
Get a Horse! America’s Skepticism Toward the First Automobiles - caf
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/
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caf
Of particular interest is Winton's comments on patent sharing:

 _The steering wheel was one of my early patents, and it was the same wheel
that came into later and general use. It is but one of more than a hundred
patents I hold on different parts for automobiles.

I believe I am entitled to say I have never collected a cent in royalties from
them, nor will I. Lawyers have tried to argue me into bringing suits for
infringements, but it so happened we pioneers always worked together. We
loaned ideas. We loaned tools. We loaned patents. If we worked out a good
idea, we loaned that. You see, some 20 years ago there was a man named George
Baldwin Selden, a lawyer and inventor living in Rochester, New York, who
caused a lot of trouble and expense to the automobile industry by bringing
suit against all of us for the infringement of a patent that had been granted
him on May 8, 1879. His patent covered a machine containing the essential
principles of an automobile._

