Who invented the car?

Murky waters - https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-top-ten-patent-wars-automobiles-3-41099/


Was Selden the first little guy to get beat by Detroit ala Tucker?
The Court held that Selden’s patent was valid, but that Ford’s automobiles (and other automaker’s cars) would not infringe the Selden patent, narrowly confining it to the claimed invention which referenced a specific type of engine not used by automakers, who instead used the Otto engine invented in Germany.
 
Who invented the car? According to my second-grade teacher Miss Shaw, it was Henry Ford. It took me YEARS to UNLEARN that "fact". She's also the one who told us New York City is the capital of New York State. So much for public education...
Marshall
 
To answer that, you need to define what is a car. There have been vehicles that could, at a stretch be called a car going back centuries but I believe he first of the modern cars was made by Carl Benz closely followed by a couple of French guys.
 
Marshall,

thanks for the morning laugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dam teachers, we dont need no stinkin badges...........
 
The question invites an argument
as to the definition of what specifically
the person asking the question constitutes
a “ car “, so their is no definitive answer,
just opinions …



Jim
Transporting To Travel
Traveling To Share
Stories From The Road
 
I was always taught Duryea had the first powered horseless carriage in the US. Ahead Ford by a couple of years.
Ed
 
You mentioned Leonardo DaVinci, so I will chime in with what I think is his biggest oversight. He knew how to turn rotary motion into linear motion and vice versa; and he knew the power of turning water into steam; if he had combined them, he could have invented a steam-powered "automobile." He was that close!
 
Now onto flight - Gustav Whitehead claimed to have made a sustained powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine on August 14, 1901, his plane had no controls so basically a powered paper airplane. There was also a guy named Langley director of the Smithsonian who claimed powered/controlled flight 2 months before the Wright Bros.


Of course we'll never get a straight answer from them lest they lose the Wright Flyer:


"Neither the Smithsonian Institution nor its successors, nor any museum or other
agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the
Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a
statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight. Failure to observe this condition. Failure to observe this condition by the Smithsonian will result in a return of the “Flyer” to the vendors, according to paragraph four of the contract.”


https://www.dpma.de/docs/dpma/veroeffentlichungen/meilensteine/2021/wright-contract.pdf
 
Selden actually never assembled a running automobile until the court battle with Ford and some of the other manufacturers. The automobile he did assemble was mostly based on his patent but not entirely. An automobile constructed exactly as detailed in his patent would not function. That was the biggest reason he lost to Ford and the others.

Karl Benz is generally accredited with building the first actual usable automobile.

Chris W.
 
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I's amazing how history is taught, and then re taught, depending on who, or where it is being taught. Take powered flight, many are taught it was the Wright brothers, but some New Zealanders claim it was Richard Pearse 6 months before the Wright brothers.
 
agreed dave. We are all taught that Lindberg completed the first solo over the Atlantic, but Carranza beat him by a few months.

problem is Carranza died and so it didnt make for a good story. Carranza memorial is about 10 miles from my house.....
 
ronn said:
agreed dave. We are all taught that Lindberg completed the first solo over the Atlantic, but Carranza beat him by a few months.

Lindberg made the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris. There was a big prize offered for this accomplishment. There were several other entries attempting the same thing, but Lindberg was the first to succeed.

Chris W.
Click to expand...
 
The first steam powered car was invented by a guy named Cugnot (French) in 1769. He built one copy...it was a flop. The first gas/diesel powered car was built by Karl Benz (German) in 1886 and he joined with Gottlieb Daimler to develop it as a viable business. Henry Ford was not even the first to use mass production methods such as moving 'assembly lines' and identical mass produced parts. Ransom Olds did that at least 8 years before Henry Ford. What Henry was great at was BUSINESS! He saw a future for large scale marketing of cars. He most certainly was NOT be first to develop cars....no matter what your high school History books taught you.
 
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