An early Benz, NOT invented in America (LOC photo)
While the right-leaning blogs blaze with the inaccuracies, over-reaches and empty promises of last night’s Presidential Address to the Joint Session, I have been contemplating the backlash had it been Dubya who claimed this country invented the automobile.
President Obama, while trying to convince the taxpayers that we need to save the ineptitude that is Detroit, stated that he believes “The country that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”
Now, the infancy of the auto took on a number of forms – steam, electric, gasoline – but according to our very own Library of Congress, the credit for inventing the first automobile goes to Germany’s Karl Benz.
Benz’ three-wheeled, single chassis, gas-powered vehicle was on the road in 1885/86.
It wasn’t until 1895 that an American – George Baldwin Selden – received a patent for a gasoline-powered carriage. His invention was never manufactured.
Scotsman Robert Andersen gets the credit for the first electric carriage (reducing those CO emissions between 1832 – 1839) and Frenchman Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first self-propelled, steam-powered road vehicle for the French army in 1769.
Top speed was 2.5 miles-per-hour, and it enabled the future armies of France to perfect motorized surrender.
Charles Edgar Duryea (and his brother Frank) patented the first successful gas powered car (with a four horsepower, two-stroke motor), and also founded the first American car manufacturer.
Soon after, younger brother Earl invented the “My Other Car is a Benz” bumper sticker.
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Comments
Motorized surrender! Thank you for forcing a small amount of my morning coffee to shoot out through my nose just now!
Nice post. The first paragraph is especially cogent.
You are funny AND smart. Love your stuff...
As I heard Obama drop that particular clanger, I wondered if anyone would call him on it.
Perhaps the most striking thing is that his crack team of speechwriters are also carelessly ignorant of basic history.
Now how important is this in terms of a horrific time in our world. Did you feel good about researching that? The key thought was we need our auto industry. Did you get that or did you understand any of the speech??
Dee's right everybody knows that 0bama is smart and Bush is a moron, never mind the details.
Hallelujah, and the blind shall hear...but, easy on the French: as they love things American, and not necessarily us, so we adore them.
By the by, did y'all miss the part about conscription paying for college?
Nice article & especially nice to see Americans admitting there was something they didn't invent. However, it was rather spoilt by the tired old 'Freedom fries' type quip about the French military. If only America had learned from France's military blunder in Indochina, a lot more Americans would be alive today. Also, let's not forget that in the Gulf War the Legion was conducting combat patrols into Iraq long before the highly publisized American in-roads were made. It's not surprising most Americans are so ill-informed about my old unit, the Legion Etrangere -- so few Americans make the grade to serve in that unit! Yes, the purely French military has a poor record, but at least they admit this & have a foreign unit -- very practical with unpopular wars!
He would have been correct to have said "the country that invented the affordable, mass-produced automobile..."
Whatever.
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