Complex sentence: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725--2 October 1804) was a French inventor who built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle, the world's first automobile.
Split into simpler sentences: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725--2 October 1804) was a French inventor. He is known to have built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle, the world's first automobile.