Description
Issue No.199 - Edition 1 / 1986 - 31st Year Of Publication - English Edition - 168 Pages, Softbound, ASIN: B00F9UUP38 **VERY RARE JOURNAL IN GOOD CONDITION**
Movement is a relative term — if a person is moving in a car, then his movement relative to the car is different from his movement relative to the earth; and the latter is different again from his movement relative to the sun. It has taken thousands of years for people to understand correlations of this scale.
Despite the lack of a scientifically-verified foundation, the dream of movement was always there. Ancient mythology tells of it; the Sumerian chariots and Louis XIV's coaches, the little boy who tries to make his tricycle go faster with a couple of hefty kicks — they
all have the same end in mind: movement, mobility, progression. Poets, visionaries, realists — they all dreamed this dream — Homer in the Iliad, Leonardo da Vinci in his "Codices", the English monk Roger Bacon in the 13th century, the Frenchman Philippe Le Bon d'Humersin in the 17th century.
It was this thought which spurred on and disappointed both inventors and charlatans.
Over the centuries ideas came and went; some were good, but their significance could still not be grasped. Others came to nought or the appropriate materials or processing methods were not available — or the inventors simply did not have enough patience.
The history of the automobile shows that fate can be a capricious goddess — its favourites do not know what to do with their luck; others master new ideas, they foresee the future; and rather than mourning the past, they cope with the present.
Complex systems (as the car definitely is)always had several founders. The following chapters name the most important ones. And they also show that there had to be men like Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler who with their belief in an idea, their staying-power and the complete investment of their physical and financial resources (and thanks not least to the strength of their wives) created a new reality — the first automobiles.
Swabia and Baden can list an extraordinarily large number of inventors and tinkers — Baden-Wurttemberg's industrial strength proves that even today. This can be explained by the interest of enlightened monarchs in promoting trade, as well as by the mentality of the people. The sparseness of their landscape is as important for their thrift and diligence as the compulsion to 'do things right' — to be as near perfection as possible — so that the products which leave this country really enjoy the best reputation.
Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz made a crucial contribution to this reputation.
