Marquis Jules Félix Philippe Albert de Dion de Wandonne was born on the 9th of March in 1856 the heir of a leading French noble family, in 1901 succeeding his father Louis Albert William Joseph de Dion de Wandonne as Comte (Count) and later Marquis. A man about town he could have lived his life quite comfortably, dabbling in politics when he found himself on the opposite side of the current president of France during the Dreyfus Affair. Options got so heated that at the Auteuil horse-race course in Paris the President of France Émile Loubet was struck on the head by a walking stick wielded by de Dion. For this gross attack on the body politic he would serve 15 days in jail and fined 100 francs.
But beyond a temper and a flair for the dramatic, he was accused of being a serial duelist, De Dion had a passion for anything mechanical. He had already built a model of a steam engine when in 1881, he saw an example that he especially liked in a store window at a shop in Léon. It was a toy upon which there would be built a legend. Georges Bouton was the son of a painter and learned at Honfleur and Paris. In 1881, having finished his training, he joined his brother-in-law, Charles Trépardoux, to open a workshop in rue de la Chapelle for the construction of steam engines used in Scientific toys. Trépardoux dreamed of moving beyond toys and building a steam engine that would propel one of the new automobiles but needed someone with sufficient funds to make that dream a reality.
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Marquis Jules Félix Philippe Albert de Dion de Wandonne was born on the 9th of March in 1856 the heir of a leading French noble family, in 1901 succeeding his father Louis Albert William Joseph de Dion de Wandonne as Comte (Count) and later Marquis. A man about town he could have lived his life quite comfortably, dabbling in politics when he found himself on the opposite side of the current president of France during the Dreyfus Affair. Options got so heated that at the Auteuil horse-race course in Paris the President of France Émile Loubet was struck on the head by a walking stick wielded by de Dion. For this gross attack on the body politic he would serve 15 days in jail and fined 100 francs.
