decars1-1, Exercise 3: Defining "car"

Model answer (check the details):

How the definition changes the answer:
1. If "car" means any self-propelled road vehicle, the answer reaches back to Cugnot's steam carriage of 1769 in France.
2. If it means a vehicle with an internal-combustion engine, then early engines by Lenoir (1860s) and the work of Siegfried Marcus come into the picture.
3. If it means a practical vehicle with a light, high-speed petrol engine that could be built and sold, then Benz (patent of January 1886) and Daimler and Maybach (1885 to 1886) are the usual starting point, and their work was independent.

A careful sentence: "Carl Benz patented the first practical petrol-engined automobile in Germany in 1886, working at the same time as Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach; earlier self-propelled vehicles, such as Cugnot's steam carriage of 1769, existed, and the idea of a single inventor is a simplification."

Takeaway: when someone says "X invented Y", ask for the definition.