Get a Horse! America’s Skepticism Toward the First Automobiles

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.