Could this be the world's first electric car? Thomas Parker (C) was a Victorian inventor who claimed to have invented the vehicle
The world's first electric car may have been built by a Victorian inventor.
Newly unearthed photos show what appears to be an electric vehicle built in the year 1884.
To the modern eye the machine looks like a horseless carriage, but sitting aboard at the wheel is the 19th century inventor Thomas Parker.
Mr Parker electrified the London Underground and created overhead tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham, and the smokeless fuel coalite.
He claimed he had invented the electric car and he also had a hand in refining car batteries for petrol-powered models. He died in December 1915.
Today the photos are the treasured memories of his great-grandson Graham Parker, who still marvels at the range of ideas his great-grandfather had.
'Anything on four wheels was quite a novelty, people were terrified of the things and someone with a red flag had to walk in front of it.
'Electricity was even more terrifying because it was something you couldn't see or touch, there seemed to be quite a lot of resistance to it.'
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But with the French working on a rival petrol driven engine, the inventor soon turned his thoughts to other forms of mass transport.
'I don't think all that many (cars) were made because he was more interested in trams and tramways,' he added. 'He was one of the early people thinking about pollution.'
'People in London were fed up sitting in the smoke. He went down to London to oversee the electrification process.'
Thomas Parker's son, Thomas Hugh Parker shared his father's flair for design and innovation, even building a steam powered car in 1901 before later working on modern car features such as hydraulic brakes and four wheel steering.
He also claimed to have invented the spark plug, monoblock engine and the carburettor.
And these days the tradition lives on through Graham Parker's oldest son, Alun, who is also an engineer who has worked on projects ranging from the West Coast mainline to the Panama Canal, and Crossrail.
'It's interesting how history repeats itself,' Mr Parker said.
'But it stopped when it got to me - though somebody once commented that as a weather forecaster, I was the biggest inventor of the lot!'
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1173144/The-worlds-electric-car--built-British-inventor-1884.html
