Tulsa daily world. [volume] (Tulsa, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1905-1919, 1917-10-28

men were required to work II, one to
guide the car and the other to re-
volve the wheels that were to send
1t ahead. 1t attained n speed of five
miles an hour 1t, too, failed. be-
cause II offered no especial advant-
age over the carriage or cart.
With the discoveries of greater pos
sibilitloS of steam came renewed in
terest in the invention of a vehicle
that would carry its own propelling
power, dispense with running on rails,
and go as fast, if not faster. as a
horse-drawn carriage, and not have
to stop at short intervals to replenish
its fuel.
In 1863 a French mechanic. Joseph
Cugrot, succeeded in propellng by
steam small, staunch wooden car of
his own design and construction. lie
invented an engine which he placed
in his car and out of which he got
enough power to drive the car seven
miles an hour, and for a while it was
believed the day of the horse and
mule for driving purposes was at an
end. Cugnot received permission to
exhibit his vehicle before the great
artillerist and celebrated strategist, de
GribeanVal, who pronounced IL a won
derful success and advocated its in
PRODUCTION into the army. He believed
ii could be made to take the place
of horses in drawing artillery wagons,
cannon and heavy military parapher-
MALTA.
First Artillery Truck.
A much stronger and supposedly
speedier vehicle was then built by the
French war ministry, under the su
pervision of Cugnot which drew a
heavy piece of artillery and four men
over a measured mile in twenty min
utes. This car burned wood for fuel
and was able 10 carry enough fuel to
keep it in motion from an hour to an
hour and a half, according to the
weight it was carrying and the road
over which 1t was travelling. 1t came
to grief, however, on account OF the
failure of its steering gear, doubtless
of a very primitive kind, and the re-
suit was that the vehicle piled Itself
up against wall, a tangled, twisted
mass of wreckage.
Cugnot lost heart in his work after
this accident. and declined TO build
another horseless vehicle. The inven-
tors and machinists of his day were
unable to repair the wrecked car, or
from the wreckage gather enough
knowledge of its mechanism to build
one like IT. Nothing further was done
in the way of the making of a horse
less vehicle for a number of years.
CuCnot was recognized by Louis XIV
as a great inventor and was granted a
pension frou the state in 1172. This
he continued to draw until the out
break of the French revolution when
ii ceased, and but for the assistance
rendered him by friends he would
have perished of hunger.
Cugnot Proclaimd First Invention
Ronaparte. upon becoming the first
consul. restored to Cugnot his pension
and proclaimed him the inventor of
the horseless vehicle. Cugnot died in
1904, and year ago France erected
a statue to him as the inventor of the
automobile, in the little village Of
Void, which gave him birth. The hon.
or of being the inventor of the first
successful steam propelled horseless
vehicle is now conceded to Cugnot,
and as such his name is inscribed in
the French Academy Of Arts ant Sci
ences.
From that time on the develop
ment In the inventions was marked
Mailer, in 1775, designed and perfeo-
ted a three-wheel affair; Oliver Ev-
ans, a Pennsylvania. worked on a
successful vehicle, which resulted in
the construction of a small factory
Fire. however, destroyed the building
plans. etc, and shortly afterwards the
inventor died. He left nothing of his