"Sailing carriages are said to have been used in very remote times in China, and as far back as 1617, in the collection of travels by ... But before that date sailing chariots had actually been constructed in Holland by the celebrated mathematician Simon Stevin (born at Bruges, 1548, died 1620), a much-esteemed friend of the Stadtholder, Prince Maurice of Nassau. These vehicles attracted consider able attention from the men of science of the seventeenth century. Our own Bishop Wilkins is loud in their praise, and Grotius wrote several poems on the carriages and on their constructor. Fortunately, too, there is an engraving, now extremely rare, by Swanenburch, after a design by Jacques de Gheyn, which brings out the arrangement very clearly. It is dated 1612... Another issue of the plates, supposed to be the third, is dated 1652, and a reduced and reversed reproduction is stated by Müller, De Nederlandsche Geschiedenis in Platen, to be found in Bleau's Tooneel der Steden, 1649. A reduced copy of the central plate, showing the carriage only, is given in Le Magazin Pittoresque for 1844, and it is from that copy that the accompanying illustration (Fig. 1) has been produced. ... In a pamphlet, possibly issued with the engraving, bearing the title Windt-Wagens: Les Artificiels Chariots à Voiles du Compte Maurice... is given an account of a journey made apparently in the year 1600 along the beach from the now fashionable Dutch watering-place Scheveningen to Petten, a distance of forty-two miles to the north, which was covered in two hours, a speed which seems almost incredible. The passengers included Prince Maurice himself, who steered; Grotius, then a lad of fifteen; the Spanish Admiral, Francis Mendoza, at that time a prisoner in the hands of Prince Maurice after the battle of Nieuport; and others to the number of twenty-eight. The trial appears to have been a great success, but in spite of this, unless, indeed, the trip performed by De Peiresc in 1606 was made in it, there appears to be absolutely no record of its having been afterwards used, and, stranger still, it is quite unknown what became of the carriage in the end. It is referred to in Howell's Letters as being one of two wonderful things to be seen near the Hague: "A waggon, or ship, or a monster mixed of both, like the Hippocentaur, who was half man and half horse; this engine that hath wheels and sails, will hold above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn or mov'd by nothing else, and will run, the wind being good, and the sails hois'd up, above fifteen miles an hour upon the even hard sands: they say this invention was found out to entertain Spinola when he came hither to treat of the last truce." The anonymous author of The Present State of Holland, 1765, says of Scheveningen: " This village is famous also for a sailing chariot belonging to Prince Maurice, and kept here." He adds: "The last time it made its appearance on the strand was about 17 years ago, when through the unskilfulness of the steersman it had like to have run into the sea, and put the passengers into no small fright." This in all probability refers to the smaller carriage mentioned above as represented in the drawing of Jacques de Gheyn, which was to be seen at Scheveningen as late as 1802; its fate since that date is unknown. There is an account of another, but partially successful trial, with this carriage in 1790 upon the occasion of a royal marriage, and it is known that it was sold by auction in 1795. Stevin's contrivances appear to have set the anonymous author referred to above at work upon his own account, on what must be regarded as the forerunner of the motor perambulators, with which we shall no doubt become familiar ere long."