The History of the Taxi

A taxicab or taxi or cab is a car and driver that can be hired to carry passengers to a requested destination. What Did We Hail Pre-Taxi? Before the invention of the car, the practice of vehicles for public hire was in place. In 1640, in Paris, Nicolas Sauvage offered horse-drawn carriages and drivers for hire. In 1635, the Hackney Carriage Act was the first legislation passed that controlled horse-drawn carriages for hire in England. Taximeter The name taxicab was taken from the word taximeter. The taximeter is the instrument which measures the distance or time a vehicle travels and allows an accurate fare to be determined. The taximeter was invented by the German inventor, Wilhelm Bruhn in 1891. Daimler Victoria Gottlieb Daimler built the worlds first dedicated taxi in 1897 called the Daimler Victoria. The taxi came equipped with the newly invented taxi meter. On 16 June 1897, the Daimler Victoria taxi was delivered to Friedrich Greiner, a Stuttgart entrepreneur who started the worlds first motorized taxi company. First Taxi Accident On September 13, 1899, the first American died in a car accident. That car was a Taxi, there were about one hundred taxis operating on New Yorks streets that year. Sixty-eight-year-old Henry Bliss was helping a friend from a street car when a taxi driver lost control and fatally hit Bliss. Yellow Taxi Historical Facts Taxi company owner, Harry Allen was the first person to have yellow taxis. Allen painted his taxis yellow to stand out. Taxi Dreams: By the end of the 19th century, automobiles began to appear on city streets throughout the country. It was not long before a number of these cars were hiring themselves out in competition with horse-drawn carriages.Vance Thompsons Cab Drivers: Vance Thompson (1863-1925) published five articles on horse cab drivers in Paris, London, Dublin and New York and on gondoliers in Venice.Taxi! A brief history of the London Taxi: The first motorized London taxi, the 1897 Bersey, was electrically powered and was called the Hummingbird because of its sound.In 1922, the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company was founded in Joliet, IL, and production was set for three taxis a day