He was born on September 14, 1846 in Clarkson, New York, United States, son of Henry Rogers and Laura Anne (Baldwin) Selden.
He was of English ancestry, seventh in descent from Thomas Selden who was in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1639. His father was an able lawyer, lieutenant-governor of New York in 1856 and judge of the court of appeals for two terms in the sixties.
After young Selden had attended the local schools and St. Albans Classical Preparatory School, he went to the University of Rochester, 1861-64, his parents having moved to Rochester in 1859, but he did not finish his course.
In 1865 he entered Yale College as a classical student. Since he was interested in engineering and technology he found classical studies irksome and therefore welcomed, in a way, a call to go to his father, who had become seriously ill while traveling in Europe. Returning to the United States in 1867, he entered the Sheffield Scientific School for a few months but once more went to Rochester, entered the law offices of his father and uncle, studied law for three years.
He is said to have enlisted in the 6th New York Cavalry at the beginning of the Civil War. In 1871 he was admitted to the bar. Being particularly interested in mechanical subjects, he specialized in patent law, handling the occasional invention and patent litigation cases his father obtained. This was hardly enough, however, to satisfy his interest in technology, and as fast as he could afford it he equipped a shop of his own for experimental work.
He began a series of investigations on road traction and on the various power agencies. By 1873 he had abandoned steam as the power for a road locomotive, and he began the study of engines using liquid and gaseous fuels. Having a family to support and very little money, he progressed slowly, but in 1875 he had built an engine, which turned out to be unsuccessful, operated by the expanded products of combustion of a mixture of kerosene and laughing-gas.
Meanwhile he had engaged in other inventive work, especially in the design of machinery to prepare barrel hoops, and in 1875 he obtained a patent for a machine for shaving half-round hoops; he secured three patents for improvements in 1876 and two more in 1877, all of which he sold at a meager profit.
He continued his work on a self-propelled vehicle, especially after 1876, when he came to the conclusion that the type of internal combustion engine best suited to his purpose was one invented by George Brayton in 1872 and 1874 using hydrocarbon liquid fuels. The Brayton engine was a very heavy two-cycle stationary design with an open crankcase. Selden reduced its weight by inclosing the crankcase, increased its power by changing the manner of furnishing fuel to the cylinders, and by 1877 had made a light-weight, high-speed, three-cylinder gasoline compression engine of the Brayton type. He then designed an automobile and on May 8, 1879, applied for a patent.
When he was granted patent No. 549, 160 for a "road engine" he sold the rights to his patent on a royalty basis to W. C. Whitney of the Columbia Motor Company and Electric Vehicle Company of New Jersey.
By 1906 Selden was receiving royalties from almost all of the automobile manufacturers in the United States and was able to organize his own company in Rochester, the Selden Motor Vehicle Company. In September 1909, after many delays, the case was argued before the United States circuit court of the southern district of New York, and again the Selden patent was sustained.
The Ford Motor Company took an appeal, and on January 11, 1911, a written decision was handed down that Selden had a valid and true patent but that the defendants were not guilty of infringement because they were using the Otto four-cycle type of engine and not the Brayton two-cycle type designated in the patent. Inasmuch as all manufacturers were using the Otto type of engine this was a far-reaching victory for the automobile industry. Although the patent had but a few months more to run, Selden's royalties stopped at once. He then turned to his own automobile business.
He died in Rochester.
George Baldwin Selden designed a road-locomotive, virtually an automobile, which combined an engine, running gear, driving wheels, propeller-shaft and clutch, and a carriage body, and received a patent for an automobile. He organized his own company the Selden Motor Vehicle Company and initially received royalty on all cars sold, but legal fight for patent infringement destroyed Selden's income stream. He also was a popular lawyer and successfully represented photography pioneer George Eastman in patent matters.
On December 14, 1871, he had married Clara Drake Woodruff of Rochester, who died in 1903; in April 1909 he married Jean Shipley. At the time of his death in Rochester he was survived by his wife, two sons, and two daughters.
