Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
| Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot | |
|---|---|
| Born |
26 February 1725 Void-Vacon, Lorraine |
| Died | 2 October 1804 (aged 79) |
| Nationality | French |
| Children | 2 children |
| Engineering career | |
| Projects | fardier à vapeur |
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725 – 2 October 1804) was a French inventor who built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle, the world's first automobile. This 1769 claim of earliest self-powered vehicle is disputed by some sources which suggest that around 1672 Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, designed the first "steam-powered vehicle", but that it was too small to carry a driver and may have never been built.
Cugnot was born in Void-Vacon, Lorraine, (now departement of Meuse), France. He trained as a military engineer. In 1765 he began experimenting with working models of steam-engine-powered vehicles for the French Army, intended for transporting cannons.
French Army Captain Cugnot was one of the first to successfully employ a device for converting the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into a rotary motion by means of a ratchet arrangement. A small version of his three-wheeled fardier à vapeur ("steam ") was made and used in 1769 (a fardier was a massively built two-wheeled horse-drawn cart for transporting very heavy equipment, such as cannon barrels).
In 1770, a full-size version of the fardier à vapeur was built, specified to be able to carry four tons and cover two lieues (7.8 km or 4.8 miles) in one hour, a performance it never achieved in practice. The vehicle weighed about 2.5 tonnes tare, and had two wheels at the rear and one in the front where the horses would normally have been. The front wheel supported a steam boiler and driving mechanism. The power unit was articulated to the "trailer", and was steered from there by means of a double handle arrangement. One source states that it seated four passengers and moved at a speed of 2.25 miles per hour (3.6 km/h).
The vehicle was reported to have been very unstable due to poor weight distribution. This would have been a serious disadvantage since the fardier was intended to be able to traverse rough terrain and climb steep hills. In 1771 the second vehicle is said to have gone out of control and knocked down part of the Arsenal walls, reported to be the first known automobile accident.). However, according to Georges Ageon, the earliest mention of this occurrence was thirty years later, in 1801, and it does not feature in contemporary accounts. In addition to the weight distribution problem, boiler performance was also particularly poor, even by the standards of the day. The vehicle's fire needed to be relit, and its steam raised again, every quarter of an hour or so, which considerably reduced its overall speed and distance.
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