Just a little before midnight on March 6th,1896 in the city of Detroit, a 28 year old mechanic, Charles Brady King wheeled a strange looking contraption, something like a four wheeled buggy, out of the machine shop, looked up and down the street 

cranked the four cylinder engine in to reluctant life, got in and chugged down the street. The onlookers who saw this strange looking contraption that night got a big kick out of the situation but few if any at all realised they were witnessing a moment of historic significance, the birth of an industrial revolution, for Charles Brady King was the first man to build and drive a gasoline automobile in the city which is today the motor capital  of the world.

Story told by Dr Philip Thomas, research engineer of the Westinghouse Research Laboratory.