A Brief History
On July 21, 1904, Frenchman Louis Rigolly became the first person to speed past the 100 mph “barrier” when he accomplished the feat in his Gobron-Brillie race car at Ostende in Belgium.
Digging Deeper
Although the car would seem clunky and slow by our standards, the 13.5 liter beast of an engine (over-bored to 15 liters!) had 2 pistons per cylinder, each opposing each other from opposite directions. The engine probably produced a mere 25-50 horsepower (hp) despite its size. (I could not find the exact horsepower rating, but earlier engines had less than 25-50 hp and later Gobron-Brillie engines had as much as 70 hp in 1906.)
Rigolly had bested the previous record of about 97 mph by his new record of 103 mph which in turn stood only for a few months.
It took another 21 years for a car to break the 150 mph “barrier,” this time by an Englishman, Sir Malcolm Campbell, when he just managed 150.3 mph at the Pendine Sands in Wales while driving a Sunbeam V-12, powered by a huge 18.3 liter V-12 engine making 350 horsepower.
The danger and just how hard these records are to break is hard to fathom by those that have not engaged in the activity. If you have the enormous amount of money, the enormous amount of skill, and the enormous amount of guts, go for it! Perhaps we will be reading about you next.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
McCann, Liam. Land Speed Records. G2 Rights, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Louis Rigolly and his car – the first to exceed 100 miles per hour in 1904, is in the public domain in the United States. This status applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1925, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal. See this page for further explanation.
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