[1] He was born near Canton, Illinois, a son of George Washington Duryea and Louisa Melvina Turner, and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but spent most of his life working in Springfield, Massachusetts.

[3] Duryea and his brother Frank (1869–1967) were initially bicycle makers in Washington, D.C., but later became world-renowned as the first American gasoline-powered car manufacturers, headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts.

[5] On September 21, 1893, the Duryea brothers road-tested the first-ever, working American gasoline-powered automobile on the Howard Bemis farm in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

[6] The Duryea's "motor wagon" was a used horse drawn buggy that the brothers had purchased for $70 and into which they had installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine.

[5] This particular car was put into storage in 1894 and stayed there until 1920, when it was rescued by a former Duryea engineer Inglis M. Uppercu[8] and presented to the United States National Museum.

The first chapter briefly surveys the early evolution of automobiles, with mention of his own involvement from 1891 and the famous victory of the Duryea Motor Wagon in the first London-to Brighton race (1996).