurenkov. Russia. 1752.
Self-running carriage designed by Ivan Kulibin. Russia. 1791.
Self-running carriages by I. Kulibin and L. Shamshurenkov.
(1752 / 1791).
Mankind has long dreamed of creating a kind of self-propelled wheelchairs that can move without draft animals. This is clearly seen in various epics, legends and fairy tales. On the street in May 1752. A festive mood reigned in St. Petersburg, the air was permeated with subtle aromas of spring, the hiding sun sent its last rays. The summer garden was filled with people. Elegant carriages drove along the pavements, and suddenly, among all the carriages, one strange one appears. He walked without horses, quietly and without noise, overtaking other carriages. The people were greatly surprised. Only later it became known that this outlandish invention is - " self-running carriage”, built by the Russian serf of the Nizhny Novgorod province Leonty Shamshurenkov.
Also, a year later, Shamshurenkov wrote about what he could do self-propelled sled and a counter up to thousands of miles with a bell ringing every kilometer traveled. Thus, even 150 years before the appearance of the first car with an internal combustion engine, a prototype of a modern speedometer and a car appeared in serf Rus'.
I. P. Kulibin drew up a project in 1784, and in 1791 he built his “scooter”. In it, for the first time, rolling bearings and a flywheel were used to ensure uniform travel. Using the energy of a rotating flywheel, the ratchet mechanism, driven by pedals, allowed the wheelchair to move freewheeling. The most interesting element of the Kulibin "self-propelled gun" was a gear change mechanism, which is an integral part of the transmission of all cars with internal combustion engines.
The steam engine of Ferdinand Ferbist. Belgium. 1672.
Wooden model of Ferbist's car.
steam car Ferbista(1672), (Belgium) - In this model, a prototype of a vehicle invented by the Belgian missionary Ferdinand Ferbist, steam from the boiler was sent through a nozzle to the turbine blades, which, in turn, sent power to the wheels through a transmission mechanism. The car had a very limited mileage.
For almost 30 years (from 1659 to 1688), the Belgian Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Ferbist served as a physicist and astronomer for the Chinese emperor Kang Hi. The sovereign allowed him to use the magnificent palace library.
From the Eastern treatises the missionary learned a lot of new things, moreover, in those areas of knowledge that, in his opinion, he comprehended perfectly. Moreover, it turned out that their authors referred to the achievements of Europeans in science and technology condescendingly, as something simple and even primitive. In the well-equipped imperial workshops, Ferbist discovered equipment for conducting various experiments. Once, namely in 1678, he came up with the idea to put a steam engine on a four-wheeled cart, and direct the steam escaping from the boiler to a wheel with blades (blades). This is what they would say today turbine wheel the inventor connected through two gears to the second axle, on which 2 driving wheels were mounted. The steam coming under high pressure from a heated boiler, pushed the turbine wheel, its axle turned the drive wheels, the cart was moving and, moreover, was carrying a small load.
So that the “self-running cart” could turn, a fifth wheel was attached to it from behind through a primitive hinge. The length of the "car" Ferbista was only 600 millimeters! Of course, it was just a mechanical toy made by a missionary for the son of a Chinese emperor. However, for the first time a small steam engine was used to drive the wheels of a mechanical vehicle.
Many researchers consider the first car on the planet to be a "front-wheel drive truck" created in China.
By the way, Ferbist described his invention in the field of automotive industry in 1687 in the work European Astronomy. Attempts have been made to reproduce this steam engine according to the description. The models turned out to be different, but the principle remained the same: a burner, a steam boiler, a “turbine” wheel with blades, a pair of gears and front drive wheels.
Steam jet machine Isaac Newton. Great Britain. 1680.
Model of Newton's machine.
Newton's jet car(1680), (Great Britain) - This car was more like a fantasy, a visual embodiment of the principle jet thrust than the current vehicle design. Extremely difficult to maintain, it represented a realized attempt to use steam as a driving force.
The name of the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton is well known. But few people know that in 1680, in one of his works on mechanics, he described a carriage moving thanks to the reactive power of steam. That is, Newton's steam car uses a slightly different principle of motion than that proposed by Ferbist.
frame on four wheels with a suspended burner, over which a steam boiler with a movable nozzle directed against the movement was installed, was actually a car. Steam escaped from the nozzle through the valve on the handle at regular intervals. The resulting reactive force was supposed to push the crew forward. It's nothing but the most modern principle rocket and aircraft construction, only proposed back in the 17th century.
If we consider Newton's model, based on the technical achievements of our days, there are no errors in it, but, apparently, a huge pressure of steam was required to push such a cart with cargo or passengers. By the way, both Ferbist's steam engine and Newton's cart reverse was absent.
Evidence of the existence of this steam carriage has not yet been found, only diagrams and drawings have been preserved in the manuscripts of the great scientist. The British themselves claim that Newton's steam engine was made in "metal".
Well, it remains only to find eyewitness accounts or drawings of artists.
Steam tractor Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. France. 1769
Cugno steam tractor accident.
Cugno steam carriage on the street of a French city.
Scale model of Cugno's steam tractor.
Cugno's car(1769), (France) - A huge clumsy three-wheeled truck - the first steam vehicle tested on the road. It consisted of two vertically arranged cylinders with a capacity of 62 liters. The cart (military tractor) had a carrying capacity of four tons at a speed of 3.5 km / h, but it was very difficult to control.
Nicolas (Nicolas) Joseph Cugno (Cugno), a French army captain and military engineer, from early childhood was fond of technology and dreamed of using a steam engine on a crew. In 1765, the inventor tested his first mechanical carriage, carrying four passengers at a speed of 9.5 km / h. Although she had a number of shortcomings, the French Ministry of War instructed Cugnot to design an artillery tractor-carrier of cannon carriages for the army.
In 1769, the steam engine was ready for operation. It was a massive oak frame on three wheels. A two-cylinder steam engine and a boiler were installed on the subframe of the front (steered and driven) wheel. translational movement pistons in the cylinder was converted using a rather complex ratchet mechanism into the rotational movement of the drive wheel. True, two people had to manage the wooden steam engine, since it itself weighed a ton and the same amount - water and fuel supplies.
During one of the trips, a steam cart rammed a stone wall and the boiler exploded. And yet, once again, it was possible to prove: a car, or rather a steam car, to be! In 1770 Cugno built another steam cart,
but it no longer had a constructive development.
The last creation of a French officer has survived to this day and is located in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris. A scale model was also made for the Moscow Polytechnic Museum.
The main types of steam passenger cars.
The steam omnibus of Sir Goldsworthy Genie (Goldsworthy Genie). Great Britain. 1828.
Steam crews plying along the first transport routes.
Steam stagecoach Bordino. Italy. 1854
Model stagecoach Bordino.
Steam car Bordino
(1854), (Italy) -
This road locomotive was powered by a system consisting of a coal boiler and a machine with two horizontally arranged cylinders. On the plain it reached a speed of 8 km / h, consumed 30 kg of coal per hour and was the third vehicle designed by the Sardinian infantry officer Bordino.
Steam engines and cars.
Hill's steam carriage. Great Britain. 1830
Hill's steam carriage
At one time, she was one of the classic high-speed mail coaches.
and at a speed of about 20 km / h could carry up to 15 passengers.
Used on the London-Birmingham line,
where Church's steam carriage also ran, with seating for about 50 people.
When did all-wheel drive appear? In the first quarter of the 19th century. It was then that two Scottish friends, Burstall and Hill, came up with the brilliant idea of using the mass of a steam car to grip the wheels with the road. They designed a steam engine with all driving wheels.
The steam engine located at the rear of the crew had 2 vertical cylinders, the reciprocating movement from the pistons, by means of a crank mechanism, was converted into rotation of the rear axle. From it, with the help of a cone pair, torque, through a shaft connecting the front and rear axles, was transmitted to the front, also equipped with a cone pair, but with a different gear ratio. Since swivel pins had not yet been invented at that time, and the front axle turned entirely, the cardan joint, invented in the 16th century by the mathematician Gerolamo Cardino, was located in the center of the turn.
The steam engine had four cone pairs, two of which were in the steering gear. Similar transmission to petrol cars, according to the "official history", appeared only after many, many years. Interestingly, the driver's seat was on springs. Design? While the carriage ... This four-wheel drive steam engine was born in 1824.
Hancock's "Enterprise" steam carriage. Great Britain. 1830
"Enterprise" is in full swing.
Hancock's steam carriage
(1830), (Great Britain) -
Cruised on the mail and passenger line Bristol-London.
The appearance of the new vehicle differed from the previous horse-drawn postal carriages with a more elegant look.
This was accompanied by technical achievements such as chain drive and improved tube boiler.
Years passed, more and more advanced steam omnibuses and stagecoaches appeared. For example, Walter Hancock launched several steam stagecoaches on the roads of England in 1833. If you carefully consider the layout of one of his first creations - "Enterprise", then you can see the beginnings of today's bus design solutions.
The driver sat high in front, there was also a storage area, passengers were accommodated in comfortable cabin, and the steam engine with a firebox was located at the back. But the driver could not slow down, for this there was a wagon on the back platform. At the signal of the driver, with the help of a huge lever, he stopped the rotation of the drive wheels. The rims on the wheels were iron, and therefore, with strong braking, sparks flew from under them.
"Enterprise" developed a speed of over 35 km / h, it became real competitor horse-drawn stagecoaches, especially since Hancock created mechanical stagecoaches one after another ...
In appearance, Hancock's carriages were somewhat different from the already familiar steam engines. The master did not build them according to the carriage principle, did not use ready-made hulls of luxurious horse-drawn carriages, but made bodies from metal and wood.
In his crews, albeit unsightly, a new approach to design was felt. By the way, many of them are captured in the paintings and drawings of artists of that time.
Steam 50 is Church's local stagecoach. Great Britain. 1833.
In 1833, a very beautiful steam stagecoach appeared ... This grandiose structure came out of the walls of the workshop of William Church. The inventor did something unusual: he put two carriages one after the other, and between them he placed a steam engine, on the sides of which there were driving wheels. Only the front wheel was controlled (the wheels were diamond-shaped). A stagecoach ran between London and Birmingham. Out of 50 of its passengers, 28 were traveling
with comfort inside the salons, and 22 - at the top. The speed of the steam engine reached only 15 km / h.
It is worth noting the rich design of the crew hull. It was covered with stucco made of gypsum on a special glue, which for a long time withstood the shaking and vibration of the body. By the way, the British claim that many of Church's steam engines had three wheels ... However, the drawings have not survived, there are several drawings made by contemporaries.
Until the end of the 19th century, a great many such steam crews of various capacities were created both in Europe and overseas. All of them belonged to passenger multi-seat transport. Two- and four-seater steam engines proved to be unprofitable.
Richard Trevithick's steam carriage. Great Britain. 1801.
Richard Trevithick's steam engine. Great Britain. First quarter of the 19th century.
Here it is necessary to point out one very remarkable detail. At the very beginning of the 19th century, a very interesting development appeared, then brought to life - this is nothing more than the world's first amphibious car ...
Steam car - amphibious Oliver Evans. USA. 1801 - 1805.
A modern model, with a scale of 1:43, of the same Evans amphibian.
Evans earthmoving steam engine. USA. 1805.
A variety of steam engines - the ancestors of steam locomotives.
Steam fire truck.
Steam passenger transport.
Steam engine with passengers and driver.
Pecory steam engine. Italy. 1891
Steam Tricycle Pecory
(1891), (Italy) -
The last steam vehicle built in Italy, distinguished by its low weight,
ease of construction and maintenance.
The vertical tube boiler reached its maximum power at a pressure of 7 atm.
Steam engines are taking over the world.
Steam truck.
For Russian culture, Ivan Petrovich Kulibin is a legendary and symbolic figure at the same time. It is not for nothing that his surname itself has become a household name, and one can often hear how one person calls another Kulibin for outstanding abilities in the field of mechanics, having a very vague idea of the bearer of the illustrious surname.Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was born in 1735 in Nizhny Novgorod. His father, a small flour merchant, planned to raise a successor who could run the shop when he was old. However, already in his early youth, Ivan Kulibin shows a remarkable interest in learning, including self-education. At the age of 23, he opens a watch workshop, where he creates a clock in the shape of a duck egg that made him famous, which he would later present to Empress Catherine II, who came to Nizhny Novgorod. The clock opens the way for a talented mechanic to St. Petersburg, he becomes the head of a mechanical workshop at the Academy of Sciences. But what a paradox! Kulibin made a huge number of inventions, each of which, being translated into reality, would bring people considerable benefits. Among his ideas, carefully and in detail, were such as the design of the arched bridge, the excellent design of prostheses, the optical telegraph, the "navigable vessel" that could move against the current, and much more. However, for some reason, the government always refused to implement the Kulibin projects, preferring to keep the drawings in the archives, and subsequently acquire them for a lot of money foreign analogues. In 1818, the inventor dies, and then it turns out that his family does not even have money for a funeral.
The idea of building a mechanism that will not be driven by an external force, whether it be a draft animal or a wind blowing in the sails, has long occupied the minds of mankind. And in Russia, Kulibin, in fact, was not a pioneer. For four decades before him, the so-called "self-running carriage" was built by a peasant of the Nizhny Novgorod province Leonty Shamshurenkov. Now it is difficult to say what it was, since only mentions of Shamshurenkov's carriage have been preserved - no drawings, drawings, technical descriptions was not found. Kulibinsky invention was more fortunate - after all, Ivan Petrovich was a civil servant who served in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Therefore, his papers ended up in the archive and safely survived to this day.
So, in 1791, the inventor demonstrated to the public his new brainchild - a three-wheeled scooter - several times riding it through the streets of St. Petersburg. Kulibin began work on this mechanism back in 1784, but it took seven whole years of trial and error to create a truly functioning model. In addition to a full-size scooter, the inventor also built several toy models with which they amused themselves as children.
Initially, the mechanic planned to create a carriage with four wheels, starting from the more familiar cart layout, but quickly realized that the design needed to be lightened, so there were three wheels left. The rear wheels were larger, the front, leading, smaller. Actually, the entire scooter consisted of a frame with three wheels, a front seat designed for two passengers, and a place located behind where a person stood to ensure the movement of the crew. This man inserted his feet into special "shoes", which, with the help of a complex system of levers and rods, acted on a ratchet mechanism mounted on the vertical axis of the flywheel. The flywheel, in turn, evened out the shocks from the ratchet mechanism and ensured the continuous movement of the wheels.
At first glance, Kulibin's invention has much more in common with a bicycle than with a car, which is why it is often referred to as a velomobile. Indeed, if we consider the scooter solely from the point of view of the fact that it was set in motion by a person who pressed special pedals, then this opinion would be completely fair. But it was in the crew of Kulibin that those nodes were quite carefully developed and used, without which it is impossible to imagine modern car: gear shifting, steering gear (by the way, practically no different from those used in cars), plain bearings, braking device.
It is important to realize the simple fact that in the 18th century the exchange of information between scientists and engineers of different countries was practically zero. It often happened that the same thing was invented several times, and the question of priority in the discovery was impossible to resolve. What about the 18th century! Suffice it to recall the well-known dispute about who was the first to invent radio - Popov or Marconi. But this happened already at the beginning of the twentieth century. So, you need to understand that Kulibin had to act in an environment, as they say now, of an information vacuum. In principle, he knew nothing about whether he had predecessors, what results he had achieved, how many mistakes he had made, and how much progress had been made in his work. Therefore, the Nizhny Novgorod inventor had every right to consider himself a pioneer.
But back to technical side affairs. An interesting feature scooter was that, although the servant pressed the pedals evenly, driving wheel could rotate at different speeds. The change in speed was provided by a drum with three rims - large, medium and small. Movement on the drum was transmitted through gear train, in which the gear could cling to any of the crowns. In fact, this system is an analogue of a gearbox. Due to the small mass (according to modern scientists, the scooter weighed two hundred to two hundred and fifty kilograms at most) and the use of plain bearings in all rubbing parts, the crew, even despite the weight of a servant and one or two passengers, could reach speeds of up to 10-15 km / h.
Obviously, having accelerated, the servant could afford to rest a little, because then the scooter rolled for some time by inertia. Also, without human intervention, she went downhill well. But it is curious that, according to contemporaries, she went uphill quite quickly, so that the servant who gave her movement was by no means exhausted half to death, overcoming the rise. What in Kulibin's device gave such an opportunity? The fact is that a talented mechanic used a flywheel on his three-wheeled self-propelled carriage. In fact, the servant was swinging the flywheel, which was already transferring energy to the wheels through a gear transmission. It was the use of the flywheel that ensured the movement of the scooter uphill, and also slowed it down when it raced downhill.
The steering consisted of two levers, rods and a turntable attached to the front wheel. It should be noted that the servant who moved the scooter had to stand also because, sitting, he could not normally view the road from his place. Modern options for building a self-propelled Kulibin cart usually do not involve the presence of passengers, so the driver can turn and move the pedals while sitting. However, for the initial Kulibin plan, it was important that his crew was able to transport "idle people". Therefore, the servant had to stand, otherwise his passengers would block his view. Again, a mechanic certainly wouldn't risk trusting passengers to steer.
The inventor himself, of course, was aware of all the imperfection of his offspring. Moreover, he did not even include the scooter in the list of his most important developments, believing that this is, first of all, entertainment "for idle people." Despite the fact that he carefully worked to lighten the crew, no servant could swing the flywheel for a long time, setting the scooter in motion. The idea of an engine that would not depend on the muscular strength of a person constantly dominated Kulibin's mind. Ivan Petrovich made quite a few inventions related to the use of the power of moving water or wind. However, it was clear that all this was completely unsuitable for a self-propelled carriage. Shortly before his death, Kulibin's attention was attracted by steam engines, but he was already too old to take on such a difficult task as creating a device with a steam engine as an engine. He chose a different path - as it turned out later, erroneous. The fact is that the mechanic was obsessed with the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a perpetual motion machine, a mysterious "perpetuum mobile", which was cherished dream all the inventors of his time. Kulibin had his own idea of how a perpetual motion machine should work, and he tried to combine it with a scooter. In 1817, he starts working again on a half-forgotten self-propelled carriage, but his work was interrupted by death, and historians know little about the stage at which work was stopped.
What happened to the scooter built by the Nizhny Novgorod inventor is not noted anywhere. Slipped into obscurity. But, as mentioned above, drawings and drawings made by the hand of the inventor himself have been preserved. In the 1970-1980s, at various festivals dedicated to both the history of the automotive industry and velomobile sports, crews built on the basis of Kulibin's ideas were presented more than once. And the current model of the mechanic's scooter, restored according to his drawings, is on display at the Polytechnic Museum.
