| Nicolas Cugnot |
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Information AboutNicolas Cugnot |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT NICOLAS-JOSEPH CUGNOT | |
| 1725 births | |
| cugnot, nicolas-joseph | |
| 1804 deaths | |
| french inventors | |
| people of the french revolution | |
| mechanical engineers | |
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Cugnot was born in Void , Meuse , Lorraine . He trained as a military Engineer . He experimented with working models of Steam Engine powered vehicles for the French Army, intended for hauling heavy Cannon s, starting in 1765 . Cugnot seems to have been the first to convert the back-and-forth motion of a steam piston into rotary motion. A functioning version of his "Fardier à vapeur" ("Steam wagon") ran in 1769 . The following year he built an improved version. His vehicle was said to be able to pull 4 tonnes and travel at speeds of up to 4 km per hour. The heavy vehicle had two wheels in the back and one in the front, which supported the steam boiler and was steered by a tiller. In 1771 his vehicle crashed into a Brick wall, the first known automobile accident. The accident together with budget problems ended the French Army's experiment with mechanical vehicles, but in 1772 King Louis XV granted Cugnot a pension of 600 Francs a year for his innovative work. With the French Revolution Cugnot's pension was withdrawn in 1789 , and the inventor went into exile in Brussels , where he lived in poverty. Shortly before his death he was invited back to France by Napoleon Bonaparte . Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot returned to Paris , where he died. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's 1770 machine is preserved in Paris' Conservatoire Des Arts Et Metiers . BIBLIOGRAPHY
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