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 CHAPTER I

I was first invited to write a brief History of the Motor-Car, I at once realised that I could not do so without repeating much which was contained in an article entitled 'Recent Progress of Automobilism in France,' which I wrote for the 'North American Review' in September 1899.

It is more than a century since, in 1769, automobilism was born in France, with the steam carriage of Cugnot. This vehicle was of a crude, rudimentary, and incomplete construction. The ideas of Cugnot were an entire century in advance of the mechanical means by which they could be realised.

The attempt led to no satisfactory results. Everything was defective—motive-power, steering, control. Nevertheless, the carriage ran, and ran so well, they say, that it broke down the enclosure of the ground on which it was tried. It is an incontestable fact that Cugnot is the inventor of automobile locomotion, and that the honour of first having imagined and realised a new method of transport, destined to play an important part in the welfare of many lands, belongs to him.