The first Car?

 You learn something every day.....hopefully.  I've been reading an old guide book to Northern Ireland called "Thank You Now", written by someone called Oswell Blakeston.  It was published in 1960.

Towards the end of the book, one small sentence caught my eye, "Lisburn can claim another first for Ulster: a man called Rowan built the very first car to be put on the road in 1836".  Remember, the date for Stephenson's Rocket was 1829, so that would make this a very early attempt at a car.

This warranted a quick Google search, but only one decent lead comes up:  Did Doagh man John beat Karl Benz by creating world's first car? - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

The basics of the story are that John Rowan built a steam powered vehicle 50 years before Benz and drove it around the streets of Belfast to show it working and to entice potential investors, but they could not see the potential.  Have a look at the Belfast Telegraph Article link above.  If true, this could be interesting.



The picture is of a memorial to John Rowan in the town of Doak.  It comes from that Belfast Telegraph Article, so I make no claim to own it.

Enjoy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave a comment: I don't use or sell your data, and you will not receive any spam mail as a result.

Popular posts from this blog

Local History of the worst possible kind! The story of Carnage Hill.

This post is shamelessly copied from a local history book, now out of print, that used to be available in pdf format on line: http://www.bayburn.com/29128%20Helen's%20Bay%20&%20Crawfordsburn%20History.pdf .   It is one section only of a much larger and more broadly based book.  All credit is then due to the book's author, and to the team at bayburn.com. Those who have travelled the main road between Bangor and Belfast will know the corner known as ‘the Devil’s Elbow’, which is located just before the junction leading to Seahill/ Rockport.   On the left side of the road when travelling from Bangor there is a small road leading up into the Holywood hills.   It is now called Carney Hill, but according to this article that name derives from Carnage Hill.   To see where it got this name read on.   Many thanks are due to Sam, my friend and avid local history buff.   It was he who originally showed me a paper copy of this book.   Unfortunately it is not a proud episode
Read more

The Great Storm - 22nd December 1894

Image
I’ve seen a few good storms in my time, although probably nothing that would match the one below.   The description of a great storm in 1894 (in bold and italics), again comes from the local history booklet by C.F. Milliken. ____________ In Bangor Town Hall you will see some photographs of old sailing ships which were blown ashore on 22 nd December 1894.   Out of six sailing ships anchored in Belfast Lough only one escaped.   This was the Norwegian full rigged ship “The Malone”, which early on Friday morning slipped her anchor and went to sea. The three-masted schooner “Doctor”, went aground on Ballymacormick Point and was in matchwood in about five minutes.   The greater part of her crew were drowned. The barque “Lancaster” ran aground at Grey Point, but the crew were all rescued by the rocket apparatus. The Italian barque, “Espina” was demasted and afterwards brought into Belfast. The “Noel”, probably on poor holding ground, dragged her anchor and was driven as
Read more

An old mistake.

Image
 I have owned my BMW R75/6 for many, many years now and have always had something of a love/ hate relationship with it.  Get it going well on a long run and all is right with the world, but despite the image that BMW are keen to portray, it has been less than reliable over the years.  I must point out that not all of this unreliability has been BMW's fault.  For example, I have been through two Boyer electronic ignitions over the years, and as mentioned in the story link below, had an oiling fault caused a previous owners attempt to fit an oil pressure gauge (more on this particular fault shortly).  There has been one nagging issue that has been in this bike throughout though, and it bugs the hell out of me. The bike's engine has always made more noise than a bucket load of angry rattle snakes!   I have written about this elsewhere, including here:  Living with a 1974 BMW R75/6 (oldandireland.blogspot.com)  in a story first published in Real Classic magazine.  Eventually. a few
Read more

MOT prep for modern cars.

Image
  My wife's car (MX5) was up for MOT  recently so, well  in advance,  I checked it over.  The only usual wear and tear mechanical items that needed replaced were the rear brake pads.  There is nothing unusual in this, and it is an easy job but from previous experience it tends to have side effects in these cars (see later).  At the front there was a problem that I was not expecting. These cars come with Bilstein suspension as standard.  The rubber boots on the front ones had broken up, exposing the damper shafts to all the vile salt and corrosion that our winter roads provide.  In my humble opinion this should not happen on a ten year old car.  For example, the boots protecting the front suspension on my 47 year old BMW bike are still the original parts, and are still fine.  It is all down to the specification of the rubber in these parts as set by the factory.  But the boots had to be changed, especially given the price of replacement Bilstein suspension! This is not a particularl
Read more

And then what?

 If you have been reading these ramblings for a while, you may have read here:  The Burning Question of Our Times. (oldandireland.blogspot.com , that my conscience is giving me grief for my many years of burning petrol for fun.  You may even have seen this, posted way back in September 2019:  Old Ireland, new technology. The search for reliable solar water heating. (oldandireland.blogspot.com) , where I was looking for a good alternative for a solar thermal system that we had fitted on our roof. The tubes for it were made by a local company called Thermomax, and supposedly had a twenty year guarantee when we bought them.  They broke repeatedly and eventually catastrophically which meant that they were never likely to pay for themselves, and the guarantee turned out to be worth nothing because Thermomax went bankrupt.  Great. Because of my experience with those thermal tubes, there was no way that I was going to fit anything similar any time soon.  Still, I needed something to assuage t
Read more

The next time you have to buy Magenta toner/ ink for your printer, think of this.....

The Battle of Magenta took place near the town of Magenta in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a crown land of the Austrian Empire on 4 June 1859.   The dye was discovered in 1859 and named in honour of the event.  Now here is the Irish bit; the leader of French forces was of Irish descent.  According to Wikipedia, his family his family originally had land in Munster, lost it because of Cromwell, and then eventually emigrated to France after 1690. Patrice de MacMahon (Paddy to his mates) joined the French army in 1820 and distinguished himself fighting for Napoleon.   After winning the Battle of Magenta, he was made Duke of Magenta, before eventually becoming President of France!
Read more

Neighbours can be such an unthinking pain in the you know what!!

Image
  I have recently had to spend a time and money to fix a really crap bit of work by my next door neighbour. Considering he is a qualified tradesman, who has worked in the building trade all his life, I really would have expected a better, neater job.  You could always see through the hedge between us, which wasn't a issue until they built an extension with great big bloody windows pointing straight at the boundary hedge.  Then a week or so ago, he removed a Berberis plant that was part of the hedge and put up a bit more trellis  and this really crap green stuff that looks like green tinsel to block the hole he had created in the hedge.  Incidentally, n otice the top piece of trellis in one of the pictures.  I had to make enough of this to go all round the garden to stop Tilly jumping the fences when she was younger, and the part he put up is identical to a piece that went missing a few years ago.  That in itself is interesting!   When putting up the trellis, he initially put the wo
Read more

Tilly.

Image
  In January 2010 I was idly browsing through the ads for pet dogs on Gumtree when I spotted a very poor quality picture of a mainly white dog with some black markings.   The dog was sitting looking up at someone just out of shot, as if obedient to them, (Knowing Tilly now, I suspect treats may have been involved).   The description in the ad was somewhat less than detailed.   She was described as being a mix between a Bearded Collie and an Irish Wolf Hound, and the people that had her, wanted rid of her for free.   That, and a contact number was about it.   Even in the blurry shot on the ad she looked like a beautiful dog, and I was intrigued.   It had been around ten years since our last dog had died (aged 17), but at the time, my wife was nursing her elderly mother, and with a Wolf Hound in the mix I presumed that this would be a very large dog, so I didn’t mention it, thinking that someone would soon take on a dog like that.   Shortly after, the ad disappeared, so I thought tha
Read more

The Jewel that is the Crown.

Image
There is a hero in this story; his name is Ken McIlwrath. Belfast was not a very inviting place in the 1970’s.   The city centre was closed off and fortified. Getting to the shops meant passing through a heavy duty turnstile, and submitting yourself to a search by armed security staff who in turn were watched over by soldiers. Those who were old enough at the time will remember the automatic reaction of entering a shop and raising your arms for the search; a reaction that could be a bit embarrassing when travelling outside our small province!   The city’s night life had either moved out of town entirely, or to Great Victoria Street, an area then known as the ‘Golden Mile’. The bar trade in Northern Ireland was largely run by the duopoly of Bass and Guinness back then. Bars were supplied by one or other except for the black stuff which made it into all bars, with occasional pretenders introduced to northern drinkers by Bass such as Beamish or Murphy’s.   There was little choice
Read more