Adolphe Kégresse

Who was Adolphe Kégresse?

Adolphe Kégresse was a French military engineer, inventor of the half-track and dual clutch transmission.

Born at Héricourt, and educated in Montbéliard, he moved in 1905 to Saint Petersburg, Russia to work for the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. To improve the mobility of the imperial car park, he invented the Kégresse track to modify normal motor vehicles into half-tracks.

After World War I Kégresse was forced to return to his home country, where he was from 1919 employed by the Citroën company during the 1920s and 1930s to design half-track vehicles, together with engineer Jacques Hinstin.

After leaving the Citroën company he developed in 1935 the AutoServe gearbox-transmission system; in 1939 he pioneered the development of modern small guided tracked bombs. Kégresse died in 1943 at Croissy-sur-Seine.