When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Title: Auto-Cars: Cars, Tramcars, and Small Cars
Author: D. Farman, M.I.E.E., mechanical engineer; translated from the French by Lucien Serraillier, with a preface by Baron de Zuylen de Nyevelt, president of the Automobile Club of France.
Publisher: Whittaker & Co., London.
Publication details: Dated 1896 on the title page; imprint lists Whittaker & Co. at 2 White Hart Street, Paternoster Square, E.C., London, and 66 Fifth Avenue, New York; printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square, London.
Format: Vintage red cloth hardcover binding.
Genre/Topic: Automobiles; early motor vehicles; mechanical and automotive engineering; science & technology history.
Language: English.
Country of origin: United Kingdom.
Physical description: Octavo-format volume in red cloth with gilt titling Auto-Cars and D. Farman on the front board and spine, plain endpapers, and a typographic title page noting 112 illustrations.
Illustrations: Contains 112 black-and-white technical illustrations, including sectional diagrams of steam and petroleum motors, compressed-air motors, trams and auto-cars, mechanical layouts, tables, and charts.
Contents overview: Opening chapters cover thermodynamic principles such as Boyle\'s and Gay-Lussac\'s laws, entropy, Carnot\'s cycle, the steam engine cycle, and tractive effort on road and rail, followed by a general and historical survey of inventors and engineers including Cugnot, Newcomen, Watt, Stephenson, De Dion and Bouton, Serpollet, Lenoir, Daimler, Mékarski, Siemens and Halske, and Jeantaud.
Further chapters present theory and calculations for various types of motors, detailed descriptions of steam traction systems and vehicles, compressed air auto-cars, and petroleum auto-cars, with numerical examples, valve-gear diagrams, ignition systems, and performance data.
Later sections treat electric auto-cars, reports on auto-cars that entered the race organised by the Times Herald of Chicago with horsepower and fuel-consumption tests, and a chapter devoted to lubrication, tyres, bearings, springs, axles, carburetors, ignition, starting, and vibration.
Appendices: Includes Sir David Salomons\' letter to the press on the passing of the Locomotives on Highways Bill, the text of the Locomotives on Highways Bill, a report on the Paris-Marseilles race of September 1896, and a table of French and English equivalents, followed by an index.
Special attributes: 1896 cloth-bound English-language treatise on early motor vehicles with 112 illustrations, translated from the French and prefaced by Baron de Zuylen de Nyevelt; ex-library provenance from Oakland Free Public Library noted on the endpapers and title page; pre-ISBN era with no ISBN, UPC, or modern barcode present.
Condition details: see condition field for more information.
