"You Made Me What I Am Today* 



There are numbers of patents 

 that have made money and lost 

 more in the automobile game, 

 not counting all the accessories 

 for ruining a man's pocketbook, 

 such as spotlights, roller cur- 

 tains, mud scrapers, dust suckers, 

 tack pullers and perfume bottles. 

 The Tillinghast patents covered 

 single-tube tires, and Theodore 

 Dodge made money before that 

 tire blew out; Dunlop made 

 money; the Grant patent for 

 solid tires reaped a fortune and 

 Harry F. Baker is riding in ease 

 on Kardo patents for ball bear-| 

 ings. But it is William Barber 

 of Brooklyn who smiles at us 

 above, over his valve 

 cages used by valve-in- 

 head cars and motor- 

 cycles. Great auto- 

 mobile companies 

 pay him royalties 



Since all great men are linked 

 with their enemies, George B. 

 Selden ought not to object to 

 our mention of him in the same 

 breath with Henry Ford. Back 

 in 1879, Selden quietly took out 

 a basic patent on the modern 

 automobile. The document dealt 

 with a gas engine, using a clutch 

 and transmission to drive the 

 wheels of a vehicle, and it caused 

 more battles than the Indians 

 ever fought. The first great 

 cases were won by Selden. Ford 

 with the aid of Briscoe won the 

 second batch. The patents were 

 eventually declared invalid. 

 Over eighty manufacturers paid 

 a total of $2,000,000 in royalties 

 under the Selden patents. Look 

 in any old magazine and see 

 their names in advertisements 



will look a long way through 

 Who's Who in America without 

 finding these names, but it is an 

 oversight that Leonard Huntress 

 Dyer is not in there. Most of 

 these lights of the automobile 

 game were just crazy inventors 

 — according to their neighbors — 

 but Dyer is a well-known lawyer 

 of Chicago and New York. The 

 papers in his case — we ought to 

 call them limousine papers be- 

 cause they all led to closed car 

 opulence — had to do with a 

 series of gears which employed a 

 direct drive in one line with the 

 clutch engine and driving wheels. 

 Fortunately Dyer knew some- 

 thing about the courts. So he 

 fought only a short distance 

 down the ages and then sold 

 the rights to an association of 

 manufacturers of automobiles 



Oscar Hedstrom, who is older now 

 than when he posed for the picture 

 at left, showing him with his first 

 motorcycle, was a bicycle rider in the 

 old days before gasoline did the work. 

 He risked his neck before Glen Curtiss 

 made his famous speed record in 

 Florida. He wanted a way to pace a 

 rider without wearing out the legs of 

 two or three men; so he put a gas 

 engine on the bicycle and patented the 

 idea. He has never recovered since, 

 because the royalties have been coming 

 in a golden stream and because he 

 came to be regarded as such a valuable 

 motorcycle engineer that he was given 

 a contract with one of the biggest 

 of the manufacturers in the business 



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