He had proceeded so far on one occasion in interesting a Rochester business man, that he had him in his store and was on the point of getting him to put up $5,000, when he made a simple remark that completely “spilled the beans.” He said: “Jim, you and I will live to see more carriages on Main Street run by motor than are now drawn by horses.” The prospective investor looked at Selden for half a minute, and came to a conclusion expressed in these words: “George, you are crazy, and I won’t have anything to do with your scheme,” and with this ultimatum the man stalked out of the store. Twenty-five years later this man met Selden, and, extending his hand, said: “Well, George, you were right years ago when you said there would be more automobiles in Main Street than horses.” But Selden ignored the man’s extended hand, and with passion thrilling in his tones said: “Yes, and I wasn’t so —— crazy as you and the other fools said I was,” and walked off. And he never spoke to the man afterward. Selden’s patent could have been issued any time within the sixteen years that he let it lie dormant. He kept the application alive at the patent office by legitimate methods, and his reason for not bringing the matter to a head was that at no time in those sixteen years was he ready to manufacture under it, and he put off the actual issuance until such time as he was prepared to take full advantage of the privileges it conferred. He was alive to the fact that the years of a patent are numbered, and he aimed to time the issue so that the patent would not expire before he could derive the benefits from it. It was in 1895 that the patent was issued, and in 1900 Selden disposed of it to the Electric Vehicle Company of New Jersey. In the meantime, the development of electric motor vehicles had begun, and in 1885, Benz, a German, built the first road vehicle to be run by the internal-combustion, hydro-carbon motor. It was a tricycle, and its motor was single-cylindered, four-cycled, after the type of an engine developed in 1876, in Germany, by Otto, and water cooled. It had electric ignition and a mechanical carburetor. Benz secured a patent in 1886 on his invention and it ran successfully, making ten miles an hour. Benz was limited to the use of certain streets in Mannheim, Germany, for running his machine, out of deference to the tendency to nerves of horses and their drivers or riders. This tricycle by Benz was the forerunner of the Benz automobile. This is one of the most successful and popular cars in Germany—and before the war, in all Europe. The first automobile imported into the United States was a Benz car brought to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Up to 1917 the Benz car was an entrant in most automobile speed contests.