It is a challenge when it comes to determining a single person as being the inventor of the automobile. An estimated 100,000 patents led to cars as we know them, and people often disagree on what qualifies as the first automobile. For historians who believe that early steam-powered road vehicles were the beginning, then the person who developed the car is a man named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. He was a French military engineer who built a steam-powered tricycle that possessed artillery in 1769.
Some historians contend that the first real automobile was gasoline-powered, which points to two different inventors: Karl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Daimler. These two men filed their patents on the same day in 1886. Benz's three-wheeled vehicle was the first to combine an internal combustion engine with an integrated chassis. Daimler's motorized carriage was the first four-wheeled automobile and showcased the first high-speed gasoline engine.
The year 1886 is known as the birth of the modern car when German inventor Karl Benz patented his Benz Patent Motorwagen. Cars became more attainable to the public early in the 20th century. The first car that was accessible to the masses was 1908 Model T, an American vehicle manufactured by The Ford Motor Company. In 1886, Benz designed and patented the first internal combustion flat engine. In 1899, Benz became a joint stock company.
The first design for an American car made in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York. In 1895, Selden was granted a United States patent for a two-stroke car engine. In 1893, the first running, gasoline-powered American car was built and road tested by the Duryea brothers of Massachusetts. The first commercial run of the Duryea motor wagon took place in 1893. The Studebaker Automobile Company started to build vehicles in 1904.
