Home and Auto What's the earliest era in which people could reverse engineer a car?

**cdcox** · 07-25-2015, 10:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I don't know how evolved chemistry was at that point. I looked it up, and the periodic table first appeared in 1869. So per an earlier point, gasoline and oil and lubricants may be the most challenging part of reverse engineering a car, and I guess that would make sense. It was probably the last part that was developed when cars were invented the first time.

Petroleum has been known for 4000 years, but the ability to distill kerosene from petroleum was only discovered in 1847, despite the fact that kerosene was a very useful means of providing artificial lighting at the time. I think this would have been one of the most challenging things to develop early.

Electric light bulbs (headlamps) were invented in 1879. I don't think they would have had good methods of determining the composition of the filaments to reverse engineer them.

The lead acid battery was first developed in 1859, although I don't think that would be too difficult to reverse engineer.

Rubber vulcanization was developed in 1839.

View Poll Results: The earliest era that could successfully reverse engineer a car would be ...
1850 - 1902 era	19	52.78%
1800 to 1849	6	16.67%
1750 to 1799	5	13.89%
1700 to 1749	0	0%
1650 to 1699	0	0%
1600 to 1649	0	0%
1550 to 1599	1	2.78%
1500 to 1549	0	0%
1450 to 1499	0	0%
472 ad to 1449	1	2.78%
1 ad to 471 ad	0	0%
500 bc to 1 bc	0	0%
2000 bc to 501 bc	0	0%
4000 bc to 2001 bc	0	0%
10,000 bc to 4001 bc	1	2.78%
Earlier than 10,000 bc but after homo sapiens emerged	0	0%
I think those earlier hominids were pretty ingenious. Mark me down for them.	0	0%
I don't think anyone could do reverse engineer a car. It had to be developed in a forward gear.	0	0%
I think dolphins could do it.	1	2.78%
I need to learn more about insurance rates in each era before I can answer.	2	5.56%
Voters: 36. You may not vote on this poll