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Fun fact of the day

  • Artigo

The common gasoline engine uses a 4-stroke cycle conceptualized by the German engineer Nikolaus Otto in 1876.

The english term "Automobile" is an anglicized version of the term "Otto-Mobile", which was applied to the first vehicles using such gasoline engines.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2006
    Cool.  Makes you wonder why it's "Autobahn" and "Autohof" though.
  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2006
    What's your source on this?  All my dictionaries and etymological sources describe the words origin as French and coming from the actual words auto and mobile meaning self-moving or self propelled.  That makes alot more sense to me, especially since the first "cars" were steam powered and not driven by the internal combustion engine. Some selected sources of interest: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=automobile http://www.horseless.com/first.html
  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2006
    and what about autocratic (etmylogically ruling by oneself ) ?
  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2006
    Mark,

    I think that you are reading the phrase "fun fact" as fun FACT, which in fact it is more correcly read as "FUN fact", with fact written in in tiny 5 point letters, so tiny, in fact, that you really can't make them out.