The world’s first electric car may have been built by a Victorian inventor.
Newly unearthed photos show what appears to be an electric vehicle built in the year 1884.
To the modern eye the machine looks like a horseless carriage, but sitting aboard at the wheel is the 19th century inventor Thomas Parker.
Mr Parker electrified the London Underground and created overhead tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham, and the smokeless fuel coalite.
He claimed he had invented the electric car and he also had a hand in refining car batteries for petrol-powered models. Daily Mail
He also stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Liberal Party in the 1892 General Election, where he earned the name of “honest Tom Parker”, and was interested in establishing a metric system of weights and measures and even decimal coinage.
He died in December 1915.
The photographs of the electric car are kept by his great-grandson Graham Parker, a 76-year-old former BBC Look East weatherman.
Mr Parker, who lives in Eaton, near Norwich, said he still marvelled at the range of ideas his great-grandfather had.
“He was into anything really,” he said. “Anything on four wheels was quite a novelty, people were terrified of the things and someone with a red flag had to walk in front of it.” Telegraph.co.uk
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