OUR FIRST CENTURY BEHIND THE WHEEL

THE argument has been going on for a long time.

Who invented the automobile? And when? If you believe the French, a very peculiar contraption called the Delamare-Deboutteville started it all in 1884. If you believe the Germans, it was a fellow named Carl Benz, tinkering away in his shop two years later.

No matter whose side you are on, though, it must be admitted that those two original ''cars'' were less than practical forms of transportation. Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville's crude carriage broke in two on its first run. The Benz vehicle, a three-wheeler with the engine behind the seat, ran so poorly in its first public appearance that all further testing was done in the dead of night.

Nonetheless, much of the world today gives credit to Carl Benz for the vehicle that most successfully pulled together the disparate technology of the day. His ''motorwagen,'' it is conceded by everyone but the French, was the real granddaddy of the automobile, and the patent issued in Mannheim, Germany, on Jan. 29, 1886, is the reason for this year's centennial celebration of the car.

The German and the Frenchman were not alone, of course. A century ago, inventors everywhere were scrambling to build motorized vehicles. Gottlieb Daimler was hard at it, as were Rudolph Diesel, Charles and Frank Duryea, Henry Ford, Louis Renault and Ransom E. Olds, among others.

The arrival of the car in the late 1880's was inevitable, a long-wished-for alternative to the horse, to the buggy, to the bicycle. It was born of a desire for mobility, for more rapid transit, and it was finally made possible by the accumulation of several centuries' worth of knowledge and a burgeoning technology. Propellant, Rubber and Steel

As early as 1655, a Chinese priest had experimented with self-propulsion by applying a jet of steam to a windmill mounted on wheels. Steam power came into its own in the late 1700's. A gunpowder engine was patented in 1800, and internal-combustion engines were being developed through the early part of that century.