Everybody knows that Henry Ford — whose Model T turns 100 this year — invented the automobile. Except, of course, he didn't. Ford is generally credited with introducing the modern, mass-produced automobile that arguably differentiates our world from our ancestors' more than any other invention. (Think how different your ancestors' 19th-century migrations — and the cities they settled in — would've been if everyone had owned a car.) But Ford didn't build the first automobile.

Exactly who did turns out to be a tricky question. The answer depends in part on how you define automobile.