 Canada's first automobile was built in 1867, meeting our talented tinkerer and his steam buggy on this edition of Science Alive. I'm with Sharon Babian, a curator of transportation here at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Now, Sharon, we are standing in front of Canada's first car. Well, yes, but it's really not a car. It's actually more like a carriage. In fact, this early, they were called horseless carriages. Right. So this is actually a steam carriage. And what year was this built in? 1867. And who built it? Henry Seth Taylor. And now, what are some of the things about this that make it more of a horseless carriage and less of an automobile? Because the bodywork is essentially that of a carriage. It actually looks like a carriage. If you didn't notice the boiler on the back of it or look closely underneath and see the cylinders and pistons underneath, you would think that's a carriage. But when you do look more closely at it, you see what makes it an automobile. Now, what would power this in 1867? Steam generated either by coal or wood, depending on what was around. So you would put the steam and the boiler at the back. And then how would that actually make the vehicle move? It's a scaled-down version of a basic steam engine, a mobile or a locomotive steam engine, in that it has two pistons. They're simple pistons. They are not dual operating. They're single operating. You control the amount of steam that's going into the pistons. And that's what controls the speed of the automobile. And how does the design of the throttle work? Basically, it just opens up a valve that lets more steam in or less steam into the cylinders. Right. Is there brakes on this? No. There were no brakes on it. That's the source of many stories about the vehicle. Turning down the throttle would cause the cylinders to slow down immediately. And that would provide braking. As long as you weren't on a precipitous hill or something, you could probably stop fairly easily. Would this be noisy? Oh, I think so. Most steam engines are noisy. I don't know that it would be as noisy as a Harley-Davidson, but it would be noisy because pressurized steam is going to be escaping at various times. And it wasn't probably the highest quality boiler, so there would have been steam coming off of it. And it's a carriage, so it would rattle and shake, and there would be a lot of noise coming from the frame of the vehicle. How fast could you get going with this? About 8 to 10 miles an hour. That's still a pretty good speed, I would think, for 1867, because how fast does a horse go? Five, maybe? Yeah. Is there anything about this that really amazes you? Yes. The brasswork, the cylinders, the actual engine of the car, these were made by Henry Seth Taylor, who was a jeweler and watchmaker. So he knew how to work with metal, and he knew how to build things to very fine standards, and that's what's required when you build cylinders. You have to be able to trap the steam, but you still have to be able to move the piston, so you need very fine work. And when you look at the cylinders, you can see also some decorative work that he did on the cylinders, because he was a jeweler. And because carriages were often embellished and made to look pretty, and since he was putting an engine on it, he decided to make the engine look pretty, too. And the cylinders survived from 1867, rusting away in a barn, and they were completely functional when they were cleaned up and put into operation again. Sharon, the wheels on this thing are huge. Why would it have such big wheels? Well, carriages in general had big wheels, and that's because the roads were not very good, and bigger wheels tended to absorb more of the vibration, so it made traveling a little pleasanter, because there were only really basic springs on carriages. That's all the suspension that you have is these leaf springs, and you see the independently sprung the boiler, because the boiler would have been heavy, which was unusual in a carriage, right, because a carriage wouldn't have had that weight back there. Sharon Baby and the curator of transportation here at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Thank you, Sharon. You're welcome. This was Science Alive.