The First Automobile

The first automobile, neither gasoline nor electric powered. Before Paul Revere’s horse ride in 1775 and the Boston Tea party in 1773, French military engineer Nichlas Joseph Cugnot built this steam-powered vehicle in Paris in 1769. The three-wheeled vehicle was heavily built and designed to move heavy munitions.

As can be easily imagined, at the time a vehicle without the familiar horse to ask to stop, some of the earliest problems associated with this invention were with controlling it. It’s second first, after moving on its own, was to be involved in the world’s first automobile accident when it crashed into a wall.