The Invention of the Automobile.

Although some steam-driven vehicles were built in England, France, and the United States in the early nineteenth century, the prototypes of the modern motorcar were built by the Germans Gottleib Daimler and Karl Benz. Daimler first used his gasoline engine in a four-wheeled vehicle in 1886. The two men licensed their vehicles for production in France during the 1890s.

Ford.

Born on a farm in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1863, Henry Ford saw his first horseless carriage (a steamdriven one) at the age of twelve and never forgot the tremendous impression it made on him. His earliest automotive projects were aimed more at developing a practical tractor than a pleasure vehicle. Ford established himself in Detroit in 1891, where he was employed by the Edison Illuminating Company, and soon began to tinker with automobile engines. Ford did not invent the motorcar, nor was...