In 1884 Gottlieb Daimler of Germany invented the petrol engine. At first it was fixed to bicycles, but very quickly the motor car followed.
The early motor cars which could only move at about eight miles per hour, at first were considered highly dangerous, and in England a law was passed that a man carrying a red warning flag must walk along the road few yards ahead of a motor car.
Naturally motoring did not make very great progress in England, until the law was abolished. By the time Daimler had greatly improved his invention and others too were building successful machines which were widely used in Europe.
Then England awoke to the fact that the motor car was not an odd sort of toy, but an important practical invention. The country began to manufacture cars itself.
Many men like Austin, Lanchester, Royce and Hillman made fortunes and became famous through this industry, one of the best known of them all being Sir William Morris.
William Morris was born in 1877 in the Village Cowley, England. His parents were so poor they had no money to spend on his education. Yet William possessed a genius for practical mechanics. As a boy he repaired bicycles in a small shed in Cowley village.
A professor at Oxford University who had his bicycle repaired by William in his wayside cycle shed recognized the genius of the young man. He lent William the money to start a small repairing garage at Oxford.
Today William Morris’s car factories cover many acres not only in Oxford, but also in Birmingham, Coventry, and in France. When William’s industry was at its peak a new Morris car was born every few minutes and the work gave employment to thousands of men.
William Morris developed low price, mass produced cars like the ‘Morris Eight’, ‘Morris Minor’, ‘Morris Mini Minor’ and bigger cars ‘Morris Cowley’ and ‘Morris Oxford’ and revolutionized the British car industry.
The poor boy, who repaired cycles once, became William Richard Morris 1st Viscount of Nuffield or Lord Nuffield later. In 1952 he became the Chairman of the British Motor Corporation. (B. M. C.)
Lord Nuffield was one of the richest people in Britain. He was a great philanthropist and gave away a good portion of his annual income to welfare institutions, schools, hospitals, libraries, homes for the elders, and orphanages, and homes for the handicapped lavishly, to improve their condition.
Lord Nuffield passed away peacefully in 1963 in Oxford.