THE CAR AND THE BEGINNINGS

This is the first section af the Museum permanent exhibition. The visit starts from the second floor. The Beginnings.  AUTO-MOBILE: literally, “moves by itself”. When was it first created? Who invented it? There is no simple answer. The internal combustion engine was first tried out in the late nineteenth century, in various parts of the world, by brilliant scientists who often knew nothing of what their colleagues were doing. It was really the combination and application of a series of historic inventions such as the steering wheel, suspension systems, differential gears, universal joints and brakes that led to the birth of the automobile. Without these inventions, which are illustrated on the four monitors, the car would never have come into existence. Man has always tried to free himself from animal movement and for many long centuries dreamt and thought up the most diverse and ingenious methods to move quickly and freely. This is why in this sort of universal library we find pedal, sail, wind, steam, gas and petrol vehicles and even electric roller skates. This section pays tribute to all those who invented an auto-mobile before the automobile was invented. The first is the Italian genius of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, a reconstruction of whose spring-operated vehicle, from a folio of the Codex Atlanticus, is shown here.

Steam was the main driving force in the nineteenth century industrial revolution and it is thanks to the steam engine that the carriages of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which had enabled the creation of a considerable communications network between the largest European cities and within the countries themselves, were gradually accompanied by horsepower, while all the time maintaining their appearance intact. But this would soon change completely.

WHAT WAS THAT: A FLASH OF LIGHTNING, A TORPEDO, A GUST OF WIND? No, that was La Jamais Contente - “the never satisfied” - speeding by. The work of a very ingenious, inventive and courageous Belgian driver and car builder, Camille Jenatzy, in May 1899 it became the first car in the world to break through the 100 km/h mark (actually, 105 km/h). After hundreds, and indeed thousands, of years when the highest speeds had been those of oxen and horses, within just a few decades (from the mid nineteenth century, first with the locomotive and then with the automobile), engines allowed

man to reach extraordinary speeds that had never been witnessed before, shortening distances, cutting travelling times, bringing people and places closer, and making possible new forms of visits, contacts and trade. One important detail: La Jamais Contente was powered not by a petrol engine but by an electric motor in a futuristic torpedo-shaped body with a meticulously streamlined design that only forgot to consider... Jenatzy himself! The 100 km/h record had enormous reverberations and reinforced the then current conviction that electric motors would be the way to the future. But just three years was all it took to quash this idea, and the evolution of the automobile throughout the twentieth century fully confirmed this.

A big garage where automobiles are designed and take shape. Whether they be the first attempts, the results of small manufacturers, or the debut of future companies, the world of four-wheeled vehicles expands rapidly and with enthusiasm, with ever different shapes and solutions.