Brake System Essay

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The Development of the Brake System In a vehicle, the brakes are one of the most important systems. The braking system started very early, around the 1800's. The first type of brakes were used in vehicles that had steel rimmed wheels. They consisted of nothing more than a block of wood and a lever system. This type of braking system stopped being made in the 1890's. Brothers, by the name of Michelin, started replacing steel rimmed wheels with rubber tires. In 1902, the disc brakes were the first to be invented by an Englishman, William Lanchester. It had complications, like a horrible creaking noise, which was caused by the contact of copper brake pads against the disc brake. It took engineers about five years to fix the noise coming from the disc brakes. Herbert Frood, lined the brake pads with a long lasting asbestos. Asbestos is a heat-resistant fibrous silicate mineral that can be woven into fabrics, and is used in fire-resistant and insulating materials such as brake linings. Until the 1980’s when the health and safety of others was a concern, asbestos continued to be used in car brakes. The end of the mechanically-activated brakes came in 1918, when Malcolm Loughead, one of the founders of what later was to become Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, came up with the idea. Loughead put together a four-wheel hydraulic-brake system for cars. This system used fluids to transfer the force on the pressed pedal to the pistons and then to the brake shoes. In 1967, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard was set to 105 specific performance tests that led to a widespread introduction of disc brakes on American cars in the early seventies. The braking system isnt about just stepping on the brake pedal and the car slows down until it completely stops. By depressing the brake pedal, you are telling the master cylinder to compress brake fluid, which will send hydraulic

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