I’ve learned one big thing over the years, especially in the last decade when I’ve been running tech history pieces, looking up information in obscure journals and books, OUTSIDE the standard media and school sources.
EVERYTHING in the usual media and history books is false.
EVERY FACT we learned in school is demonstrably false, by commission or omission.
The SKILLS we learned are true because a SKILL can’t be false.
This is especially valid for the historical figures we were required to mock. Consensus requires official mockery and disdain. In fact Lysenko was right. In fact Schiaparelli was right. Harding was emphatically and powerfully right.
Now I’m wondering if Selden was right.
The standard story about autos says that George Selden was a fraudster who built a patent pool on a false claim. Last year I learned that the Selden pool was attempting to organize the smaller manufacturers, especially the carmakers outside Detroit, as a counterforce against Ford.
Now a 1958 movie by an oil company casually credits Selden for inventing the internal combustion engine in 1879. It doesn’t mention Benz or Otto.
Like all major inventions except the phonograph, internal combustion developed gradually by trial and error. The usual story credits Benz as the starting point for the correct path and ignores all others. In fact there wasn’t a single inventor, and Selden appears to be the first American in the chain.
The casual mention in this movie proves that Selden was considered the prime inventor by SOME big players in 1958. The GM consensus wasn’t universal yet.
Polistra's Mill 