The English people have an enviable record for successful mechanical inventions, and they were early experimenters on lines similar to those of Cugnot. About the time that Cugnot ran his machine into a wall, William Murdock, a mechanic, was working for Watt, the English inventor of steam. Whether he knew of Cugnot’s automobile attempt or not, there is no evidence extant. The idea of an engine-run road contrivance may have come to him through inspiration, or in some other way, as it did to Cugnot. Murdock was quite familiar with Watt’s engines. He helped to build them, and he was curious to know the different forms in which they could be used, especially as to a road vehicle. He talked to Watt, but was sternly discouraged by the latter. Just as Cugnot, no doubt, concluded that his automobile would never get anywhere, Watt opposed applying his engine to a road travelling machine, because he was firmly convinced that no vehicle that could be invented could successfully negotiate, at a speed to make it worth while, the execrable roads of that day. In this we have a fine illustration of the peculiarities and uncertain nature of the human mind. It is an organism that astounds by its perception of possibilities in one direction, while numb of any sensation whatever in glimpsing the possibilities in another direction. Watt could invent steam, but he could not imagine good roads. Had he possessed the vision, he might have seen that roads, which he so abhorred as to see nothing good in them, would be reformed if he but encouraged applying his engines to road travelling mechanism. In William Murdock’s way of taking the doleful discouragement of Watt, we see an illustration of that mental attitude that man has universally adopted in mechanical advance, toward the lugubrious prophet of failure. He has matched hope and optimism against despair and pessimism. Despite Watt and his mournful views of the impossibility of building an engine-run road carriage that would advance over English roads, Murdock went ahead and built a model of an engine-run road carriage; but when he had it finished, Watt’s discouraging views prevailed, and Murdock did not attempt to enlarge his model to a full sized form. He stopped with the model, which is at the present day in the British Museum. Murdock’s invention was tested, and the tests showed that an advance in efficiency over the creation of Cugnot had been made. The model was driven by a single cylinder of three inch bore. It had a one and a half inch stroke. A crank converted the reciprocating motion of the steam engine into rotary motion, the service performed in the Cugnot invention by the quarter revolution ratchet drive. Murdock’s idea was patented by a man named Pickard, in 1780.