Gasoline was first used as a fuel for vehicles in the early to mid-1820s. Inventors had experimented with vehicles powered by other means almost two centuries earlier; the first horseless carriage was a toy built in 1680 by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and a road vehicle using a steam engine was exhibited as early as 1771. A claim exists that an English mechanical engineer named Samuel Brown drove a self-powered vehicle in London. Brown's engine apparently had separate combustion and working cylinders and used hydrogen gas as a fuel. The patent specifications for his vehicle and eyewitness accounts of his drive both exist, but details are sketchy.

Setting aside the claim made for Brown, the first well-documented instance of an automobile using gas as a fuel dates from around 1862, when French inventor Jean-Joseph-tienne Lenoir adapted a one-cylinder engine to a vehicle that traveled about six miles...