The first automobile ever made was that produced by Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, a Frenchman, and it is today on exhibition in the Conservatory of Arts and Trades in Paris.
There is no record of how Cugnot came to conceive the idea of his invention, but it is surmised that he had read about James Watt, in England, having discovered the principle of steam as motive power. This was about 1755.
The history of Watt’s experiments in applying steam to run engines does not, however, disclose that any engines he produced were ever seen by Cugnot, or that any adequate description of them was published at the time when Cugnot could have taken advantage of it.
So all we may actually know of Cugnot’s reasons for thinking he could make an “animalless” road vehicle is locked up in the rickety century-and-a-half-old Cugnot invention which we may see in the Paris Conservatory.
And what we would see would be:
An object which might make us laugh, did we not soberly reflect, in the light of our superior knowledge of today, that it was the first step in the long, laborious journey, extending over 157 years, that inventors had to travel to produce our luxurious limousine, our satisfying touring car and our terrifying speed demon of the oval racing course.
Cugnot’s body returned to dust 113 years ago, but his idea went marching on.
The visible expression of this idea which we can see in the Paris Conservatory is in the form of a tractor for a field gun, Cugnot having been a captain in the engineering corps of the French army.
The tractor has a single drive wheel actuated by two single acting brass cylinders, connected by an iron steam pipe with a round boiler of copper containing fire pot and chimneys.
Attached to this first motor-driven road vehicle is a wagon, on which it was Cugnot’a idea to have a field gun mounted.