Taxi or taximeter: What came first?
Before the era of online cab service ushered in, there were the good old taxis for a comfortable journey. When you think of taxis, you can't miss the taximeter mounted outside the cab, right? Surprisingly, they arrived before official taxis came into being. But who should we thank for introducing these vehicles to us? Read on to trace the backstory of taxi.
The pre-taxi era
In the early 17th century, horse-drawn hackney carriage (large four-wheeled vehicle with sitting on both sides, accommodating four adults) for hire started being popular in London. They were mainly made available for merchants and tourists who would hire them from innkeepers. Similarly, in Paris, around the same time, fiacres were introduced. They were smaller than hackney carriages and could only carry two people at once and were mainly meant for artists and musicians to travel from one show to another.
Fast forward to 1834, a Yorkshire-based architect named Joseph Hansom designed and patented the hansom cab. It was an upgraded version of hackney carriage that ran on two-wheels and were easily drawn by a single horse, that too at a faster pace and cheaper rates. Not only that, it had a custom-made low centre of gravity, for safe cornering, something that was important keeping in mind the 19th century heavy traffic of London. By the late 19th century, hansom cab had reached other important European cities like Berlin, Paris and St. Petersburg, before finally ending up in New York.
Electric battery-powered cab introduced
In the last decade of the 19th century, a British electrical engineer named Walter Bersey invented the world’s first electric battery-powered cabs for hire. He designed and introduced more than 60 cabs for fellow Londoners. Needless to say, they were a lot faster than the horse-drawn cabs and became an instant hit with people, especially the common masses as they could finally afford it. Interestingly, this cab was nicknamed “Hummingbird” for the humming noise it made.
World welcomes taximeter and the first official taxi
Meanwhile, in 1891, a German inventor by the name Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn invented a device that could measure the distance or time or both a vehicle travels. It could then determine an accurate fare by showing it on the screen. Guess why he thought of such as unique device? Well, because his brother, who was a cab driver in Berlin often complained that he had frequent arguments with passengers regarding fares. This device was known as taximeter.
Six years down the line, another German engineer, industrial designer and entrepreneur named Gottlieb W. Daimler finally decided to make use of Bruhn’s innovation, building the world’s first ever taxi. It was both named and based on the taximeter. Moreover, it was gasoline powered and was equipped with a taximeter mounted outside the cab, above the driver’s side front wheel.
The world’s first modern taxi was known as Daimler Victoria, named after the company that Daimler founded. However, when Daimler fell terminally ill, he didn’t waste time to sell his company to his trusted employee Friedrich Greiner who started the first motorised taxi running company in Stuttgart, Germany. With the turn of the century, taxi with taximeter became a worldwide rage operating all across Europe, USA and even parts of Asia.
Interestingly, all taxis were originally black in colour. However, they turned yellow when American taxi company owner Harry Allen decided to paint his taxi yellow, for safety yellow. After all, human eyes are most sensitive to yellow and can trace it from far away.