Historedia
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Grant of Selden Patent

When
1895-11-05
Where
United States
Part of
George Selden granted the first U.S. automobile patent

George B. Selden received U.S. Patent 549,160 for a road engine on November 5, 1895, after a sixteen-year delay due to amendments.

Selden filed for a patent on May 8, 1879, with George Eastman as a witness. He filed a series of amendments to his application, which stretched out the legal process, resulting in a delay of 16 years before the patent was granted on 5 November 1895.

Sources

  1. George B. Selden Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-04
  2. History of the automobile Wikipedia
  3. Patent Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-03

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.