Do you know who is said to be the inventor of what is called the world's first automobile? A French inventor, an army captain and an engineer, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, was believed to be the first person who built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle, the world's first automobile. This self-propelled vehicle is a three wheeled vehicle, which was built for the French army in 1769, intended for transporting cannons. This vehicle, is capable of converting the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into a rotary motion by means of a ratchet arrangement. The vehicle carried a front mounted boiler and a two-cylinder engine located over the front wheel. Cugnot’s vehicle worked but needed to stop every 10 - 12 minutes to rebuild enough steam pressure to continue. The vehicle’s single front wheel performed both steering and driving functions. The vehicle had a top speed of 2 mph with four passengers aboard and eventually caused the world’s first automobile accident when it ran out of control and demolished a garden wall. This vehicle was popularly known as Cugnot's fardier à vapeur.
Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot.
