The windmill and the motor car may seem unlikely cousins, but both transmit power through rotating shafts. Methods of connecting vertical and horizontal shafts, equipment of different weights, and shafts turning at different speeds were crucial obstacles to automotive pioneers. Steam carriages moved forward by simply opening a throttle, but the internal combustion engine must not be connected to the rear wheels (where the load is exerted), it must continue running while it is stationary, and it must accelerate from a low initial speed to a higher one. Consequently, a device is needed to apply loads gradually after the engine is started.

In the 1890s, Emile Levassor adapted a cone-shaped clutch and sliding gears he observed on woodworking machinery to the transmission of automotive power. Louis Renault followed in 1899 and created the general layout of the transmission that was to be adopted by the fledgling automotive...