World's first use of an internal combustion engine in a primitive automobile' - built by François Isaac de Rivaz in 1808.
After retirement from the Army, living in Switzerland, he invented a primitive internal combustion engine which he constructed in 1807. It was powered by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen manually ignited by electric spark, but the engine neither involved the in-cylinder compression, the crank, nor the connecting rod. A year later, Isaac built an early automobile for his new engine to power. His engine was never commercially successful.
