Grave of George B. Selden at Mt. Hope Cemetery, Rochester, NY.
GEORGE B. SELDEN, AUTO PIONEER, DIES AT 77
Inventor of First Gasoline-Propelled Vehicle in 1878
Reaped Years of Litigation
ROCHESTER. N. Y., Jan. 17.—George Baldwin Selden, inventor of the first gasoline-propelled vehicle and a pioneer in the present automotive Industry, died at his home here today. He was President of the Selden Motor Company of this city. He was 77 years old.
While George Baldwin Selden filed in 1879 the first patent for a gasoline motor- propelled vehicle, he reaped only long years of litigation, which, it was said. cost him nearly all the money his Invention brought him in. He obtained his patent In November, 1896. In the intervening years other gasoline-propelled cars had been built here and In Germany. Setting up a claim to the basic patent, Selden began suit in 1900 against Ford and Winton. The lower court found in his favor, but while the Appellate Court upheld his patent, it reversed judgment on the ground that Winton and Ford were making. a motor of another type.
The litigation was renewed by the Electric Vehicle Company of New Jersey, to whom Selden sold the manufacturing rights. The sued manufacturers, with the exception of Ford, surrendered and formed the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, and agreed to pay 1 ¼ per cent. of the price of their cars as royalty. This was later reduced to four-fifths of 1 per cent.
Ford continued the fight alone. In 1911 Judge Noyes, in a decision, affirmed Selden’s patent but held that the Ford engine was of the Otto type. As other manufacturers were using the same type, the association was disbanded and the royalties ceased.
Mr. Selden was graduated from ‘Yale In 1869 and studied law under his father. After experimenting in the making of engines for light vehicles driven by steam, by ammonia gas, bisuiphite of carbon and other liquid fuels, he turned his attention to petroleum as fuel. He had, in 1875, built an engine that was driven by a mixture of “laughing gas” and kerosene. it proved a failure.
By 1876 he reached the conclusion that the internal combustion engine of the compression type using liquids fuel was the solution of his difficulties. Notwithstanding the gibes of others, he persevered.
New York Times; January 18, 1922