1895: Inventor George Selden receives the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
Who the true inventor of the automobile actually was remains clouded in the murk of history and a tangle of bureaucracy. Gottlieb Daimler of Germany often gets the credit, but a number of people, including Selden, had been working on gasoline-powered vehicles at the same time -- perhaps even earlier.
Selden's case for priority wasn't helped by the fact that it took him forever to get his patent. He built his first horseless carriage in 1877 and filed for a patent in 1879. But a succession of tweaks and amendments -- mostly of his own doing -- delayed patent issuance until 1895.
While Selden was an inventor, the subsequent tale of his automobile is a story more about legal maneuvering than about innovation, and in this Selden was overmatched. After selling his patent rights in 1899 to the Electric Vehicle Company in exchange for a piece of the action, Selden and EVC found themselves suing Henry Ford and several other automobile makers for patent infringement.
The case dragged on for eight years. Selden (who had trained as a lawyer) and EVC won at the lower-court level but ultimately lost on appeal. Ford convinced the appellate court that because his automobiles were powered not by the EVC's two-stroke Brayton engine, but by the four-stroke Otto engine, the Ford was an entirely different product.
The loss drove Selden and EVC from the field, but he did begin manufacturing trucks as the Selden Truck Sales Corporation.
An interesting historical sidelight: Selden's father, Henry, was Abraham Lincoln's first choice to be his vice presidential running mate during the 1864 election. The elder Selden declined the honor, however, and so missed the chance to become president of the United States when Lincoln was assassinated the following April.
