"America invented the automobile" - Obama
 

"I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

It's a tricky history but I wouldn't get the US credit for it. Maybe Karl Benz in Germany. Whatcha think?

No I think the very first one was a ford.

no ford put the automobile on an assembly line and pumped them out cheap

It was Karl Benz, but the technology was perfected in the United States, and the assembly line was all us. Without that, cars would have been hand-crafted luxury items and I would have ridden a carriage to work this morning (rather than my roommate's sedan, lol)

Who the fuck is his speech writer, anyways? Was it Bush's speech writer?

Henry Ford is credited with standardization and interchangeability in the auto industry, maybe he meant something along those lines ..

adl colin, i've noticed your post/thread quality has gone done recently. i used to look forward to your comments re: stocks and such.

it's too bad that this is what you took from the speech last nite, i expected more from you.

Benz was the first to perfect the gas combustion engine but didn't manfacture entire cars until much later. Like others have pointed out ford was the first to allow affordable assembly line made cars. They could assemble a model t in something like an hour and half.

I myself find the history of technology to be fascinating. You're free not to participate.

There are multiple answers to who invented the automobile and it is interesting to see what people think about it. I would think most Americans would say Ford and most Europeans would say Benz.

Same with the history of the radio which has such interesting answers as Marconi, Tesla and Alexander Popov. Most know Marconi, some know Tesla, hardly anyone knows Popov outside of Eastern Europe. All legitimate answers in my opinion.

And how about TV? Is it Farnsworth or Zworykin?

And the WWW? Would you go with Tim Berners-Lee or Al Gore?!

According to the American "Library of Congress" there is not a straightforward answer
though if you had to give credit to one inventor it would be "Karl Benz".

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/auto.html

That caught me off guard too... I thought it was a pretty ignorant thing to say. :2 cents:

Wiki::
Karl Friedrich Benz, sometimes spelled as Carl, (November 25, 1844, Karlsruhe, – April 4, 1929, Ladenburg, Germany) was a German engine designer and automobile engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile and pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach working as partners, also worked on similar types of inventions, without knowledge of the work of the other, but Benz patented his work first and, after that, patented all of the processes that made the internal combustion engine feasible for use in automobiles. In 1879 Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, which he designed in 1878.

Why Carl Benz? The first known "automobile" was a steam run creation of French inventor Nicolas Cugnot in 1769. If we were being "combustion engine" specific then yes it would be Benz, but we are talking about the first "automobile."

Yea he should have added "industry" behind it, but overall the guy can give a hell of speech... :pimp

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First of all, That answer is a grey area. You can research and get different correct answers, his being one of them.

Second, Obama is one of the greatest speakers of all time. To compare him to Bush is plain ignorant

Giving Ford credit for creating the automobile because he set up an assembly line is like giving Google credit for creating the Internet because they allow you to search it quickly.

He probably meant setting up the assembly line and thus making automobiles affordable, but saying the US invented the automobile is still an ignorant statement. He should have worded it differently.

However, if that's all we have to complain about when he gives a speech, that's a good thing!

I'll be fucked if we're gonna give France credit for anything but baguette. :1orglaugh

well since nations dont invent things and people do , i would suspect he was speaking in "broad" terms. i.e. america was the pioneer of the auto industry.

Ford wasn't even the first American production line manufacturer, it was Oldsmobile.

Almost a decade before Ford Oldsmobile had started producing more affordable cars on a production line...

Oh and Benz weren't building cars only licensing patents and selling engines, the first gasoline car manufacturer was Peugeot.

exactly lol
well said

i think mc ren should write the speech of any president.

I'm sneaky as FUCK when it comes to crime!

I caught that too. He probably meant (I hope) America invented modern car manufacturing.

No Henry Ford just made them affordable and set up the production line.

I'm sure that's what he meant and anyone that gets all pissy about this is fucked up.

close enough, fuck it

YOU=ANAL get over it.

Germans are also good at starting wars and having us kick their asses.

The Republicans are outrage!

at least we gave up on starting new ones after 1945 :2 cents:

If you wanna go THERE then why not Ferdinand Verbiest?

pretty sure if bush had said this, no one would be defending him and everyone would be adding it to his resume of idiocies


doesn't mean i like bush either, i'm just saying...

"Around 1672 he designed ? as a toy for the Chinese Emperor ? a steam-propelled trolley which was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile').... only 60cm long.... It is not known if Verbiest's model was ever built at the time."

We are talking about "practical" inventions, as in completed to working models. Leonardo made sketched designs for a helicopter but he isn't the "inventor" who works out all the technical bugs for a working model.

I could sketch a design for a time machine or a teleporter but that doesn't make ME the inventor. :winkwink:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

By far the best comeback of the day. Kudos to you man. :thumbsup

the car was invented by a white european, black president mixed somethig up

Im sure Colin is crushed.

Obama is lama'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile

sure you can't walk away with it, because the goddamn fucking check engine light is on

I don't disagree with you. Sketching it ain't inventing it. Like you said "It is not known if Verbiest's model was ever built". Possibly it was. It's not likely we'll ever know.

Apparently Cugnot and Verbiest are in the same boat. Did they actually build them? Did they actually run?

"Although Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769 by adapting an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran or was stable"

it definitely wasn't ford, but it's a common misconception.

who cares.. Obama was speaking to the american people who in general believe that america did "invent" the automobile and since it is popular belief, it must be correct.

what is 100% correct is that America perfected and branded the automobile, not an invention but surely much more important.

It wont matter once the oil is gone.