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Saturday, July 23, 2011
The 1912 Official Handbook of Automobiles, (wow, stats and views of brasss era cars still licensed under the Selden patent)
Posted by st at 9:04 PM
the above delivery wagon is cool, but check out the Locomobile Cup Racer, and the price ... $18,000
the Peerless on the right hand side below... if you read the stat sheet, you might be as amused as I am that the body is known as the "King of Belgium"
the Selden Patent issue:
The above tag has a bit of historical perspective... the Selden company patented the automobile. He collected on every car made... 0.75%
Selden was a patent attorney. His dad was a judge, and a prominent Republican attorney most noted for defending Susan B Anthony.
Yeah, it obviously didn't stand up very long, but for a time, they had the patent on the automobile, and if you wanted to sell a car in America, you either paid a licensing fee or fought them in court.
Henry Ford fought them in court and won... he was obviously better prepared to make a success and a fortune that he'd share with the US Govt by way of taxes, so the right people were persuaded to take the patent of the automobile, and make it go away... the reason given was that the Ford and other cars were using an engine based on a different engine than Selden had patented.
see the whole book page by page at http://www.archive.org/stream/officialhandboo04assogoog#page/n12/mode/2up which is just one of 10s of thousands of online books at http://www.archive.org/
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