The Selden Motor Wagon; The Selden car; The Selden Patent . Hope. Cemetery in Rochester, N. Y., often remark on a simple tombstone bearing. George Baldwin Selden.
Below Selden's name is his claim to. A hundred. years ago nearly everybody knew Selden's name- -especially anyone about. Selden's 1. 89. 5 patent. This is the story of George Baldwin Selden. And forgotten man of the automobile.
One. of 1. 2 children, he was born in 1. Clarkson, 1. 6 miles west of. Rochester, in a house that still stands. His abolitionist father, Henry.
Automobilia, and other car-related collectables. Since its debut in late 2001, oldclassiccar has grown in many different directions, usually in a slightly haphazard.
Rogers Selden, participated in the formation of the Republican Party in. New York in 1. 85. According. to a family account, Henry Selden turned down the chance for nomination. Republican ticket with Abraham Lincoln. With the passage of the. Amendment holding that citizenship rights cannot be abridged and.
The following details were taken from Motor Age of June 3, 1926: The Hamlin Front Drive Special was built by Chevrolet Brothers and contains a great number of Ford parts. A variety of innovative street signals and markings were developed by other cities hoping to tame the automobile. Because they were regularly plowed over by cars. Mary Frances Creighton was a 38-year-old housewife, who along with Everett Appelgate, were executed in Sing Sing Prison's electric chair, Old Sparky, for the. Collection of quotes organized by topic. Includes a large collection of historical quotes.
Amendment guaranteeing that race was no bar to voting rights. In the 1. 87. 2 national. Anthony and 1. 4 other. Ward. Susan B. Rogers posted her bail, saying.
Fate sometimes plays strange tricks. Had his father. accepted the vice- presidential nomination, he might have returned from. Lincoln. Instead, he emerged obscurely to enter Yale as a. He soon abandoned a classical course to enroll in. Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, where he spent two happy years.
Young. George Selden was a tinkerer and had a native mechanical ability, but. His science studies were cut short. Rochester to . By 1. Selden. soon became fascinated with the subject of road locomotion and read.
Heavy steam- powered vehicles. England and America a half century before but had. As. Selden saw it, the main problem was to find a new and light engine to.
Philadelphia and the Brayton Engine. In. 1. 87. 6, the nation celebrated its hundredth birthday with the Centennial. Exposition in Philadelphia. Selden attended to show a machine he had. This gave him a chance to see and. The exposition's.
Machinery Hall held 1. This. 1,5. 00- horsepower monster engine operated five miles of rotating shafts. It required only a.
In. contrast with the clumsy, clattering giant engines powered by steam and. Brayton engine on display. Selden began toying with engine designs. The Brayton. engine contained a diaphragm through which flame entered the.
Selden's engine was. Brayton's except that it omitted the diaphragm. Combustion. was just as poor. In December of 1. Frank Clement's machine shop in Rochester. The. design, called for three cylinders, each opposed by a compression air. A casting was made, but only one of the cylinders was bored out.
He had enclosed the. Brayton open crankcase and made it integral with the block. This. enabled him to eliminate the heavy bed plate and the cumbersome.
Brayton's engine. Selden knew at last that he had found an engine. The. elated Rochester lawyer filed his patent application on May 8, 1. In. it, he described in general terms an . It was their. combination that was new and therefore patentable. At. the time Selden filed his patent application, the two- cycle Selden.
In. Germany, Nikolaus Otto had used an electric spark to ignite a mixture. The drawing that accompanied Selden's. Rebasz, Jr., Selden's patent draftsman.
The other was that of. George Eastman, a name that would later become known worldwide. In. 1. 87. 9, Eastman was still only an unknown clerk in an office in the same. Selden. He had the germ of an idea for bringing photography. It. was to be the subject of amendment and correspondence for the next 1. Selden. was widely criticized for taking advantage of the statutory limit that.
Delaying patent. applications was a common tactic- -and it was entirely legal. Patent Office Backlog. During. the 1. 9th century, American patent law had become a veritable jungle of.
The Patent Act of 1. Patent Office actions. In 1. 87. 0 a two- year period was. But the two- year. Once Selden had submitted his.
By the end of 1. 89. Patent Office found. Of. 1. 2,0. 00 pending for two years or more, five, including Selden's, had. The exasperated. Commissioner of Patents ruled in April of 1. This ruling had the. By the primacy. of his patent application, he was the first American to conceive of the.
Procrastination a Tactic. Selden. has been castigated by various historians of technology as .
Patent Office replies to. Selden took a month or less.
Practically all of Selden's responses are. Even. such a routine detail as furnishing a new oath took Selden 7. Out. of fairness to the Rochester inventor, his explanation for the delays.
There is evidence. Nevertheless, between 1. In all, Selden made about a hundred. In the more than 1. Patent Office for a total of. To make replies to Patent Office actions and to pay.
Selden took 1. 5 years and 1. With a. nonrenewable life of 1. Selden's patent finally issued on. November 5, 1. 89. A Patent at Last. Selden's. patent emerged but attracted little attention and languished. Car maker. Alexander Winton of Cleveland paid Selden $2.
Winton cars under the patent, but the option was never taken up. Fate. intervened in the improbable form of a blizzard on the second Monday in. February of 1. 89.
Lawyer and financier William Collins Whitney . Towering drifts brought traffic almost to a standstill. Nevertheless, the 1.
The snows of the blizzard of 1. Whitney and his associate, Thomas Fortune Ryan. Isaac L. Rice's. Electric Vehicle Company. Whitney's plans were on an imperial. Under his aegis, the EVC announced it would place 1. The. next step was to find an automobile builder capable of accepting an. Pope, its founder.
Columbia bicycle a household word. He was also the first. In April of 1. 89. Whitney. traveled to Hartford to discuss his plans with Pope and George H.
Day. Pope's assistant. Day and Whitney soon discovered that they had. Before long the subject.
Whitney was dazzling Pope. Day with talk of a merger of his EVC and the automobile- building. Pope Company. To capitalize on the widely recognized and. Columbia name, a new organization called the Columbia. Automobile Company was formed to fill the Whitney order. Whitney. and his associates had been the first to conceive of the holding. Using this device, they.
Under Whitney's plan revealed in Hartford, the EVC. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and cities in. Georgia and California. A Troubling Patent With.
Whitney, a self- made millionaire and former Secretary of the Navy under. President Grover Cleveland, inquired whether there were any basic.
Hermann F. Cuntz, a young patent specialist on. Pope's staff, obligingly produced a three- page list of patents covering. Cuntz had been pestering the Pope.
Pope's experimental gasoline vehicles infringed on it. Management had. turned a deaf ear to the eager Cuntz. Not William Collins. Whitney, who was anxious to hear more about the annoying Selden patent. According to him, Selden's patent covered a. To Maxim, the. prospect that all this effort could be stopped- -if Cuntz was right- -was.
Whitney's bitter experience of a few years before. Who, he asked, was this Selden? And could. Rochester indeed have been the birthplace of the automobile?
Rochester. was a sedate and comfortable city on the banks of the Genesee River. Rochester. encouraged the growth of a nursery industry and soon was reborn as . We do. know that he favored the assignment of his patent to manufacturers. On November 4, 1. Selden gave an exclusive.
Pope and Whitney's company for a royalty of $1. Despite. Whitney's preference for electricity as a motive power, the EVC. Searching for new sources. Whitney forces remembered the Selden patent. Perhaps. royalty payments by the burgeoning gasoline segment of the industry. When rumors got out. Even a financially wounded EVC would.
The industry monthly Horseless. EVC . Instead, the Whitney lawyers moved to the. In June of 1. 90. Betts, Sheffield & Betts. The targets were the Buffalo. Gasolene . Johnsbury.
Vermont- -was nothing more than two youths building an automobile in. Another suit was brought against Smith &. Mabley, a New York company importing Renaults, Panhards, Fiats and. Mercedes cars from Europe. With parts makers, automobile builders large. Whitney group. had plugged all legal loopholes. At the news of the suits, most.
Thus, Selden found himself on the. Alexander Winton thought this was too steep. In the. meantime, two Detroit manufacturers, Henry B.
Joy of Packard and. Frederic L. Smith of the Olds Motor Works, decided that the best course. They provided the backbone for the formation of. Selden group a royalty of one- half of 1 percent, threatening to.
Winton defense if their offer was not accepted. Negotiations. between a now- conciliatory George H. Day and the manufacturers' group.
Whitney and his. lawyers in March of 1. On their drive up to Whitney's palatial. Fifth Avenue and 6. Street, the manufacturers' committee. Elihu H. Cutler of the Knox Automobile Company of. Springfield, Mass., as their spokesman.
At each attempt by. Whitney or his lawyers to get the group to discuss negotiating terms. Cutler simply, again and again, repeated what the. Reading in a New England twang from his notes.
Cutler would drone: . This association shall determine who. These are our. organization that would be called the Association of Licensed. Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) was about to be born.
For reasons that were never. Selden had. consented to share half of his royalties with the enterprising George. H. Day. One condition of the ALAM agreement was that the Winton. Company settle its suit out of court with the acceptance of a Selden. The other manufacturers were expected to knuckle under and.
Winton's sales got. H. Nelson Jackson, a wealthy Vermont physician. New York after a grueling 6. San Francisco that was the subject of a recent PBS television program. Apparently, Ford with a record of two unsuccessful attempts.
ALAM. about a license. In the summer of 1. Ford Motor Company was. The ALAM told. Ford to . Smith. then president of the ALAM, had characterized the Ford factory as a.
As secretary- treasurer of the Olds. Smith obviously had. The Ford Model A runabout carried a list price of. Ford, with capital running low, made another approach to.