Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot was born on 26 February 1725 in France. He designed and constructed the "Fardier à vapeur," the world's first full-size, working self-propelled mechanical land-vehicle. The machine ran on steam and moved without external power — a functional automobile before the concept had a name. He died on 2 October 1804, having demonstrated that a vehicle could carry itself forward by its own engine decades before anyone else managed it at scale.