His success was based on the greater efficiency and smaller size of his power unit, which was the first to have the piston moved by steam at high pressure. Earlier power units had pistons that moved as a result of atmospheric pressure against the vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. Later, Trevithick successfully used his knowledge of automobiles to create the train. He is considered the founder of both road and rail automotive transportation. Starting in 1831, however, laws against steam coaches restricted them off roads, and by 1860 development of self-propelled vehicles virtually ended.
In France and Germany, all eyes where turned to the development of the internal-combustion engine (modern car). The first internal-combustion engine was designed by the Dutch scientist Christian Huygens in 1678 It was to have been fueled with gunpowder, but it was never built. About 1860 a French inventor named Etienne Lenoir built the first practical internal-combustion engine. .
It burned illuminating gas as opposed to gunpowder. In 1866 two German engineers, Eugene Langen (1833-95) and Nikolaus August Otto (1832-91), developed a more efficient gas engine, and in 1876 Otto built a four-cycle engine. The German engineer Gottlieb Daimler revolutionized the automobile industry by inventing the high-speed internal combustion motor. His four-cycle, single-cylinder motor, patented in 1887, achieved speeds many times those of any previous engine, that way it would hold three times more and go three times faster. In 1889 he developed a two-cylinder engine that gave still greater power. The superiority of the high-speed Daimler engine over the then highly developed steam engine was conclusively demonstrated at the famous Paris-Bordeaux Race of 1895. The first car, propelled by a Daimler engine, came in six hours ahead of the second car, and the next three cars to finish were all propelled by Daimler engines.
