The Selden Patent Story

By Dan Cooper

The Selden patent episode in automotive history presents a look at attempted monopoly in the age of the great trusts. The legal battle against George Selden's "road engine" patent, waged by Henry Ford, Thomas L. Jeffery and others, is a story of powerful financial interests and their ineffective attempts to control a budding industry.

George Baldwin Selden was a Rochester, New York, patent attorney. He reportedly was one of the early patent attorneys for George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak. Selden saw the potential of the automobile, and tried to exploit that potential through what he knew best. He applied for a patent on what he hoped to be the prototype for all future automobiles, a basic road vehicle propelled by a liquid hydrocarbon engine.

The automobile industry came into being during the era of the great trusts, and the climate of monopoly and patent-controlled leverage was at its peak influence in the economy. These facts were not lost on Selden, who simply looked at the present state of transportation, and projected the future growth of the auto industry. He applied for the patent without ever having manufactured a single car. It was the idea that held importance, not the physical entity.

A few of the earliest vehicles had already been made in 1879, when Selden originally filed his patent application. The first self-propelled "road wagon" had been created in France, more than a hundred years earlier in 1769 (Cugnot). In England another one dated to 1803 (Trevithick). Both of these early "cars" were steam powered. The first four-wheeled horseless carriage to be powered by a gasoline engine was produced about 1860, again in France (Lenoir). But the earliest gasoline powered cars to appear in America emerged after Selden applied for the patent. Charles Duryea built his first car in 1892. It was not until 1896 that Charles King, Ransom Olds and Henry Ford produced their first cars in Detroit.

It should also be noted that inventors were filing for similar patents in other countries. In France, Edouard Delamare-Debouteville filed for his patent on the automobile in 1860. And almost a decade after Selden's patent application, in 1886, Karl Benz received a similar patent in Mannhelm, Germany, for his first gasoline-fueled automobile.

There was no actual vehicle built according to the deliberately vague specifications for the "road engine" until much later, in 1904. This eventual car was labeled an "1877 Selden," because the patent had been backdated to that year. But even profiting from the additional years of technology, when the car was finally manufactured, it barely operated. It ran only briefly before experiencing mechanical difficulties.

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