Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot

French engineer

• Born: February 26, 1725
• Birthplace: Void, France
• Died: October 2, 1804
• Place of death: Paris, France

Cugnot invented a vehicle powered by steam called the fardier à vapeur, or steam dray. This three-wheeled carriage was said to be able to pull up to four tons at a speed of four kilometers per hour.

Primary fields: Automotive technology; military technology and weaponry

Primary invention: Steam dray (fardier à vapeur)

Early Life

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (koon-yoh) was born on February 26, 1725, in Void, a small village in eastern France. The child of farmers, Cugnot attended school in Void and later in nearby Toul, where he showed great talent in mathematics and physics. This skill led him to enroll, when he was sixteen, in L’Ecole Royale du Génie de Mézières, a school of military engineering located about one hundred miles west of Toul.

After graduating, Cugnot entered the French army as an officer in the artillery corps. Sent to Vienna when the duke of Lorraine was crowned Emperor Francis I of Austria, Cugnot benefited greatly from his introduction to the German-speaking world. While on post, Cugnot read German engineer Jakob Leupold’s Theatrum Machinarum (1724), which described all the steam machines invented up to that time. Introduced to the mechanical structure of steam engines, Cugnot was intrigued by the potential of such a novel source of power. He was later sent to Brussels, where he was assigned to fortification design. Wrestling with the mechanical problems involved in constructing artillery defenses and maximizing the effective use of cannon through flexible emplacement, Cugnot began to consider the possibility of using steam power to quickly move immensely heavy weapons to new locations.

Life’s Work

In 1763, at the age of thirty-eight, Cugnot was discharged from the army. Awarded a 600-franc pension in recognition of his invention of a new cavalry musket, he was secure from penury but certainly not wealthy. Taking advantage of his financial security, Cugnot immediately moved to Paris, where in 1766 he published a book titled Éléments de l’art militaire ancien et moderne. In 1767, he began work on the design of a military vehicle powered by a steam machine. Needing more funds to build his invention than his pension could supply, he contacted General Gribeauval, his superior officer in Vienna and now inspector general of the French army in Paris. Impressed with Cugnot’s design and plans, Gribeauval ordered him to build a small prototype of his machine. Gribeauval successfully guided Cugnot’s project through the mazes of royal bureaucracy, gaining the support of the Marquis de Monteynard, the minister of war, and the financial support of King Louis XV.

Cugnot’s first working prototype, which took almost three years to develop, made its debut before Gribeauval and other high-ranking French officers in Paris on October 23, 1769. Called a fardier à vapeur by its inventor (and a “locomotive” by the English press that reported it), the machine was not a complete success. Though it moved a short distance under its own power, it needed to stop frequently to allow more steam pressure to build up inside the boiler. It would take between twelve and fifteen minutes for the pressure to reach the desired level and allow the prototype to move again. Nevertheless, the concept proved to be workable, so the king and the army asked Cugnot to build a full-size fardier capable of carrying a load of about four tons.

In January, 1770, Gribeauval sent an order to the Arsenal in Strasbourg in eastern France to immediately build two 14-inch pumps and pistons in accordance with Cugnot’s plans. These important parts were to be delivered to the Arsenal in Paris, where in the following months Cugnot continued his second fardier development. The construction was completed in early April, 1770. On April 22, 1770, the fardier, now called a “steam dray” in English, was presented officially to King Louis XV and his court.

Cugnot was awarded a large sum of money to continue development, building a second model powered by a different and improved two-cylinder steam engine. By mid-November, 1770, the new machine was ready for trial and performed admirably, pulling a 2.5-ton payload from the military arsenal in the suburbs of Paris to Vincennes at the respectable rate of 2 kilometers per hour (1.2 miles per hour). In fact, during a later trial, the machine malfunctioned, hit a wall, and was damaged (producing the first automobile accident in recorded history). Even with its limitations, however, the fardier showed considerable promise. The development of more reliable and efficient steam engines would resolve many of its most pressing problems. Cugnot’s fardier had to be repaired after its accident and was ready for a new trial on July 2, 1771. This new attempt took place either in a park in Meudon or on the road between Paris and Vincennes (accounts vary). New trials were scheduled for the later part of the summer of 1771, but Cugnot’s supporters, such as the duke of Choiseul, who had been sent into exile, fell from power and were replaced by conservatives who failed to see the potential of steam power, which could be applied to military or civilian usage.

Cugnot’s invention was abandoned, his funding stopped, and his steam machine barely avoided destruction twice during the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte was apparently interested in renewing development, but Cugnot’s advancing age and Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt were obstacles that could not be overcome. Though Bonaparte granted Cugnot a pension of one thousand francs per year, the project was never completed and Cugnot in his later years complemented his pension by teaching military engineering at the Arsenal in Paris. Although Cugnot had modest means, he lived above the poverty level on Tournon Street in Paris, where he died on October 2, 1804, at the age of seventy-nine.

Impact

Cugnot was among the first engineers to recognize the great potential of self-powered vehicles. While the size and weight of steam engines made them impractical for personal use, their application to military transport seemed a realistic goal. Hampered mainly by the technical limitations of steam technology at the time, Cugnot was a pragmatic engineer who persevered in developing his fardier into a workable machine. Ultimately, Cugnot’s project was ended by superiors who lacked his vision. His mechanical accomplishment stands as the pioneering work that foreshadowed the great revolutions in power and transportation of the nineteenth century. The opinions of French scientists at the end of the eighteenth century regarding Cugnot’s steam machine are well described by Marquis de Saint-Auban, who on March 12, 1779, wrote a letter to the members of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz stating that Cugnot’s steam dray was supposed to replace horse-drawn carriages and that his machine was as ingenious as it was useless. Saint-Auban described its flaws in a disparaging way. Not only was it clear that the military withdrew their support for Cugnot’s invention but even French scientists failed to see its relevance in improving transportation.

Cugnot’s dream became an everyday reality in the locomotives that ran on the world’s railways, the great steam tractors that transformed agriculture, and, as the twentieth century dawned, the steam-powered automobiles that competed (in many ways successfully) with the internal combustion engine. His second fardier has survived and is presently on display at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

Bibliography

Burness, Ted. Ultimate Auto Album: An Illustrated History of the Automobile. Iola, Wis.: Krause, 2001. Traces more than two hundred years of automobile history. A wonderfully illustrated book.

Crump, Thomas. A Brief History of the Age of Steam: The Power That Drove the Industrial Revolution. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007. Begins with the invention, by Thomas Newcomen, of the first steam machine in England in 1710 and explains how steam changed the world by introducing the Industrial Revolution.

Eckermann, Erik. World History of the Automobile. Translated by Peter L. Albrecht. Warrendale, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, 2001. Offers an extensive history of the development of the automobile throughout the world. Abundantly illustrated.

Sutcliffe, Andrea. Steam: The Untold Story of America’s First Great Invention. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Traces the development of steam power and its effects on American society.