Gustave Trouvé

Gustave Trouvé (1839 to 1902) was a French electrical engineer and inventor of the nineteenth century, born in La Haye-Descartes in the Indre-et-Loire. The son of a cattle dealer, he trained briefly as a locksmith and at the École des Arts et Métiers in Angers before poor health ended his studies, and he went to Paris to work for a clockmaker. From 1865 he ran his own workshop in central Paris, where he patented a wide range of electrical applications, including a pocket battery for miniature electric automata, a portable military telegraph, an improved telephone, a sensitive portable microphone and the polyscope, a forerunner of the endoscope. In 1881 he fitted an electric motor to a tricycle, building what is credited as the first electric vehicle, and made a removable motor for a boat, the origin of the outboard engine. He received the Légion d'Honneur and was known above all for his skill at miniaturization.