Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725 – 2 October 1804) was a French France is a founding member state of the European Union and is the largest one by area. France has been a major power for several centuries with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and in the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th inventor An invention is a new composition, device, or process. An invention may be derived from a pre-existing model or idea, or it could be independently conceived in which case it may be a radical breakthrough. In addition, there is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviors adopted by people and passed on to others. He is believed to have built the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle. This claim is disputed by some sources, however, which suggest that Ferdinand Verbiest Father Ferdinand Verbiest was a Flemish Jesuit missionary in China during the Qing dynasty. He was born in Pittem near Tielt in Flanders, later part of the modern state of Belgium. He is known as Nan Huairen (南懷仁) in Chinese. He was an accomplished mathematician and astronomer and proved to the court of Kangxi Emperor that European astronomy, as a member of a Jesuit mission in China The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the, may have been the first to build a 'car' around 1672.[1][2]
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Background
Cugnot was born in Void, Lorraine The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun and the historic capital Nancy, (now departement of Meuse Meuse is a department in northeast France, named after the River Meuse), France. He trained as a military engineer An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, safety and cost. The word engineer is derived from. He experimented with working models of steam-engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid-powered vehicles for the French Army, intended for transporting cannon A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. The, starting in 1765.
The first self-propelled vehicle?
Cugnot was one of the first to employ successfully a device for converting the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into rotary motion by means of a ratchet arrangement. A small version of his three-wheeled fardier à vapeur ran in 1769. (A fardier was a massively built two-wheeled horse-drawn cart for transporting very heavy equipment such as cannon barrels).
The original 1769 model. Cugnot's 1771 fardier à vapeur, as preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris. Cut-away drawing The first "automobile accident"?The following year, a full-size version of the fardier à vapeur was built, specified to be able to carry 4 tons and cover 2 lieues (7.8 km or 4.8 miles) in one hour, a performance it never achieved in practice. The vehicle, which weighed about 2.5 tonnes tare, had two wheels at the rear and one in the front where the horses would normally have been; this front wheel supported the steam boiler and driving mechanism. The power unit was articulated to the "trailer" and 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]
The vehicle was reported to have been very unstable due to poor weight distribution - which would have been a serious disadvantage seeing that it was intended that the fardier should 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 wall, (the first known 'automobile' accident? A traffic collision is when a road vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, animal, road debris, or other geographical or architectural obstacle. Traffic collisions can result in injury, property damage, and death); however according to Georges Ageon [4], the earliest mention of this occurrence dates from 1801 and it does not feature in contemporary accounts. Boiler performance was also particularly poor, even by the standards of the day, with the fire needing to be relit and steam raised again every quarter of an hour or so, considerably reducing overall speed.
After running a small number of trials variously described as being between Paris and Vincennes and at Meudon, the project was abandoned and the French Army's experiment with mechanical vehicles came to an end. Even so in 1772, King Louis XV Louis XV ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death on 10 May 1774. Coming to the throne at the age of five, Louis initially reigned with the aid of the Régent, Philippe, duc d'Orléans, his great-uncle. He took formal personal control of the government of France on his thirteenth birthday, 15 February 1723 granted Cugnot a pension of 600 livres a year for his innovative work and the experiment was judged interesting enough for the fardier to be kept at the Arsenal until transferred to the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in 1800, where it can still be seen today.
Later life
Engine part of Cugnot's 1771 fardier à vapeur, as preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris.With the French Revolution The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political, Cugnot's pension was withdrawn in 1789, and the inventor went into exile in Brussels Brussels (French: Bruxelles, pronounced [bʁysɛl] ; Dutch: Brussel, pronounced [ˈbrʏsəl] (help·info)), officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region (French: Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, Dutch: Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest (help·info)), is the de facto capital city of the European Union (EU) and the largest urban area in, where he lived in poverty. Shortly before his death, he was invited back to France by Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte , was a military and political leader of France and Emperor of the French as Napoleon I, whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century and Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot returned to Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated, where he died on 2 October 1804.
References
- ^ "1679-1681 – R P Verbiest's Steam Chariot". History of the Automobile: origin to 1900. Hergé Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. "Hergé" [ɛʁʒe] is the French pronunciation of "RG", his initials reversed. His best known and most substantial work is The Adventures of Tintin comic book series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 198. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://users.skynet.be/tintinpassion/VOIRSAVOIR/Auto/Pages_auto/Auto_001.html&sa=X&oi=translate. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
- ^ Setright, L. J. K. (2004). Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car. Granta Books. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 1-86207-698-7.
- ^ L. A. Manwaring, The Observer's Book of Automobiles (12th ed.) 1966, Library of Congress catalog card # 62-9807. p. 7
- ^ "Le fardier de Cugnot". http://www.ile-de-france.drire.gouv.fr/vehicules/homolo/cnrv/histoire.htm.
- Max J. B. Rauck, Cugnot, 1769-1969: der Urahn unseres Autos fuhr vor 200 Jahren, München: Münchener Zeitungsverlag, 196
- Bruno Jacomy, Annie-Claude Martin: Le Chariot à feu de M. Cugnot, Paris, 1992, Nathan/Musée national des techniques, ISBN 2-09-204538-5.
- Louis Andre: Le Premier accident automobile de l'histoire , in La Revue du Musée des arts et métiers, 1993, Numéro 2, p 44-46
See also
External links
- The fardier exhibit at the Musee National des Arts et Métiers:
- Cugnot on 3wheelers.com
- Link to downloadable video at DB Museum, showing a reconstruction of the fardier in action (B&W)
- Replica at the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum
- Hybrid-Vehicle.org: The Steamers
- Le fardier de Cugnot: page in French about Cugnot and his invention, hosted at an Île-de-France regional government web site and credited to the Société des ingénieurs de l'automobile (Society of Automotive Engineers).
- Biography of Cugnot from 'World of Invention'
Categories: 1725 births | 1804 deaths | French inventors Categories: Inventors by nationality | French people by occupation | Science and technology in France | People of the French Revolution | Mechanical engineers Categories: Mechanical engineering | Engineers by specialty | Steam road vehicles
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:13:13 GMT+00:00
Wired News ... since the late 1700s: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot tested his fardier a vapeur in 1769, and Richard Trevithick had built prototype locomotives since 1801. ...
