His first experiment was not long in the making. With a piece of gas pipe, an old wheel, some wire, and other scraps of metal assembled on a long board fastened to the kitchen sink in the Ford home, he made his first model gas engine. Although it sputtered and jumped, it worked. During the years that Henry Ford worked on his homemade engines, other men were also experimenting with gas engines, and they were just as determined as he was to make them operate successfully. The fair in Chicago had aroused the curiosity of many people, and the newspapers began to carry stories about “horseless carriages.” From France came word of the exploits of Daimler and Benz with their “road wagons,” and in 1895, New Yorkers saw three Benz “horseless wagons.” Henry Ford traveled East to see them. Late in the same year, the Chicago _Times-Herald_ announced that it would give a $5,000 prize to the winner of a race between these new contraptions. Only four cars were ready at race time, and only two got away from the starting line—a Duryea and a Benz. The Benz won. One of Henry Ford’s friends, Charles B. King of Detroit, was an umpire of the race. Back in Detroit, the two friends probably discussed the merits of the cars that King had seen in Chicago. At any rate, King gave Ford some intake valves for his engines. Henry Ford continued to add to his knowledge of gas engines. Soon after the race in Chicago, the _American Machinist_ magazine told of an engine invented by E. J. Pennington which, in a day when most gas engines were bulky and heavy, was light and compact. This idea appealed to Ford, and his work took a new turn. The First _Ford_ Takes to the Road By the spring of 1896, he was ready to make a trial run with his own horseless carriage. First he had to tear out part of the brick wall of his shed in order to get his machine into the alley. Once in the open, the engine was started, and the car bumped down the cobblestone street and continued successfully on its first short run around the block. A few weeks later, he drove it out to the homestead in Dearborn. His father was not impressed with the contraption. These first tests meant more labor; hours of changing, adjusting, and repairing were ahead. During the day, Ford was the chief engineer of the Illuminating Company, but in his spare time, he was Ford the experimenter. The signs of the times were encouraging. The great inventor, Thomas Edison, announced in the newspapers that the horse was doomed. Up in Lansing, R. E. Olds produced his first Oldsmobile. Alexander Winton of Cleveland drove his auto from Cleveland to New York, making what was called a “reliability” run. William K. Vanderbilt bought a car to race. All over the nation, people began to read and hear about the marvels of the new invention, of the men who were building cars, and of the races they held at fairgrounds and parks.