To call the relationship between brothers Charles and Frank Duryea fraught would be an understatement. Charles considered himself a superlative designer; it was his idea in the first place to draw up how a gasoline engine might power a quadracycle, something still revolutionary for the 1880s. Frank Duryea was just the tinkerer -- the greasemonkey in their bicycle shop who might actually build Charles' designs. Which he did; and in September 1893, Frank Duryea drove their creation 600 feet -- the first trip of a gas-powered automobile in America. The brothers would build 13 copies, win the first automobile race and seem destined for greatness. But they weren't; Charles left their firm, determined to sell machines no one really wanted, while Frank Duryea retired by 1919 and lived until 1967. You can see their work in the Smithsonian -- and hear it below: