A vehicle (Latin: vehiculum) is a mechanical means of conveyance, a carriage or transport. Most often they are manufactured (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft), although some other means of transport which are not made by humans also may be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and floating tree trunks.
Vehicles may be propelled or pulled by engines or animals including humans, for instance, a chariot, a stagecoach, a mule-drawn barge, an ox-cart or rickshaw. However, animals on their own, though used as a means of transport, are not called vehicles, but rather beasts of burden or draft animals. This distinction includes humans carrying another human, for example a child or a disabled person. Means of transport without a vehicle or animal would include walking, running, crawling, or swimming.
Vehicles that do not travel on land often are called craft, such as watercraft, sailcraft, aircraft, hovercraft, and spacecraft
Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed, or skied.
History of vehicles
* The oldest boats to be found by archaeological excavation are logboats from around 7,000-9,000 years ago,[1][2][3][4]
* a 7,000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait.[5]
* Boats were used between 4000BCE-3000BCE in Sumer,[6] ancient Egypt[7] and in the Indian Ocean.[6]
* There is evidence of camel pulled wheeled vehicles about 3000-4000 BCE.[8]
* The earliest evidence of a wagonway, a predecessor of the railway, found so far was the 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos wagonway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece since around 600 BC.[9][10][11][12][13] Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route.[13]
* Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a stained-glass window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau dating from around 1350.[14]
* In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Castle in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope, and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel.[15][16]
* 1769 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769, by adapting an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some[citation needed], who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran or was stable.
* In Russia, in the 1780s, Ivan Kulibin developed a human-pedalled, three-wheeled carriage with modern features such as a flywheel, brake, gear box, and bearings; however, it was not developed further.[17]
* 1783 Montgolfier brothers first Balloon vehicle
* Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive in 1801, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle, although it was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of little practical use.
* push bikes draisines, or hobby horses were the first human means of transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, the draisine (or Laufmaschine, "running machine"), invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais, is regarded as the forerunner of the modern bicycle (and motorcycle). It was introduced by Drais to the public in Mannheim in summer 1817.[18]
* 1885 Otto Lilienthal began experimental gliding, and achieved the first sustained, controlled, reproducible flights.
* 1903 Wright brothers flew the first controlled, powered aircraft
* 1928 Opel RAK.1 rocket car
* 1961 Vostok vehicle carried first man (Yuri Gagarin) into space
* 1969 Apollo Program first manned vehicle lands on the moon
Power source
Vehicles may be powered by fuels, such as petroleum or diesel, nuclear power, wind, waves, batteries, electrical power, solar energy, gravity, human or animal power and other chemical reactions and physical sources of energy have seen some use.
Motors
The power is converted into some kind of motion by a "motor". Engines commonly include steam engines, internal combustion engines (including jet engines and gas turbines) or electric motors. Muscles perform this function in animals. Other schemes are sometimes used.[citation needed]
Movement
Vehicles use different means to permit or ease movement. These are commonly in the form of wheels, boat or submarine hulls, skis, caterpillar tracks, skates, wings, rotors or cushions of air or jets of air. Lighter than air lifting and rocket power have also been used. Trains use tracks, either with wheels resting on them, or in a few cases using magnetic levitation. Cable cars are suspended from cables which move. Legs are used on experimental mechanical systems.[citation needed]
One of the studies of vehicle movement is vehicle dynamics. In terms of dynamics, some vehicles such as bicycles and motorcycles leave essentially a single track and are unstable at rest.
Propulsion
Propulsion is achieved in different ways. It can be achieved by an animal's legs that pulls a vehicle or by wheels that provide torque, by jet propulsion, a propeller or sometimes linear electric motors. Cables can also be attached to a vehicle, as in some funiculars. Wind powered vehicles such as yachts are nearly always directly propelled by the wind, but some unusual forms use the power of the wind to turn wheels.
Some gravity powered vehicles such as glider aircraft, street luge and soapbox cars have no in-built propulsion system. |
