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WENTY-FIVE years
ago, a young man with
a scheme for a carriage
to be run by a gasoline
motor, called upon a
large manufacturer of
vehicles and farm im-
plements. The young
man had spent years
upon his patent-its success meant for-
tune to him, and also triumph over the
men who had laughed at him. So he
used his best eloquence to induce the
manufacturer to put his automobile on
the market.

But the manufacturer shook his head.
"You've been wasting your time on that
scheme," he said. "And if I went into it,
I'd be wasting my money. No, sir-even
if it worked, nobody'd ever care to ride
in your 'explosion buggy.'

999

The young man was George B. Sel-
den, and what this manufacturer said
was also said by dozens of others. To-
day there are in use in the United States
about 70,000 "explosion buggies;" and
about 70 per cent of all gasoline automo-
biles made in this country or imported

into it are licensed under the Selden pat-
ent-the patent, that in the late seventies
and during the eighties, manufacturers
smiled at as the impracticable scheme of
a dreamer.

Mr.

Seated in the machine shop on the
third floor of his home in Rochester,
N. Y., with lathes and batteries
and tools about us, and before the
original engine, Mr. Selden told to
me for THE TECHNICAL WORLD
MAGAZINE the story of the devel-
opment of his invention and his long
struggle to get it on the market.
Selden is a gray-haired man of fifty-nine,
with a strong chin that clenched tightly
when he spoke of the jeers he had en-
dured, and with quick eyes that gleamed
like steel points when he spoke of his
ultimate triumphs. He is intensely him-
self-defiantly himself. The things he
believes, he believes with his whole
being; once his heavy jaw sets, all the
world cannot change him. And he has
needed this self-confidence, this aggres-
sive, dogged determination; without
them he could never have kept on during
the years that discouragement and pov- -

Copyright 1906, by The Technical World Company

202933

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erty sought to make him abandon his invention.

When Mr. Seldon was a boy of about fourteen, he chanced to hear a conversation between his father-who, though a lawyer, was versed in mechanical things and a manufacturer of farm implements, about self-propelled vehicles

MR. SELDEN AND HIS YOUNGER SON.

for public roads. They both agreed that such vehicles were impracticable. This discussion was to Mr. Selden what the spoon over the teakettle's spout was to James Watt-it started him thinking upon the subject that was to be the main theme of his life. When he entered Yale in 1865 he attempted to do some reading upon the subject, but found few books treating of vehicles driven by their own power. Mr. Selden's career in Yale, from the academic standpoint, was not successful; he rebelled against his classical studies; and (so at least he declares) the only good recitations he made was

when he was asked something not in the text books. This youthful revolt against academic requirements had its logical result in his attitude as a father: his two sons, now young men, have been almost wholly educated at home, where they were required to study only such subjects as fitted their bents.

Mr. Selden left Yale in 1869 and began the study of law with his father. In 1871 he was admitted to the bar. Since 1876 his legal work has been entirely in the field of patent litigation. Despite the fact that his father discouraged his mechanical pursuits, desiring him to give. himself wholly to the law, he continued his mechanical investigations in the leisure the law allowed him. Whenever he could get away from his office he would lock himself in his shop (he has always had a machine shop in his home) and ponder over mechanical problems or make experiments. His first investigations had in view the development of the steam automobile, which during the twenties and thirties of last century seemed to have such a brilliant future. In March, 1873, he abandoned steam as the power for a road locomotive and began the study of engines using other agents. He investigated engines to be operated by ammonia gas, by bisulphide of carbon and other liquid fuels. 1874 or 1875 he built and operated an engine that was driven by a mixture of "laughing gas" and kerosene. The mixture was burned in a small chamber and the expanded products of combustion were fed to an engine similar to the ordinary steam engine. But, owing to the internal corrosion of the engine by the mixture, this machine soon proved to be a failure.

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Mr. Selden was greatly hampered by the fact that his law practice, not very remunerative at this time, had to support both his family and his experiments, with the consequence that the latter had to be conducted upon a stringently economical basis; and by the further fact that, at the beginning of his investigation, he had no information whatever about liquid-fuel, internal-combustion engines, and had to gain it almost entirely from his own experiments. He was exploring what to him was an unknown territory. So he moved slowly, often

taking the wrong direction, often halted by seemingly insurmountable difficulties. But by 1876 he had reached the conclusion that road-locomotion would be achieved only by an internal-combustion engine of the compression type using liquid fuel, most likely one of the lighter petroleum products. At last he was on the right road.

Thirty years ago Mr. Selden never dreamed of the automobile of the present -of a touring car that would run thirty, forty or fifty miles an hour, of a racing

gained the basic idea of his engine there followed a year of thought and experiment. He had many black days. In October, 1877, he wrote in his diary, "Can't carry on about a dozen patent law suits and do much experimenting at the same time." And the next day he wrote, "If ever I get a road wagon it will be by accident. Of the almighty effort which an invention requires, who knows but the inventor?" But he kept indomitably on through these periods of depression, and by the latter part of 1877

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machine that would run two miles a minute. His dream was of a light carriage that would run as fast the second or third hour as a good horse would the firstten miles an hour. To fully understand the task he was attacking, it must be remembered that the Lenoir gas engine of this period weighed about 5,000 pounds per horse power, the fly wheel being as heavy as an ordinary touring car, and that the Otto engine of a few years later weighed per horse power about 1,500 pounds. After Mr. Selden

he felt he had conquered, either by actual experiment or by theory, all his main problems. The time had come to build the engine.

All this while people had continued to sneer at Mr. Selden. His own brother advised him to go no further, told him he might as well throw his dollars into the river. The draughtsman who made the drawings of the engine under Mr. Selden's direction (Mr. Selden was not then a practical designer of machinery), laughed at the specifications as he drew

them and openly said Mr. Selden was spending money like a fool. But Mr. Selden's faith in his idea carried him on; the specifications, then the patterns, then the castings, were made. At this stage he felt the lack of money, which had all along crippled him, with especial keenness. His compressed air chambers were sections of boiler pipes, his flywheel he picked up at second hand in a foundry, a few parts not essential to the demonstration of the running ability of the engine were omitted, and only one of the three cylinders was fitted up. At length, early in 1878, Mr. Selden's long dream stood before him in steel and brass.

Would the engine run? Would his friends and enemies still have occasion to laugh at him, or would it be his turn to laugh? The May day in 1878 when the first test was made will forever be to Mr. Selden an unforgetable day. The trial took place in the corner of a foundry boarded off into a small room. All was made ready-the ignition flame was light

ed-the fly wheel given a turn. There was a sharp explosion, then increasingly rapid explosions. The engine ran!

The

The gasoline motor has developed marvelously in the twenty-eight years that have elapsed-it now averages about ten pounds per horse power, and engines are in use that weigh less than six pounds per horse power; yet nevertheless the operation of this pioneer engine will always be of interest. cylinder and air pump chamber (see Fig. 1) are in one piece; as are also the cylinder piston and air pump piston, the latter being joined by bars. The forward stroke compresses the air in the air pump chamber d, and forces it into the compressed air tank O. The backward stroke draws fresh air into the air pump chamber, and drives the exhausted gases from the cylinder through the exhaust valve V, operated by the cam-shaft S. Air is admitted from the compressed air tank into the explosion chamber T' by the valve operated by the cam-shaft S;

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THE SELDEN AUTOMOBILE, SHOWING THE ORIGINAL ENGINE MOUNTED ON THE FRONT AXLE.

The car is backed by turning the front wheels half-way around.

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FIGURE I-VERTICAL SECTION OF ONE CHAMBER OF THE SELDEN ENGINE.

This flame is maintained by a slight quantity of air that enters through a small hole in the main inlet valve. The reciprocating motion of the piston is communicated to the crank shaft by a yoke fitted into the piston. The engine is kept cool by water in the crank chamhers, between the working cylinder and the air cylinder; the revolving of the crank shaft splashes this water over all the heated parts. This three-cylinder engine (with all three cylinders operating, no fly wheel was used) weighs about 300 pounds, and generates about five horse power.

Almost a year elapsed before Mr. Selden could spare the money necessary to file an application for a patent. The chief claim of the application, which was filed May 8, 1879, is as follows: "The combination with a road-locomotive, provided with a suitable running gear including a propelling wheel and steering mechanism, of a liquid hydrocarbon gas

vice and a suitable carriage body adapted to the conveyance of persons or goods, substantially as described." Owing to the delays natural to the prosecution of an application, the patent was not granted till November 5, 1895.

Eighteen seventy-eight and seventynine were hard years with Mr. Seldenas were many before and many after. He was financially unable to build the running gear and so complete his "gasoline buggy." But in constructing a light engine that would run he believed he had solved the problem of the automobile, and he hopefully began to try to interest capital in his invention. But he quickly found that the efforts required to evolve his invention were nothing compared to the efforts required to get it on the market. He was dealing with a new power; the public, and even manufacturers, could not understand what went on inside the engine, consequently had no confidence in it.

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