page_title: Charles Brady King
section_title: First car made by King
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Brady King / First car made by King
caption_attribution_description: English: King 1893 car design for Road Carriage
context_page_description: Charles Brady King was an American engineer and entrepreneur remembered as an automotive pioneer, artist, etcher, musician, poet, architect, mystic, industrialist and inventor.
  King was the first person in Detroit to design, build and drive a self-propelled automobile – 3 months before Henry Ford built his automobile. The Detroit Journal of March 7, 1896, reported that King drove his motor-powered vehicle down Woodward Avenue – being the first person in Detroit to build and drive such a vehicle.
  The Journal also reported that King made and sold the first complete automobile in Detroit.
context_section_description: King started designing and building his first car from the time of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. He test drove his first car in Detroit in front of hundreds of spectators on March 6, 1896, at speeds up to seven miles per hour. It was powered by a Sintz engine. The time was just before 11 P.M. The route that King did started from a building on St. Antoine Street, going first south toward the Detroit River. When he arrived at Jefferson Avenue he turned right. After passing by several businesses he arrived at Woodward Avenue. He turned right again onto that street. He again passed by several businesses and then stopped for a short time at Cadillac Square at the Russell House hotel. Henry Ford was present when King demonstrated his horseless carriage, riding a bicycle behind!
  King showed to the Detroit public his car, which probably was the first in Michigan, however not the first in the world nor even the first in the United States. King served as a mentor to Henry Ford, Ransom E. Olds and others for their inspiration to develop a "horseless carriage". Their gasoline powered automobiles came out months later.  He did secret road tests in 1895, prior to this public display.
  The Detroit Journal interviewed King and he provided the Journal with his most famous quote:
  I am convinced they [horseless carriages] will in time supersede the horse.
  The Detroit Free Press newspaper published an article the next morning:
  The first horseless carriage seen in this city was out on the streets last night. It is the invention of Charles B. King, a Detroiter, and its progress up down Woodward Avenue about 11 o’clock caused a deal of comment, people crowding around it so that its progress was impeded. The apparatus seemed to work all right, and went at the rate of five or six miles an hour at an even rate of speed.
  King intended to run his motocycle in America's first automobile race on Thanksgiving Day in 1895.  His car wasn't quite ready for the race, and like more than 70 other potential entrants to the event he was forced to drop out of the race. Instead, King served as an umpire during the race on the car driven by Oscar Mueller.  When Mueller collapsed from exposure near the end of the race, King took over as the driver.  Other than the winning Duryea, this was the only other car to complete the entire course of the race.
caption: Charles B. King 1893 first car design
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