News from the Museum of the Moscow Automobile and Road State Technical University (MADI), which was established by Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 748 on 13 December 1930 on the basis of the automotive and road faculty of the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers and the Higher Automotive and Road School of TsUDORTRANS.
130 years ago, on 16 July 1896, the first Russian car with a "petrol engine", an internal combustion engine, designed by Yevgeny Yakovlev and Pyotr Freze, was presented to the public at the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod.
This was a well-thought-out commercial model, created for serial production. The engine, with a power of 1.5–2 horsepower, was developed by Yakovlev, while the chassis and body were created at Freze's carriage factory.
The collaboration between the two St. Petersburg residents proved to be a rare example of an ideal division of labour. Yakovlev, a recognised engine specialist and former naval officer, took on the work on the engine and transmission. Freze, whose factory produced the best carriages in the capital, was responsible for the running gear, body, and wheels – everything that connected the car to the road.
The car weighed about 300 kg, accelerated to 20 km/h, and used such breakthrough solutions of the time as electric ignition, a removable cylinder head, and a water cooling system. The wheels were wooden, with solid rubber tyres, and rotated on bronze bushings, which helped reduce friction.
Its length was 2450 mm, and its width was 1590 mm. From the outside, the car resembled a light horse-drawn phaeton, but inside it concealed technologies that were very advanced for those years.
Nothing changed the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries as much as the automobile.