I wonder how terrific car magazine article writer Exra Dyer is related to LH Dyer, patent holder for car stuff?

 

Dan wrote an article on the "Instruction Plates" on Franklin car firewalls, in order to relate the "licensed by Ricker", and brought up this topic utterly new to me about 100 year old cars, that the "Made By" plate (familiar to most people interested in cars made before 1970) used to have info that relayed who owned some patents needed to manufacture the vehicle, and I was intrigued by Leonard Huntress Dyer's name, and the likelyhood that Ezra Dyer is related to him 

In the Sept 1912 book  Motor Truck: The National Authority of Power Haulage, Volume 3  the focus of an article is LH Dyer's company Enterprize Automobile Company (I've never heard of) (he was the president of it) that bought the rights to patents held by the "Patents Holding Association" that was using the Selden Patent to parasitically get rich from all the car makers (prior to 1911ish) in the Michigan area 

So, they had the patent rights to the sliding gear transmission! Who knew? 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10225440083209514&set=pcb.10225440086169588

1903 Thomas

This seems to me to be an oil reservoir, with glass sides to see the amount left in the reservoir

cool padded seating, and door in the back (like EMFs)

And the wicker baskets are there for everything, gold clubs, umbrella,

If you want to compare it to the 1902 Thomas, the oldest known Thomas, which was at Pebble Beach: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-1902-thomas-won-pebble-beachs-pre.html 

Alexander Hardy... took on the Selden Patent, and won. Still lost a lot, and had to go back working for a company after losing his Flint Car Co.

The Flint Roadster was the brainchild of Alexander Hardy, formerly with the Durant-Dort Carriage Company of Flint, Michigan.

 Hardy decided to go it alone, launching the Flint roadster towards the end of 1902. The steering was designed so it could have the tiller swapped to either left or right side of the seat, where ever the driver preferred to steer from

Hardy then fell foul of the infamous 'Selden Patent', granted in 1895 to George Selden for an internal combustion powered carriage, which severely hampered the development of the US auto industry prior to WWI.

Hardy was sued by the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, and although he won the resulting court case, ceased manufacture of the Flint Roadster in 1904 after 52 examples had been built. He returned to Durant-Dort, which had acquired the fledgling Buick concern, and would later serve as general manager of both Marquette and Chevrolet.

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22724/lot/109/

the race between Ford and Winton, the Selden Patent fiasco as well, was covered quite well on "The Men That Built America"

from the History channel

1904/1906 Buick touring

 
one of the few vehicles to have a Selden tag

a variety of interesting things found while browsing through the library online photos

George B. Selden in his first automobile, patented 1895... but marked 1877 because that was the year he made it. 

a photo of the first automobile

 1886 Benz

 1903 Olds Pirate, a one cylinder special race car that held a record for the one mile speed record

 1904 curved dash Olds

 1907 sports racer

 1906 Stanley

 Suposed to be the first limo in America

 J. M. Quinby & Company; Builders of aluminum automobile bodies 1909

Mercer

I noticed the odd sign above the storefront "Automobile Jobbers"

 1944 east 138th street ... and that truck bed in the bottom of the photo looks handmade, and put into the rumble seat area... was the neat trick to shift a car classification during fuel rationing during WW2 from car to commercial truck and then it could get more gas more often if I recall correctly.. and this is a 1944 photo

Electric car about 1905, on the charger in the garage

 the caption on the side says "Brooklyn Auto Graveyard"

 Stuck in a mud hole (DEEP one) in Texas 1919

The Czar leaving the racecourse at Krasnoe Selo, in his 40 horse-power Delaunay Belleville in 1909

Above racing at Indy

Above and below, racing at Ormand Beach

Barney Oldfield in the advertising

the trophys from the 1908 Prince Henry tour

1922 advertisement

the caption to the above drawing seems to be "When Greek meets Greek" and I don't understand it

this advertisement was captioned "his Herreshoff car"

 The Pullman car Palmyra

 Tenth Avenue and 29th Street, Manhattan. December 23, 1935

found while searching around at http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital