A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a vehicle for hire that provides point-to-point transportation for passengers typically on an exclusive, non-shared basis. This differs from public transport, where pick-up and drop-off points are set by the service provider, although demand-responsive transport and share taxis provide hybrid bus/taxi modes.
Types of vehicles, methods of regulation, hiring, dispatching, and negotiating payment differ from country to country. The main forms of taxi are:
Hackney carriages, also known as public hire, hailed or street taxis, licensed for hailing throughout communities
Private hire vehicles, also known as minicabs or private hire taxis, licensed for pre-booking only
Taxibuses, which come in many variations throughout the developing countries as jitneys or jeepney, operating on pre-set routes typified by multiple stops and multiple independent passengers
Limousines, specialized vehicles licensed for operation by pre-booking
App-based ridesharing services offer similar point-to-point transport but are usually regulated separately from taxis.
The word taxicab is a compound word formed as a contraction of taximeter and cabriolet. Taximeter is an adaptation of the German word Taxameter, which is itself a variant of the earlier German word Taxanom. Taxe /ˈtaksə/ is a German word meaning 'tax, charge, scale of charges'. The Medieval Latin word taxa also means 'tax, charge', from Classical Latin taxō (infinitive taxāre) 'to rate, appraise, value, estimate'. Meter is ultimately borrowed from Ancient Greek μέτρον (metron) 'measure'. A cabriolet is a type of horse-drawn carriage; the word comes from French cabrioler 'to leap, caper', from Italian capriolare 'to somersault', from Latin capreolus 'roebuck, wild goat'. In most European languages that word has taken on the meaning of a convertible car.
The taxicabs of Paris were equipped with the first meters beginning on 9 March 1898. They were originally called taxamètres, then renamed taximètres on 17 October 1904.
Harry Nathaniel Allen of The New York Taxicab Company, who imported the first 600 gas-powered New York City taxicabs from France in 1907, borrowed the word taxicab from London, where the word was in use by early 1907.
A popular but erroneous account holds that the vehicles were named after Franz von Taxis from the house of Thurn and Taxis, a 16th-century postmaster for Philip of Burgundy, and his nephew Johann Baptiste von Taxis, General Postmaster for the Holy Roman Empire. Both instituted fast and reliable postal services (conveying letters, with some post routes transporting people) across Europe. Their surname derives from their 13th-century ancestor Omodeo Tasso.
Horse-drawn for-hire hackney carriage services began operating in both Paris and London in the early 17th century. The first documented public hackney coach service for hire was in London in 1605. In 1625 carriages were made available for hire from innkeepers in London and the first taxi rank appeared on the Strand outside the Maypole Inn in 1636. In 1635 the Hackney Carriage Act was passed by Parliament to legalise horse-drawn carriages for hire. Coaches were hired out by innkeepers to merchants and visitors. A further "Ordinance for the Regulation of Hackney-Coachmen in London and the places adjacent" was approved by Parliament in 1654 and the first hackney-carriage licences were issued in 1662.
A similar service was started by Nicolas Sauvage in Paris in 1637. His vehicles were known as fiacres, as the main vehicle depot apparently was opposite a shrine to Saint Fiacre. (The term fiacre is still used in French to describe a horse-drawn vehicle for hire, while the German term Fiaker is used, especially in Austria, to refer to the same thing.)
The hansom cab was designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York as a substantial improvement on the old hackney carriages. These two-wheel vehicles were fast, light enough to be pulled by a single horse (making the journey cheaper than travelling in a larger four-wheel coach) were agile enough to steer around horse-drawn vehicles in the notorious traffic jams of nineteenth-century London and had a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others to improve its practicability, but retained Hansom's name.
These soon replaced the hackney carriage as a vehicle for hire. They quickly spread to other cities in the United Kingdom, as well as continental European cities, particularly Paris, Berlin, and St Petersburg. The cab was introduced to other British Empire cities and to the United States during the late 19th century, being most commonly used in New York City.
The first cab service in Toronto, "The City", was established in 1837 by Thornton Blackburn, an ex-slave whose escape when captured in Detroit was the impetus for the Blackburn Riots.
The modern taximeter was invented and perfected by a trio of German inventors; Wilhelm Friedrich Nedler, Ferdinand Dencker and Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Bruhn. The Daimler Victoria—the world's first motorized-powered taximeter-cab—was built by Gottlieb Daimler in 1897 and began operating in Stuttgart in June 1897. Gasoline-powered taxicabs began operating in Paris in 1899, in London in 1903, and in New York in 1907. The New York taxicabs were initially imported from France by Harry N. Allen, owner of the Allen-Kingston Motor Car Company. Their manufacturing took place at Bristol Engineering in Bristol, Connecticut where the first domestically produced Taxicabs were built in 1908, designed by Fred E. Moskovics who had worked at Daimler in the late 1890s. Albert F. Rockwell was the owner of Bristol and his wife suggested he paint his taxicabs yellow to maximise his vehicles' visibility. Moskovics was one of the organizers of the first Yellow Taxicab Company in New York.
Electric battery-powered taxis became available at the end of the 19th century. In London, Walter Bersey designed a fleet of such cabs and introduced them to the streets of London on 19 August 1897. They were soon nicknamed 'Hummingbirds' due to the idiosyncratic humming noise they made. In the same year in New York City, the Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company began running 12 electric hansom cabs. The company ran until 1898 with up to 62 cabs operating until it was reformed by its financiers to form the Electric Vehicle Company.