February 26, 1725 – The inventor of the automobile is born
French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, born on this day in 1725, receives credit as the creator of the first self-propelled, land based vehicle. Cugnot, a captain in the French army, had long relied on two wheeled horse drawn fardiers to carry heavy equipment across great distances. This included items such as artillery and arms. As the horses tired, his pace slowed and eventually stopped. He desired to create a vehicle that would move along steadily, uninterrupted by fatigue.
This problem led to the development of his first vehicle. To do so, he created a mechanism that turned the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into rotary motion by means of a ratchet system. His efforts resulted in a small scale “fardier à vapeur,” a steam powered fardier, in 1769, which had t...
