MR. PRESIDENT: AMERICA DIDN'T INVENT THE AUTOMOBILE

"...thy word is truth." (from John 17:17)

I watched most of President Barack Obama's speech to Congress tonight...the "sort of" State of the Union address. I'm a right of center Republican, so there ARE a number of issues about which the President and I disagree. Even so, President Obama is an excellent speaker. Overall, his delivery was very good. He's definitely a charismatic speaker and President. I heartily agreed with probably about half of what he had to say, and I disagreed to one degree or another with about half of what he had to say.

There IS one "nit-pik" I have about the speech. When the President was talking about the importance of the revitalization of the American automobile industry he stated that "America is the country that invented the automobile". MANY people believe that, but it's absolutely untrue!

In fact, the gasoline-powered automobile was invented in Europe. Both Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz (competitors) applied for patents for gasoline vehicles in Germany in the same year: 1889. That was almost ten years ahead of the American gasoline automobile.

It IS true that Henry Ford built one experimental gasoline automobile in 1893, four years after Dailmer and Benz, but the Ford Motor Company did not actually go into business until 1903. There were a number of American cars built in the late 1890s and early 1900s but overall the U.S. automobile industry lagged about 5-10 years behind Germany, Italy, and France.

In the very early years of the Twentieth Century, there WERE over one hundred automobile manufacturers in the United States, not counting homemade autos or tiny garages which built only a handful of cars a year. Most of these companies were in just a few states. Probably the leading auto manufacturing states prior to 1910 were Michigan and Massachusetts. It was Henry Ford's Model T, introduced in 1908 as a car for the common man which sold like hotcakes, put American on wheels and set America on the way to becoming the leading automobile manufacturing country for many decades.

I heartily agree that I'd like to see the U.S. auto industry return to health and prominence, but, Mr. President, America didn't invent the automobile!