This May Be The First Mention Of A Horseless Carriage In Literature But There Are Big Questions

I enjoy learning about automotive “firsts,” because I think there’s something inherently interesting about the first of anything that eventually becomes something much bigger. These events and milestones are interesting because at the time of their creation, it’s usually not especially clear what their eventual impact will be, and, maybe even more excitingly, often these firsts occur far earlier than one would guess. They’re just kind of fascinating and fun, and I think I have an interesting one to share with you today.

Oh, and there’s also my longstanding vendetta against Mercedes-Benz, who still claim the “first automobile” even though their claim is absolute unmitigated horseshit. I think they know this, deep down, as they even have a strange “forerunners to the automobile” page that effectively disproves their own claim, and yet they somehow try to use this as more evidence for their claim. What a pack of jerks, am I right?

But I’m getting off track here; what I want to tell you about today is what seems to be the first reference to an actually existing horseless carriage in Western literature, though I’m not certain we can call this vehicle an “automobile.” It’s a sort of sticky question, one I’ve addressed before, and I’m not really certain I have a better answer today. But it is mentioned in a famous, or maybe infamous, work of literature, all the way back in 1759.

That work of literature is Laurence Sterne’s strange and rambling and funny and surprisingly modern (or post-modern or something like that, I’m sure there are dissertations that go into all of that) nine-volume novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

Among certain well-read people, like my librarian friend, this is an incredibly important work, and I feel bad that even though she’s been trying to get me to read the thing for decades, I’ve never really managed to get very far. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it! The book does some wild things with typography and lambasts the overbearing formalities of the era, and is by all accounts a wild, unhinged romp that I suspect one could think of as the start of a line of literature that ends up with Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism. It seems great.

But, at the moment, all I want to focus on is a claim I encountered in David Burgess Wise’s 1977 book, The Motor Car. In the book, Wise makes the claim that the first “horseless vehicle” mentioned in literature is a massive land yacht (not of the Cadillac or Lincoln variety) that was powered by wind and carried about 28 people.

Wise didn’t mention the specific quote, but I think I found it (emphasis mine):

“What shall we say of the great Piereskius?—That’s the very man, cried my uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Shevling, and from Shevling back again, merely to see Stevinus’s flying chariot.“

“Stevinus” refers to Simon Stevin, a Flemish mathematician and music theorist who also seemed to dabble in building massive wind-carriages, and one he built around 1600 for Dutch prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau seems to be what was being referenced as the “flying chariot.”

The land yacht or sail carriage or wind carriage or whatever we want to call this thing is certainly an impressive beast; it’s huge, carrying an awful lot of people, and has two very ship-like masts. Based on most period representations (that one up there is from 1649), the construction looks quite naval, like a long, low ship with massive artillery-type wheels.

There looks to be some sort of leaf-spring type of suspension, though I can’t really tell, and what I may be reading as the leaves could be more heavy timber, but the rear axle does seem to be on some manner of pivot for steering, in a rudder-like manner that reflects the nautical inspiration for this machine.

But here’s my question: is this an automobile of any sort? It’s definitely a vehicle that moves without animal power – and that alone is worth noting as a first to be mentioned in literature here – but I feel like I’m back at my earlier question of whether or not a wind-powered vehicle can be considered self-propelled.

The power is coming externally, from the wind, but one could say a solar-powered car is the same way, with the energy coming from the sun. Sure, the mechanism to change that solar energy into motive energy is vastly more complex – solar panels to turn solar energy into electricity which is then fed into electric motors, as opposed to wind energy pushing against sails – but, really, does the complexity matter?

Is a sail, simple as it is, still not a mechanism used to translate wind into motion? The sails and mast and associated support and guide lines are not complex machinery, but they do constitute a machine of sorts, do they not? So are we looking at the first actual, extant automobile ever to be mentioned in a work of literature?

I’m honestly not sure what I think. Stevin’s wind-carriage is definitely a milestone of sorts, proof that wheeled travel on land was possible without the use of animal power. It wasn’t exactly practical, and it wasn’t really all that revolutionary – the same principles had been used on water for centuries – but it was still something, and is a milestone in the history of the automobile.

I think I’ve convinced myself that the arrangement of sails and related equipment counts as an “engine” of sorts – physical objects arranged in such a way to transfer some form of energy into motive force. An electric motor does this with streams of electrons, a gasoline engine does this with liquid hydrocarbons, steam engines do this with heat energy, and I suppose sails (and windmills, etc.) do this with the kinetic force of atmospheric motion that we call wind.

So maybe this can count as a sort of automobile? I’m happy to listen to any opinions here, because I think this is an interesting problem. Regardless, though, I do think this is likely the first non-fantastical, non-animal-powered, actually-existing wheeled vehicle mentioned in any literature. After all, Tristram Shandy was published about a decade before Cugnot’s 1769 steam artillery hauler was built!