This section is from the book "The Home Cyclopedia Of General Information", by Charles Morris. Also available from Amazon: Home Cyclopedia of Necessary Knowledge.
[Gk. autos, self; L. mobilis, movable.] A self-moving carriage, distinguished at first as a horseless carriage. Steam and gasoline engines and electric storage batteries are used as propelling powers, and automobiles came rapidly into use near the end of the nineteenth century. A great development of them seems probable in the twentieth century.
 
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