CAR TALK

Automobile records and firsts.

FIRST POLICE CAR. Officer Louis Mueller Sr. operated the first police car in Akron, Ohio, in 1899, when he was assigned to pick up an intoxicated man. Run by electricity, the vehicle could reach a speed of only 16 miles per hour and travel 30 miles before needing to recharge its battery. The car cost $2,400 and was equipped with electric lights, a stretcher, and gongs for a siren.

FIRST SOLAR-POWERED CAR. When William G. Cobb of General Motors showcased the first solar car at the Chicago Powerama convention in 1955, there was one small problem—at only 15 inches high, it was too small to drive. Seventeen years later, the International Rectifier Company unveiled something a little more realistic: a 1912 Baker electric car converted to run on solar power.

FIRST LAND-SPEED RECORD. French race-car driver Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (better known as the “Electric Count”) set the world’s first land-speed record when he raced his electric car down a deserted road near Paris in 1898 at the “incredible” speed of 39.24 mph. The count wasn’t satisfied with his feat, though, so he tried again in January 1899, screeching down the road and breaking his own record with a top speed of 43.64 mph.

FIRST GAS PUMP. On September 5, 1885, Sylvanus Bowser of Fort Wayne, Indiana, delivered the first gasoline pump to a local gas station. Bowser had manufactured a pump tank that held one barrel of gasoline. Thirteen years later, pumps were made that could draw fuel from an underground tank.

FIRST SANCTIONED DRAG RACE. On April 10, 1949, California street racers and hot-rodders gathered in the town of Goleta, north of Santa Barbara. Their race would take place on an airstrip that the military used to train pilots. Complete with a flagman at the starting line and another at the finish a quarter-mile away, the fastest local roadsters showed up to race each other side-by-side. Thousands of spectators watched the 10-second race.

When and where was the wheel invented? Around 4000 B.C., in Mesopotamia (now Iraq).