Nicholas Cugnot

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Cugnot steam car
Nicholas Cugnot's steam car in the famous collision with the barracks wall
Nicholas Cugnot steam car in section

Nicholas Joseph (or Nicolas , Nicolas-Joseph ) Cugnot (born September 25, 1725 in Void (now Void-Vacon , Arr. Commercy ), Lorraine , † October 2, 1804 in Paris ) was a French artillery officer and inventor.

Construction of a steam car

Cugnot was commissioned by the War Department to develop a means of transport for the artillery. The steam car developed by Cugnot was presented in Paris in 1769 . The vehicle had two cylinders , the piston rods of which turned the front wheel via a kind of freewheel gear. The vehicle was 725 cm long, 230 cm wide, 210 cm high and weighed 4000 kg. According to various sources, the car reached a speed between 3 and 4.5 km / h. However, due to the heavy weight of the kettle hanging over the front axle, it was difficult to steer and ended one of its first demonstration drives in a barracks wall.

Despite the imperfection of drive and control, it is the first documented automobile (self-propelled car) with the steam engine as the drive, i.e. the first car that was not moved by humans, animals or the wind as an external force. Before there were only wind cars, which depended on an external force during the journey, or very occasionally vehicles that were moved by people who had been mounted with cranks or wheels (siege machines, see for example Helepolis ). Around 1670, the Belgian Ferdinand Verbiest had invented a small steam engine in China that could possibly already drive itself.

Cugnots steam car can also be a precursor of the railway - locomotive apply. The still very immature steam engine and the associated low power with high weight, however, let the interest in Cugnot's car wipe out again.

Nevertheless, the development was so impressive that King Louis XV. Cugnot put up a pension of 600 livres a year for his development work. The fardier (French for cart) was initially kept in the arsenal, but then moved to the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in 1800 , where it can be viewed today.

Next life

The French Revolution led to the expiry of the pension in 1789, and the inventor went into exile in Brussels , where he lived in poverty. Shortly before his death, Napoleon Bonaparte invited him to return, a call that Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot followed to Paris, where he died on October 2, 1804.

The age of the automobile began a few decades later with considerably improved steam engines, especially in England and France with steam cars.

In his honor, a glacier in Antarctica was named the Cugnot Piedmont Glacier .

Works

  • Éléments de l'art militaire ancien et moderne , 1766
  • La Fortification de campagne théorique et pratique , 1769 (traduit en allemand en 1773).
  • Théorie de la fortification, suivie de la description d'un nouvel instrument topographique , 1778

literature

  • Rauck, Max JB: Cugnot, 1769–1969: the ancestor of our car drove 200 years ago. Munich: Munich newspaper publisher 1969.
  • 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
  • Ludwig Beck : history of iron. Vol. 4, Braunschweig 1899, p. 286

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ile-de-france.drire.gouv.fr%2Fvehicules%2Fhomolo%2Fcnrv%2Fhistoire.htm
  2. ^ Gisbert Lechner, Bernd Bertsche, Harald Naunheimer; Vehicle transmissions: basics, selection, design and construction; Springer-Verlag , 1994, ISBN 3-540-57423-9
  3. ↑ http://cugnot.cnam.fr:8000/SEARCH/BASIS/collec/internet/objet/DDW?W%3DDESIG+PH+WORDS+%27Fardier%27+ORDER+BY+DESIG/Ascend%26M%3D5%26K % 3D1% 26R% 3DY% 26U% 3D1
  4. ↑ http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/actualites/celebrations2004/cugnot.htm

Web links

Commons : Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

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personal data
SURNAME Cugnot, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cugnot, Nicholas Joseph; Cugnot, Nicolas; Cugnot, Nicolas-Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French designer of the first steam car
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1725
PLACE OF BIRTH Void (Lorraine)
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1804
Place of death Brussels or Paris