13 replies to this topic

[Pullman99]

Knowing that many members of The Nostalgia Forum have a very broad interest in all aspects of transport and vehicles outside of motorsport, I wanted to bring to your attention an important anniversary that is linked to the true origin of all motor vehicles - le Fardier de Cugnot that was originally constructed in 1769.

 

I am carrying out some research into a large scale (1/6th as far as I can estimate of le Fardier at the National Motor Museum.   This model has been in the care of the National Motor Museum for the past decade, although it is currently in store, and is recorded as being on loan from the Royal Automobile Club.   The RAC has very little in terms of trying to establish the model's provenance but their Golden Jubilee book of 1947 refers to it being on display at Pall Mall.     Please see an attached photograph and I apologise for its quality.  Entirely down to myself, but it is fairly dimly lit in the museum store!     The extract from the Golden Jubilee book indicates that the model was exhibited at Pall Mall in 1947 which could suggest that it may also have been an element in the exhibitions organised for the Golden Jubilee of the British motor industry organised the year before.   A research trail that potentially rivals those featured in the BBC's "Fake or Fortune"!   

 

The story of Cugnot is one that I discovered when I was a small child and it has fascinated me ever since.  The original vehicle is preserved (and has been since about 1800 at the request of Napoleon Bonaparte)) in le Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.   I have also followed the building of two replica / reconstructions - one in Florida and one in France - in recent years and have seen both in steam.  Retromobile in 2011 for the Tampa vehicle and in 2022 for the French one.   I visited an event in Panningen in the Netherlands where le Fardier was being demonstrated last year to specifically speak with engineer Fabrice Gennison, the leader of the French replica project which is totally authentic to Cugnot’s original, about the possibility of bringing the vehicle to the UK in a couple of years time.  I renewed that conversation with Fabrice at an event in Sampigny, near Commercy, in August this year.

 

The model showcase bears a makers plate from a Paris modelmaker and is an obviously Victorian era museum display case.   An expert on early high pressure steam has looked at the photographs of the model and is of the opinion that it may have been made from the extant engineering drawings that are contemporary to Cugnot’s time as a military engineer.    The potential date of the showcase made me wonder if the model had been made for the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris prior to coming to the UK.    

 

On the 26th of February 2025 it will be the 300th anniversary of Nicolas Joseph Cugnot’s birth in 1725 in the small town of Void-Vacon in Eastern France.    The French replica of le Fardier is based there and a newly created museum structure is nearing completion with the aim of opening the venue on the Centenary date.

 

If any of our learned friends can add anything further to this tale, please feel free to post.   In particular, if there are any members of the Royal Automobile Club who recall the model being exhibited there, or who may know how it came to the UK, please feel free to post.

 

The story of the building of then two replicas in recent years - as well as one constructed by the German railways for a documentary film in the 1930s (yes really) and which is kept at the DB Museum in Nuremberg - is quite fascinating.   I'll post some further information in due course.

 

 

 

 

RAC Golden Jubilee Book extract (above) and the almost complete Cugnot Museum in Void-Vacon

 

 

 

 

[Odseybod]

Might be fun to stage a run-off (? chug-off) with this replica of a slightly younger device?

 

https://archiv.radio...inventors/bozek

 

 

[Vitesse2]

I think there was a static exhibition at the new SMMT headquarters in Piccadilly when it opened in 1946, a couple of weeks before the London parade, but the only other non-moving one I've seen a reference to was in Brighton and comprised of speed record cars. I doubt Cugnot would fit into either, given that it was a very British celebration.

 

And although it's a year later than 1947, in 1948 there was apparently a George Stephenson centenary celebration in Chesterfield. Which, according to The Times (13 Aug 1948) had 'set [him] here in his proper place among locomotive-makers, from Cugnot in the 1760s to the builders of the modern giants ...' Could be a red herring, but you never know!

 

The display case has an air of the ones I remember seeing in the Science Museum in the 1960s and 1970s, which have probably now been consigned to their store at Wroughton. And I guess the model is based on Cugnot's second machine? This rather nice illustration is from the Illustrated London News, 28 July 1906:

 

[Pullman99]

The display case has an air of the ones I remember seeing in the Science Museum in the 1960s and 1970s, which have probably now been consigned to their store at Wroughton. And I guess the model is based on Cugnot's second machine?

Thank you so much for that Vitesse2. Greatly appreciated. The mystery is that no-one in the RAC seems to have any record of the model so we'll keep trying to piece its provenance together however incomplete that may be, As mentioned by yourself, the SMMT and other related activities in the late 1940s centred around British achievement and, therefore, it is all the more surprising that a very accurate model of le Fardier should have been in Britain at all. The display case is vey much the sort of thing you (and I) would have seen in The Science Museum and other contemporary venues and, as it was made in Paris, presumably French museums as well.

Cugnot's original machine was initially built in 1769 and I have had several conversations with the engineers responsible for both the Florida (Alain Cerf) and Frence (Fabrice Gennison) replicas and both had access to the original when planning their new build projects. Alain Cerf, in particular, made an extensive study of the original and concluded that there was ever only one vehicle that, following initial testing, had its wheelbase extended - by Cugnot - between 1770 and 1771 and for which the evidence survives in the vehicle as displayed. Much has also been made down the years of the notorious collision with a wall - even to the extent of featuring in the 1930s German documentary film Das Stahltier (see link below) that led to Cugnot's downfall. The story actually dates from around the early 1800s and possibly even later and is unlikely to be true. Cugnot's fall from grace is primarily due to his promoters in the French government and, specifically, in the arsenal where he was employed. Following the Revolution in 1789, Cugnot became an exile in Brussels but clearly Napoleon recognised his achievements and reinstated his previously withdrawn pension

Incidentally. Cugnot is played in Das Stahltier by Max Schreck whose best known role was in the 1922 film Nosferatu! The You Tube extract below is still shown in a quite old video installation in le Musée des Arts et Métier next to the vehicle but the complete film, that also features replicas of several pioneer railway locomotives including those of Trevithick and the Stephensons. Although made to celebrate the Centenary of German railways in 1935, It was never released publicly as almost none of the pioneers featured were German and, therefore, presumably regarded as having limited propaganda value.

https://www.youtube....h?v=1wMkn3zh9dk

[Vitesse2]

The Autocar, i/d 20 January 1900, p57, states that 'the curious vehicle of Cugnot, of which a model is kept at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, was the forerunner of the steam car ...'

 

This may be of more interest though:

 

 

The mentioned V&A Science Division became the Science Museum in 1909. Its history from then on gets complicated. https://www.sciencem...eum-history.pdf

 

Another Autocar article (29 June 1923, p1160) has a different photo of what seems to be the same model and seemingly implies that it was still on view in South Kensington.

 

However, in the 'Here and There' column of The Autocar, 17 May 1935, there is this little snippet of news:

 

 

1770 Model. A scale rnodel of the first practical power-driven road vehicle is the subject of the special exhibit in the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh for May. It is Cugnot's steam car, built and designed in France in 1770, when it cost about £800.

 

So, is this actually the one from the V&A/Science Museum? Or are/were there potentially as many as three scale models?

[brucemoxon]

I certainly can't offer any information, but I always thought it looked horribly front-heavy and that it could topple over at any time. 

 

But an engineering marvel, none the less. 

 

300 eh? 

 

BRM

[Nick Planas]

I certainly can't offer any information, but I always thought it looked horribly front-heavy and that it could topple over at any time. 

 

But an engineering marvel, none the less. 

 

300 eh? 

 

BRM

With a reluctant nod to modern parlance (yuk) I think you could say it would initially rotate well due to excessive front end...

[robert dick]

In the Catalogue du Musée/Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers/Transports sur Route/1953,
a 1-to-6 modèle of the Cugnot built in 1851 by Bourbouze et Médard is mentioned on page 77:
https://cnum.cnam.fr.../100/116/10/114

= = = =
In the Catalogue des Collections du Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers/1905,
the modèle is mentioned on page 386:
https://cnum.cnam.fr...6/100/443/9/443

= = = =
Cugnot in general:
https://cnum.cnam.fr...hp?ident=M16690

= = = =
btw:
In the second half of the 1870s, young Georges Bouton (of De Dion-et-Bouton) built scientific instruments for Jean-Gustave Bourbouze, who prepared the course of physics at the Sorbonne.
 

[Vitesse2]

The Science Museum online catalogue has only three references to Cugnot, none of which is a model and the first two of which are probably duplicates:

 

Monochrome photograph of the Cugnot's steam tractor, 1770-71, at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, Paris.

 

Black and white photo: Cugnot's steam tractor of 1770-71.

 

Cugnot's Steam Car, 1770. - This seems to be the ILN illustration I posted above:

 

Colour print, Cugnot's Steam Car, 1770, A Tea-Kettle on Wheels, by Amedee Forestier, about 1928. Colour print from a book illustration, depicting Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's steam powered carriage in a street, being examined by curious passers by. Text beneath gives a brief history of the steam carriage and its preservation. Pasted to board.

Edited by Vitesse2, Yesterday, 09:52.
Science Museum catalogue search isn't perfect!

[Vitesse2]

The 'Scottish' model seems to still be in Scotland. Maker's name P Régnard.

 

https://www.nms.ac.u...ts?entry=207434

 

And the Science Museum has two examples of his work.

 

https://collection.s...29200/p-regnard

 

As well as - it seems - the '1907' model, built by Régnard Frères in 1892, to special order of what would become the V&A, apparently at a scale of 1:5:

 

https://collection.s...traction-engine

 

So, there are at least three models of it in the UK! Although we can therefore eliminate the Science Museum and 'Scottish' ones as being the same as the RAC/Beaulieu one!

[brucemoxon]

With a reluctant nod to modern parlance (yuk) I think you could say it would initially rotate well due to excessive front end...

 

I'll bet on plough understeer, I think. Then rolling onto its side. 

 

 

BRM

[Sterzo]

Without wishing to detract from the achievements of Carl Benz, I have long scatched my pedant's head at the description of his vehicle as "the first motor car". Surely we should acknowledge the several engineers who, like Cugnot and Trevithick, built steam-powered vehicles. Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the subject, which does give credit to the steam pioneers. Inevitably it's not complete - there's no mention of the wonderfully named Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, for example - but it does set the record straight.

 

And, of course, it's generally a fair assumption in history that "the first" of anything quite probably isn't. As a child, I knew the book sent across the Atlantic by a kind aunt was wrong to claim the motor car was invented by Henry Ford. But maybe, just maybe, Hans Hautsch could lay claim to the first known automobile.

 

https://en.wikipedia..._the_automobile

[Pullman99]

 

So, there are at least three models of it in the UK! Although we can therefore eliminate the Science Museum and 'Scottish' ones as being the same as the RAC/Beaulieu one!

 

Thank you so much everyone for your detailed and intriguing responses.   I think that I have seen the Science Museum model many years ago.   I'll continue a more detailed examination of the Beaulieu model and see if there is a modelmaker's date anywhere within the case or on the model itself.   The 1851 date attributed to the model in the Musée/Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and mentioned above by Robert Dick, is also the date of the The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.   I wonder whether their model could have been exhibited there??

 

More on this story later, no doubt...

Edited by Pullman99, Yesterday, 15:18.

[Vitesse2]

Well, the official catalogue of the Great Exhibition is available online ...

 

https://archive.org/...e/1168/mode/2up

 

However, Bourbouze et Médard aren't listed as exhibitors and the word Cugnot doesn't come up in a text search of the book.

 

Probably stating the obvious here, but it would presumably make sense to contact both museums to verify they actually have the physical objects. Might have been lent out for some special exhibition and never returned ...