IBS 
 
 

AUTOMOBILE 
 BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIVES AND THE 
 WORK OF THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN 
 IDENTIFIED WITH THE INVENTION AND 
 DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-PROPELLED 
 VEHICLES ON THE COMMON ROADS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MONOGRAPH PRESS 
 
Copyright, 1904 
 
 BY THE MONOGRAPH PRESS 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 
 u) 
 
FOREWORD 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 N a large sense the history of the rise of the auto- 
 mobile has been a history of some of the foremost 
 inventors, mechanical engineers, manufacturers 
 and active business men of more than a full cen- 
 tury. The subject of self-propelled vehicles on the com- 
 mon roads has enlisted the faculties of many men whose 
 minds have been engrossed with the study and the solu- 
 tion of mechanical and engineering problems, purely from 
 an absorbing love of science ; it has had the financial sup- 
 port of those whose energies are constantly and forcefully 
 exerted in the industrial and commercial activities of the 
 age; it has received the merited consideration of those who 
 regard as of paramount importance any addition to the 
 sum of successful human endeavor and any influence that 
 contributes to the further advance of modern civilization. 
 Along these lines of thought this book of AUTOMOBILE 
 BIOGRAPHIES has been prepared. On its pages are 
 sketches of the lives and the work of those who have been 
 most active in planning, inventing and perfecting the mod- 
 ern horseless highway vehicle, in adapting it to the public 
 needs for pleasure or business and in promoting its use- 
 fulness and broadening the field of its utility. 
 
 Included herein are accounts of the pioneer inventors, 
 the noted investigators and the contemporaneous workers 
 who have helped to make the automobile in its many forms 
 the most remarkable mechanical success of to-day and the 
 
 5 
 
 M119809 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 most valuable and epoch-making addition to the conveni- 
 ences of modern social, industrial and commercial life. 
 These sketches have been carefully prepared from the best 
 sources of information, works of reference, personal pa- 
 pers and so on ? and are believed to be thoroughly accurate 
 and reliable. Much of the information contained in them 
 has been derived from exceedingly rare old volumes and 
 papers that are not generally accessible, and it comes with 
 a full flavor of newness. Much also has been acquired 
 from original sources and has never before been given to 
 the public. 
 
 The investigator into this subject will find, doubtless, 
 to his very great surprise, that the story of the pioneer 
 inventors, who, in the early part of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, experimented with the problems of the steam road 
 carriage, has been recorded voluminously and with much 
 detail. It was a notable movement, that absorbed the 
 abundant attention of inventors, manufacturers and the 
 public at large at that time. 
 
 Writers of that day recorded with a great deal of 
 particularity the experimenting with boilers, engines, ma- 
 chinery and carriages, and the promoting of companies for 
 the transportation of passengers and the hauling of goods. 
 Modern students and historians of this subject find 
 themselves greatly indebted to the writers of that epoch, 
 like Gordon, Herbert and others, who preserved, with 
 such painstaking care, for future generations, as well as 
 for their own time, the account of the lives and labors of 
 such men as Watt, Trevithick, Maceroni, Hancock and 
 others. Every modern work upon this subject draws gen- 
 erously from those sources. 
 
 Concerning the later period from the middle of the 
 century that has just ended, down to the present time, 
 
 6 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 there is less concrete information, readily available. With 
 the cessation of public interest in the matter and its gen- 
 eral relegation into the background, by inventors, engi- 
 neers and those who had previously been financial backers 
 of the experimenting, writers ceased to give the subject 
 the enthusiastic attention that they had before bestowed 
 upon it. Records of that period are scant, partly because 
 there was so little to record and partly because no one 
 cared to record even that little. 
 
 Until comparatively recent times the historian of the 
 self-propelled vehicle, who was so much in evidence sev- 
 enty-five years ago, had not reappeared. Even now his 
 work is generally of a desultory character, voluminous, 
 but largely ephemeral. It is widely scattered, not easily 
 accessible and already considerably forgotten from day to 
 day. Especially of the men of the last half century, who 
 have made the present-day automobile possible and are 
 now contributing to its greater future, the following pages 
 present much that has never been brought together in this 
 form. It is both history and the material for history. 
 
 It is believed that these sketches will be found pecu- 
 liarly interesting and permanently valuable. Individually 
 they are clear presentations of the achievements of some 
 of the most distinguished engineers and inventors of the 
 last hundred years. Collectively they present a complete 
 story of the inception and gradual development of the 
 automobile from the first clumsy steam wagons of Cugnot, 
 Trevithick, Evans and others to the perfected carriage of 
 to-day. 
 
 The chapter on The Origin and Development of the 
 Automobile is a careful study and review of the conditions 
 that attended the attempts to install the first common road 
 steam carriages, the tentative experimenting with bicycles, 
 
 7 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 tricycles and other vehicles in the middle of the last cen- 
 tury and the renaissance of the last two decades. Several 
 of the illustrations are from old and rare prints, and others 
 are from photographs. 
 
 It is not possible to set down here all the authorities 
 that have been consulted in the preparation of this work. 
 Special acknowledgment, however, must be made to The 
 Engineering Magazine for permission to use text and 
 photographs, and to J. G. Pangborn for permission to 
 use a great deal of interesting information regarding the 
 early steam inventors contained in his work, The World's 
 Railway, and to reproduce portrait sketches of Trevithick, 
 Murdoch, and Read, from the same valuable volume. 
 
 LYMAN HORACE WEEKS. 
 
 NEW YORK, January, 1905. 
 
 8 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
 THE AUTOMOBILE 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
 AUTOMOBILE 
 
 STRANGE EARLY VEHICLES 
 
 He who would fully acquaint himself with the his- 
 tory of the inception and growth of the idea of travel 
 by self-propelled vehicles on the public highways 
 must go further back in the annals of the past than 
 he is likely first to anticipate. Nearly three cen- 
 turies ago men of mechanical and scientific turns of 
 mind were giving attention to the subject, although 
 their thoughts at that time were mostly confined to 
 the realms of imaginative speculation. Even before 
 that philosophers occasionally dreamed of what 
 might be in some far off time. Roger Bacon, in the 
 thirteenth century, looking into the distant future, 
 made this prediction: "It will be possible to con- 
 struct chariots so that without animals they may be 
 moved with incalculable speed." It was several hun- 
 dred years before men were ready to give practical 
 attention to this idea, and about 1740 good Bishop 
 Berkeley could only make this as a prediction and 
 not a realization : "Mark me, ere long we shall see 
 a pan of coals brought to use in place of a feed of 
 oats." 
 
 But the ancients, in a way, anticipated even Roger 
 Bacon and Bishop Berkeley, for Heliodorus refers to 
 a triumphal chariot at Athens that was moved by 
 slaves who worked the machinery, and Pancirollus 
 also alludes to such chariots, 
 ii 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 HORSELESS WAGONS IN CHINA 
 
 Approaching the seventeenth century the investi- 
 gator finds that definite examples are becoming more 
 numerous, even if as yet not very practical. China, 
 which, like Egypt, seems to have known and buried 
 many ideas centuries before the rest of the world 
 achieved them, had horseless vehicles before 1600. 
 These merit, at least, passing attention even though 
 they were not propelled by an engine, for the present 
 automobile is the outgrowth of that old idea to 
 eliminate the horse as the means of travel. 
 
 Matthieu Ricci, 1552-1610, a Jesuit missionary in 
 China, told how in that country a wagon not drawn 
 by horses or other animals was in common use. In 
 an early collection of travels this vehicle was de- 
 scribed as follows : "This river is so cloyed with 
 ships because it is not frozen in winter that the way 
 is stopped with multitude; which made Ricius ex- 
 change his way by water into another (more strange 
 to us) by waggon, if we may so call it, which had 
 but one wheel, so built that one might sit in the mid- 
 dle as 'twere on horseback, and on each side another, 
 the waggoner putting 't swiftly and safely forwards 
 with levers or barres of wood (those waggons driven 
 by wind and gayle he mentions not. ) " It was some- 
 what later than this that China was indebted to that 
 other famous Jesuit missionary, Verbiest, for his 
 steam carriage, which, however, was not much more 
 than a toy. 
 
 MANUALLY PROPELLED VEHICLES 
 
 But in the seventeenth century most attention 
 seems to have been given to devising carriages that 
 12 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 should be moved by the hand or foot power of man. 
 The auto car that was run in the streets of Nurem- 
 berg. Germany, by Johann Hautsch, in 1649, was 
 of this description, and that of Elie Richard, the phy- 
 sician, of La Rochelle, France, about the same time, 
 was of the same class. 
 
 Not long after this Potter, of England, came along 
 in 1663 with a mechanical cart designed to travel on 
 legs, and in the same year the celebrated Hooke pre- 
 sented to the Royal Society of England a plan for 
 some sort of a machine by which one could "walk 
 upon the land or water with swiftness, after the 
 manner of a crane." It does not quite appear what 
 that cart and that machine were. One authority 
 thinks that the Hooke patent was for a one-wheel 
 vehicle supposed to be propelled by a person inside 
 the wheel. Then, also, there was Beza, another 
 French physician, with a mechanical vehicle in 1710. 
 
 OTHER FRENCH AND ENGLISH EXPERIMENTS 
 
 In fact, the interest in carriages worked by man 
 power extended from the seventeenth well into the 
 nineteenth century. Soon after the time of Beza, 
 mechanical chariots, modeled after the Richard 
 coach, were advertised to be run in London, but it 
 does not appear that they met with public favor. 
 Scientists and others gave much thought to the sub- 
 ject, both in England and in France. John Vevers, 
 master of the boarding-school at Ryegate, Surrey, 
 came out with a carriage that was evidently copied 
 from that of Richard. Other forms of carriages 
 worked by hand or foot power of man were described 
 in the periodicals of the time. George Black, of 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Berwick-on-the-Tweed, built a wagon to be run by 
 hand power in 1768. In England, John Ladd, of 
 Trowbridge, Wilts, in 1757; John Beaumont, of 
 Ayrshire, in 1788, and in France, Thomas in 1703, 
 Gerard in 1711, Ferry in 1770, and Maillard, Blanch- 
 ard and Meurice, in 1779, and others, were most 
 active during this period. 
 
 It was well into the nineteenth century before this 
 idea was wholly abandoned. Edmund Cartwright, 
 inventor of the hand loom, contributed to the experi- 
 menting, and the 1831 patent to Sir James C. Ander- 
 son was for a very imposing vehicle rowed by 
 twenty-four men. 
 
 COMPRESSED AIR POWER 
 
 At the same time that the steam engineers in Eng- 
 land were bringing out their vehicles, 1800-35, others 
 were at work on the problem of compressed air car- 
 riages. Among these was W. Mann, of Brixton, 
 who, in 1830, published in London a pamphlet, en- 
 titled A Description of a New Method of Propelling 
 Locomotive Machines, and of Communicating Power 
 and Motion to All Other Kinds of Machinery, and 
 it contained a lithograph of the proposed carriage. 
 Sir George Medhurst, of England, about 1800, with 
 his proposed regular line of coaches run by com- 
 pressed air was, perhaps, the most conspicuous ex- 
 perimenter into this method of propulsion. 
 
 SAILING CARRIAGES ON LAND 
 
 Many men long speculated upon the possibility of 
 wind propulsion on land as well as upon the sea. 
 The most ambitious attempt in that line was the sail- 
 14 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 ing chariot of Simon Stevin, of The Hague, in 1600. 
 Vehicles of this kind were built by others, and in 
 1695 Sir Humphrey Mackworth applied sails to 
 wagons on the tramways at his colliery at Neath, 
 South Wales. The Frenchman, Du Quet, in 1714, 
 and the Swiss clergyman, Genevois, proposed to get 
 power from windmills mounted on their wagons. 
 More curious even than these was the carriage drawn 
 by kites, the invention of George Pocock, in 1826. 
 
 THE STEAM CARRIAGE PREDICTED 
 
 But all these and other fantastic devices never got 
 beyond the experimental stage, and nothing of a sub- 
 stantial, practical character was ever evolved from 
 them. It remained for the latter part of the eight- 
 eenth century to see the subject taken up seriously 
 and considered in a way that promised definite re- 
 sults. And it was steam that then brought the mat- 
 ter strongly to the front. 
 
 It is true that Sir Isaac Newton tentatively sug- 
 gested the possibility of carriage propulsion by steam 
 about 1680, but his suggestion lay dormant for nearly 
 a century. Then the growing knowledge of the 
 power of steam and the possibilities in the new ele- 
 ment turned men's thoughts again very forcibly to 
 this theme. The stationary engine had shown its 
 usefulness, and the consideration of making this sta- 
 tionary machine movable, and therefore available for 
 transportation, naturally followed. 
 
 Dr. Erasmus Darwin is said to have urged James 
 
 Watt and Matthew Boulton to build a fiery chariot as 
 
 early as 1765. In his poem, The Botanic Garden, 
 
 famous in that day, Dr. Darwin, like a prophet crying 
 
 15 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 in the wilderness, sang of the future of steam in these 
 lines : 
 
 "Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar 
 Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car ; 
 On, on wide waving wings, expanded bear 
 The flying chariot through the field of air ; 
 Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above, 
 Shall wave their fluttering 'kerchiefs as they move, 
 Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowds, 
 And armies shrink beneath the shadowy clouds." 
 
 These lines may indeed be fairly interpreted as an- 
 ticipating in prophetic prediction the modern motor 
 airship, as well as the motor car. 
 
 THE FIRST STEAM VEHICLES 
 
 It was considerably later than this that the dream 
 of Dr. Darwin approached to realization at the hands 
 of the steam engine inventors and builders. Aside 
 from Nicholas Joseph Cugnot, the French army offi- 
 cer who, about 1769, constructed an artillery wagon 
 propelled by a high-pressure engine, those who first 
 built successful self-propelled vehicles for highway 
 travel were the famous engineers of England and 
 Scotland, who harnessed steam and developed the 
 high-pressure engine in the last half of the eighteenth 
 century and the first half of the nineteenth. James 
 Watt patented, in 1782, a double-acting engine, 
 which he planned might be "applied to give motion 
 to wheel carriages," the engine to be portable; but 
 he never put the patent to trial. He was followed 
 by George Stephenson, Richard Trevi thick, Walter 
 Hancock, Goldsworthy Gurney, David Gordon, Wil- 
 liam Brunton and others in England, and Oliver 
 16 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Evans, Nathan Read and Thomas Blanchard in the 
 United States, with two score or more contempo- 
 raries. For more than half a century steam vehicles 
 of various types were invented by these engineers 
 and many of them were brought into practical use. 
 
 Soon after the end of the first quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century the interest in steam carriages had 
 assumed large proportions in England. In 1833 
 there were no less than twenty such vehicles, either 
 completed or in hand, around London, and a dozen 
 corporations had been organized to build and run 
 them over stated routes. 
 
 Alexander Gordon, the eminent engineer, wrote a 
 book, entitled Treatise Upon Elemental Locomotion, 
 that went into three editions inside of four years. 
 He also brought out two special journals covering 
 this field of mechanics. The Mechanic's Magazine, 
 and other publications, also gave much attention to 
 the subject, and the steam-carriage literature of the 
 period became very voluminous. 
 
 POPULAR PREJUDICE AROUSED 
 
 For a time it looked as though the new vehicle was 
 destined to a permanency and to accomplish a revolu- 
 tion in the methods of travel on the high-roads. But 
 several things arose to determine otherwise. There 
 sprang up an unreasoning senseless hostility to any 
 substitute for the horse as the agent of vehicular traf- 
 fic. The stage-coach drivers were afraid that they 
 would be thrown out of work. Breeders of horses 
 foresaw the destruction of their business, when 
 horses should no longer be in demand. Farmers 
 were sure that with horses superseded by steam, they 
 17 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 would never be able to sell any more oats. This 
 public animosity manifested itself wherever the steam 
 carriages went. The coaches were hooted at and 
 stoned amid cries of "down with machinery." Stones 
 and other obstacles were placed in the roads, trenches 
 were dug to trap the unsuspicious driver and stretches 
 of roadway were dug up and made into quagmires to 
 stall the machines. Parliament was called upon and 
 enacted excessive highway tolls, especially directed at 
 steam carriages. Another law that stood on the stat- 
 ute books of Great Britain until within comparatively 
 recent times compelled every self-propelled vehicle 
 moving on the highway to be preceded by a man 
 walking and carrying a red flag. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF RAILROADS 
 
 All this was undoubtedly due, in a large measure, 
 if not wholly, to what was then known as the Turn 
 Pike Trusts, which, in conjunction with the stage-line 
 companies, in many cases, were owners of a thousand 
 and more horses. The latter, quite naturally, ob- 
 jected to the introduction of the mechanical vehicle, 
 while the former had such relations to them that both 
 their interests were identical. . 
 
 But above all things, the great art of railroading 
 had already grown from infant existence to a condi- 
 tion of great possibilities, which were now to be 
 finally determined by a success, not alone mechanical 
 and in the eyes of the inventor, but measured by the 
 balance sheets of the companies of individuals who 
 had made possible the construction of the various 
 experimental locomotives or experimental lines then 
 being operated in England and elsewhere. Just at 
 18 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 this time, in the thirties of the nineteenth century, 
 seems to have been the crucial point. The arguments 
 of the engineers on the question of sufficient traction 
 of the iron-shod wheels on iron or other hard rail- 
 ways, while given due consideration, were not wholly 
 convincing, at least to the people investing their 
 money in the enterprises; the profits were to tell in 
 the final conclusion, and it would seem that the great 
 era of railroading might be considered to have had 
 its actual birth at this time, because : 
 
 The first dividend was paid on one of the great 
 railroad enterprises. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST DIVIDEND 
 
 For the time being that seemed to sound the 
 death knell o<f the common road steam-propelled 
 vehicle. The engineers so strongly advocating the 
 railroad had proven their various propositions in the 
 eyes of those who had the financial powers to engage 
 in the extensive introduction and development of the 
 new means of transportation. Further demonstra- 
 tion, extensively exploited, was also made to* the 
 satisfaction of those investors, that vehicles could be 
 pulled with less power on a hard roadbed such as a 
 railway, than on an uneven and sometimes soft path 
 such as common roads. It seems clear that these 
 and various other arguments, heartily urged at 
 that time, and, in some cases, unquestionable from 
 a technical standpoint, were really decided by that 
 first dividend. And the common road vehicle with 
 the support and enthusiasm of its backers largely 
 withdrawn from it dropped to a position greatly 
 subordinate to the other branch of transportation. 
 19 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 THE STEAM ROAD VEHICLE AGAIN 
 
 On the other hand, the development which came in 
 the next few decades in the railroad department 
 brought also a renewed demand for common road 
 vehicles for certain classes of work or for certain 
 localities. The steam vehicle for stationary pur- 
 poses, and also for the locomotive, were being rapidly 
 developed and refined. The railroad settled down to 
 the idea of a power unit drawing numerous wagons. 
 That has been consistently adhered to to the present 
 day, and only in the past decade have we gone back 
 to the old and first principles of embodying the 
 mechanical propelling means in the same vehicle that 
 transports the passengers or goods. So, while Han- 
 cock and his worthy contemporaries passed into his- 
 tory, other common road steam advocates continued 
 their isolated attempts up to and past the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, although without any such 
 general enthusiasm as prevailed in the twenties and 
 early thirties. 
 
 NEW GENERATION OF INVENTORS 
 
 Many attempts in America, such as those of 
 Fisher, Dudgeon, and others, and the work in Eng- 
 land by numerous inventors and machine manufac- 
 turers, such as Tangye, Hilditch, Snowden, F. Hill, 
 Jr., aided by the engineers, Macadam, Telford and 
 M'Neil, who were improving the common roads so 
 that they might approach the advantageous condi- 
 tions of the railroad, assume prominence in connec- 
 tion w T ith that period of the history. Rickett's car- 
 riage, in 1858; Carrett's, in 1862; Boulton's, in 1867; 
 Catley's, in 1869, and others, were among the 
 20 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 finger-posts of that time, pointing to more notable 
 achievements of the future. 
 
 But in England the Act of Parliament, passed in 
 1836 and in force almost to to-day, known as the 
 Locomotive Act, was the deterrent to progress in 
 common road steam locomotion. This condition even 
 continued after the select committee of Parliament, 
 in 1873, endeavored to remove some of the restric- 
 tions, but succeeded only in producing the Act of 
 1878, which in no way improved the position of the 
 common road vehicle. 
 
 In France and on the Continent political conditions 
 doubtless mitigated against any general advance, and 
 though this period included the great development 
 of machinery and construction which paved the way 
 for the future, it is not of prominence in this history. 
 
 A PERIOD OF EXPERIMENTING 
 
 A new era may be said to have commenced in the 
 early part of the seventies when we find Amedee 
 Bollee exhibiting a steam machine at the Vienna Ex- 
 position. In the seventies were also experiments on 
 modified forms of power on vehicle propelling mo- 
 tors other than steam, but it still seemed to be the 
 steam vehicle that characterized the new period of 
 activity which blossomed out in the early eighties 
 with many ardent advocates, and exhibited a type of 
 light vehicle with efficient strong boiler and light en- 
 gine. America should not be overlooked, however, 
 when we consider the one small vehicle of Austin, 
 which was constructed in Massachusetts, and at- 
 tracted great attention at the shows of the Ocean 
 Circus, in the early seventies, or thereabout. Bouton, 
 
 21 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 of France, came to the fore in the early eighties, and 
 the light steam vehicle seemed on the high road to a 
 great development and a monopoly of the common 
 roads vehicle industry, until its competitor appeared 
 in what is now popularly known as the gasoline 
 vehicle in the middle eighties. 
 
 THE SELDEN PATENT 
 
 From this time on the great industry of to-day 
 advanced in strides and jumps, but while the future 
 had been anticipated in some suggestions and experi- 
 ments in Europe, at last one great mind had delved 
 into the problem and anticipated the great future of 
 the new type of vehicle in America. Selden, after 
 a decade or more of study and work, and well- 
 directed experiments, had made his own deductions, 
 and with clear discerning had concluded what, to his 
 mind, would be the vehicle in the future. The re- 
 sult of his labors and the subsequent filing, in 1879, 
 of a patent application, when considered in connec- 
 tion with his persistent work from that time on, 
 even to the present day, would seem to justly mark 
 him as the pioneer in this type of vehicle; in fact, 
 he was so called by the Commissioner of Patents of 
 the United States when publishing his annual re- 
 port, immediately after the issue of Selden's patent. 
 
 ADVENT OF THE HYDRO-CARBON ENGINE 
 
 Then followed the work on carbureters and igni- 
 tion devices and details of construction adapting the 
 liquid hydro-carbons of uncertain quality to more 
 satisfactory use. Details became and still are nu- 
 merous, and optional to a great extent, but the liquid 
 hydro-carbon engine of the compression type clistin- 
 
 22 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 guished the new epoch. The development of the sta- 
 tionary engine operated with gas from receivers also 
 proceeded rapidly in those days, though it was well 
 into the eighties before the gas engine of the compres- 
 sion type involved a commercially successful industry 
 to any extent ; not for several years did the principal 
 manufacturers take up commercially the proposition 
 of the liquid hydro-carbon application. The devel- 
 opment of the small engine using liquid hydro-car- 
 bons received attention from Marcus, in Austria, and 
 the persistent attention of Benz and of Daimler, in 
 Germany. The two latter, furthermore, adapted 
 their engines to vehicles, and enthusiasm was great 
 when Benz ran his three-wheeler, with explosive 
 engine, through the streets of his native town. 
 
 PROGRESS IN FRANCE AND AMERICA 
 
 England was still shackled; but in France many 
 were inspired to change from steam to the 
 hydro-carbon engine. About 1890 we find sev- 
 eral French manufacturers procuring engines, or 
 the right to manufacture the small explosive engines 
 developed by the Germans, and promptly adapting 
 them to their vehicle construction, already well de- 
 veloped for steam propulsion. Panhard & Levassor ; 
 Bouton, with his backer, DeDion ; Bollee, now Leon, 
 the nephew ; Delahaye and Peugeot, were among the 
 earliest Frenchmen to appreciate the commercial pos- 
 sibilities of the new type. Then the large manufac- 
 turers, already experienced in other lines, and par- 
 ticularly in cycle manufacture, entered the field in 
 1893, 1894 and 1895 ; among them such old concerns 
 as DeDetrich, manufacturers for one hundred and 
 23 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 more years, grasped the opportunity. America was 
 not idle, and while road conditions in this country 
 militated largely against the early attempts in the 
 industry, the efforts of the Duryeas and of Haynes, 
 and various other experimenters, who have since re- 
 tired, were heard from. It was difficult, however, 
 with the obstacles then existing in America, for these 
 early workers to secure encouragement, and progress 
 w r as slow, just as the endeavors of Selden and some 
 of the early steam vehicle people had received noth- 
 ing but discouragement at the hands of those whom 
 they endeavored to lead to the success of large 
 manufacturing undertakings. 
 
 However, the Times-Herald race, in Chicago, 
 near the close of 1895, brought forth a large number 
 of inventors and several starters, including electric, 
 steam and gasoline vehicles, and the showing was 
 such as to practically satisfy the doubting that these 
 were the beginning of the industry in this country. 
 
 THE ENGLISH REVIVAL 
 
 Abroad, the leaders in the automobile movement 
 organized the now historic races from Paris in dif- 
 ferent directions. With the runs of 1894, 1895 and 
 1896, and in each successive year thereafter, and 
 with the road and other conditions improved, the 
 industry rapidly developed. England also was at 
 last reached. The restraints that had existed there 
 for more than half a century could no more be en- 
 dured. The burden was finally thrown off, for 
 which great credit is due to Sir David Salomon, and 
 the offensive Locomotive Act was at last repealed in 
 August, 1896. The subsequent Locomotive Act 
 24 
 
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 which came into effect November 14, -1896, marked 
 a red-letter day in motoring history for England, and 
 was justly celebrated by a procession of vehicles 
 from London to Brighton. Salomon had previously 
 organized an exhibition in England, and had im- 
 ported a French car, and as a prominent member of 
 scientific and technical societies, in which he pre- 
 sented many papers on the subject, had done, possi- 
 bly, more than any other individual to 1 influence pub- 
 lic sentiment and to secure this new enactment. 
 English manufacturers were not entirely unprepared 
 for the change, and a great wave of interest and 
 activity swept the country. Naturally this was fol- 
 lowed by a reaction, but since then a counter-reaction 
 has set in, resulting in the present grand development 
 of that class of manufacturing in the British Isles. 
 
 The small steam vehicle of Whitney, and his con- 
 temporaries, the Stanleys in the United States, then 
 came to the fore. Under energetic promotion thou- 
 sands of small vehicles of that type were manufac- 
 tured and put into use. These, in no small meas- 
 ure, became to the public at large the convincing 
 object lesson of the practicability and possibilities of 
 the small automobile for every-day use. 
 
 MODERN CONDITIONS 
 
 The Paris show of 1900 revealed a great forward 
 step in the development of constructions, and the 
 offer immediately thereafter of the James Gordon 
 . Bennett trophy of international racing gave 
 to the automobile industry such an impetus as has 
 seldom been the good fortune of any other art to re- 
 ceive. To-day the automobile has reached that stage 
 25 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 of perfection where the question is no longer whether 
 or not the vehicle will carry you to a certain place 
 and back. Now it is only a question of the speed, 
 absence of vibration, and sweetness of running the 
 engine, absence of all noise, and other details of re- 
 finement. Vehicles are now of the Pullman type, 
 luxurious to the extent of prices ranging into the 
 thirties of thousands of dollars, while on the other 
 hand, thousands of small vehicles, costing between 
 five hundred and one thousand dollars, are annually 
 made and sold. 
 
 The steam machine, after being practically suc- 
 ceeded by the gasoline, was again improved by the 
 flash boiler. The main development of this new 
 power was carried on by Serpollet, of France, and 
 later, by Rollin T. White, in the United States, both 
 whom have become most able competitors of man- 
 ufacturers of machines of other classes. 
 
 THE INDUSTRY TO-DAY 
 
 The beginning of 1905 finds us with the annual 
 shows, which have been consecutive for many years, 
 while the census of vehicles now in use, or made in the 
 last ten years, will aggregate several hundred thou- 
 sand. The annual production is estimated as probably 
 approximating one hundred thousand in a few of 
 the principal countries. The value of the electrical 
 vehicle, particularly as the town vehicle for anything 
 except speeding, is now well established, and reports 
 from Paris as well as New York indicate the lack of 
 facilities of factories in this line for producing these 
 carriages as rapidly as demanded. Heavy 'buses 
 and individual vehicles alike are also popular. 
 26 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 NICHOLAS JOSEPH CUGNOT, 
 WILLIAM MURDOCK, 
 OLIVER EVANS, 
 WILLIAM SYMINGTON, 
 NATHAN READ, 
 RICHARD TREVITHICK, 
 DAVID GORDON, 
 W. H. JAMES, 
 GOLDSWORTHY GUENEY, 
 THOMAS BLANCHARD, 
 M. JOHNSON, 
 WALTER HANCOCK, 
 W. T. JAMES, 
 FRANCIS MACERONI, 
 RICHARD ROBERTS, 
 J. SCOTT RUSSELL, 
 W. H. CHURCH, 
 ETIENNE LENOIR, 
 AMEDEE BOLLEE, 
 GEORGE B. SELDEN, 
 SIEGFRIED MARCUS, 
 CARL BENZ, 
 GOTTLIEB DAIMLER, 
 M. LEVASSOR, 
 LEON SERPOLLET. 
 
 29 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 NICHOLAS JOSEPH CUGNOT 
 
 Born at Void, Lorraine, France, September 25, 
 1725. Died in Paris, October 2, 1804. 
 
 Concerning the early life of Cugnot, little is 
 known. He was educated for the engineering serv- 
 ice of the French army, and gained distinction as a 
 military and mechanical engineer. He also served 
 as a military engineer in Germany. Soon afterward 
 he entered the service of Prince Charles of Lorraine, 
 and for a time resided at Brussels, where he gave 
 lessons in the military art. He did not return to 
 his native land until 1763, and then invented a new 
 gun, with which the cavalry were equipped. 
 
 This brought him to the attention of the Compte 
 de Saxe, and under the patronage of that nobleman, 
 he constructed in 1765 his first locomotive. This 
 was a small wagon. On its first run it carried four 
 persons, and traveled at the rate of two and a quar- 
 ter miles an hour. The boiler, however, being too 
 small, the carriage could go only for fifteen or twenty 
 minutes before the steam was exhausted, and it was 
 necessary to stop the engine for nearly the same time, 
 to enable the boiler to raise the steam to the maxi- 
 mum pressure, before it could proceed on its journey. 
 This machine was a disappointment, in consequence 
 of the inefficiency of the feed pumps. It has been 
 stated that while in Brussels he had made a smaller 
 vehicle, which, if so, was soon after 1760. 
 
 Several small accidents happened during the trial, 
 for the machine could not be completely controlled, 
 but it was considered on the whole to be fairly suc- 
 cessful and worthy of further attention. The sug- 
 gestion was made that provided it could be made 
 31 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 more powerful, and its mechanism improved, it might 
 be used to drag cannon into the field instead of using 
 horses for that purpose. Consequently, Cugnot was 
 ordered by the Due de Choiseul, Minister of War, to 
 proceed with the construction of an improved and 
 more powerful machine. This vehicle, which was 
 finished in 1770, cost twenty thousand livres. It was 
 in two parts, a wagon and an engine. The wagon 
 was carried on two wheels and had a seat for the 
 steersman ; the engine and boiler were supported on 
 a single driving-wheel in front of the wagon. The 
 two parts were united by a movable pin. A toothed 
 quadrant, fixed on the framing of the fore part, was 
 actuated by spur gearing on the upright steersman's 
 shaft in close proximity to the seat, by means of 
 which the conductor could cause the carriage to turn 
 in either direction, at an angle of from fifteen to 
 twenty degrees. In front was a round copper boiler, 
 having a furnace inside, two small chimneys, two 
 single-acting brass cylinders communicating with the 
 boiler by the steam pipe, and other machinery. On 
 each side of the driving-wheel, ratchet wheels were 
 fixed, and as one of the pistons descended, the piston- 
 rod drew a crank, the pawl of which, working into 
 the ratchet-wheel, caused the driving-wheel to make a 
 quarter of a revolution. By gearing, the same move- 
 ment placed the piston on the other side in a position 
 for making a stroke, and turned the four- way cock, 
 so as to open the second cylinder to the steam and the 
 first cylinder to the atmosphere. The second piston 
 then descended, causing the leading wheel to make 
 another quarter of a revolution, and restoring the first 
 piston to its original position. In order to run the 
 32 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 vehicle backwards, the pawl was made to act on the 
 upper side, changing the position of the spring which 
 pressed upon it; then, when the engine was started, 
 the pawl caused the driving-wheel to turn a quarter 
 of a revolution in the opposite direction with every 
 stroke of the piston. 
 
 This machine w r as first tried in 1/70 in the pres- 
 ence of a distinguished assembly, that included the 
 Due de Choiseul ; General Gribeauval, First Inspector- 
 General of Artillery ; the Compte de Saxe, and others. 
 Subsequently, other trials of it were made, with satis- 
 factory results generally. The heavy over-balancing 
 weight of the engine and boiler in front rendered it 
 difficult to control. On one of its trips it ran into a 
 wall in turning a corner and was partly wrecked. 
 Further experiments with it were abandoned, and in 
 1800 it was deposited in the Conservatoire des Arts 
 et Metier, Paris, where it still remains. 
 
 At a later period of his life, having lost his means 
 of support, Cugnot's public services were considered 
 to entitle him to a reward from the State. Louis 
 Fifteenth gave him a pension of six hundred livres, 
 but the French Revolution coming on, he was de- 
 prived even of that pittance, and he lived in abject 
 misery in Brussels. His carriage was then in the 
 arsenal, and a revolutionary committee, during the 
 reign of terror, tried to take it out and reduce it to 
 scrap, but was driven off. When Napoleon came to 
 the throne, he restored the pension and increased it to 
 one thousand livres. In addition to his inventions, 
 Cugnot wrote several \vorks on military art and 
 fortification. 
 
 33 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 WILLIAM MURDOCK 
 
 Born in Bellow Mill, near Old Cumnock, Ayrshire, 
 Scotland, August 21, 1754. Died at Sycamore Hill, 
 November 15, 1839. 
 
 Murdock was the son of John Murdoch, a mill- 
 wright. He was modestly educated, and brought up 
 to his father's trade, helping to build and put up mill 
 machinery. A curious production of the father and 
 son, at this period, was a wooden horse, worked by 
 mechanical power, on which young Murdock trav- 
 eled about the country. When he was twenty-three 
 years of age he entered the employment of the fa- 
 mous engineering firm of Boulton & Watt, at Soho, 
 and there remained throughout his active life. 
 
 Watt recognized in him a valuable assistant, and 
 his services were jealously regarded. On his part 
 he devoted himself unreservedly to the interests of 
 his employers. In 1777 he was sent to Cornwall to 
 look after the pumps and engines set up by the firm 
 in the mines, and for a long period he lived at Red- 
 ruth. For some five years after 1800 he was engi- 
 neer and superintendent at the Soho foundry. While 
 living at Redruth, in 1792, he began a series of ex- 
 periments on the illuminating properties of the gases 
 of coal, wood, peat, and other substances, and in 
 1799 put up a gas-making apparatus at Soho. In 
 1803 he fitted the Soho factory with a gas-lighting 
 system. Other inventions that are credited to him 
 are models for an oscillating engine and a rotary en- 
 gine, a method of making steam pipes, an apparatus 
 for utilizing the force of compressed air, and a steam 
 gun. 
 
 His early training and all his surroundings nat- 
 
 34 
 
WILLIAM MURDOCK 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 urally and inevitably interested Murdock in the sub- 
 ject of steam locomotion, and before 1784 he began 
 to experiment on these lines. That he made definite 
 progress is shown in a letter that Thomas Wilson, 
 agent in Cornwall of Boulton & Watt, wrote to his 
 employers in August, 1786, saying, "William Mur- 
 dock desires me to inform you that he has made a 
 small engine of three-quarter-inch diameter and one 
 and one-half inch stroke, that he has applied to a 
 small carriage, which answers amazingly." He had 
 made and run this model in 1784, and it is still in 
 existence, and in the possession of the Messrs. 
 Richard and George Tangye, England. 
 
 This model was on the high-pressure principle, and 
 ran on three wheels, the single front one for steering. 
 The vertical boiler, nearly over the rear axle, was 
 heated by a spirit-lamp, and the machine stood only 
 a little more than a foot high. The axle was cranked 
 in the middle and turned by a rod connected to 1 a 
 beam moved up and down by the piston-rod project- 
 ing from the top of the cylinder. Yet it developed 
 considerable speed. It is interesting to note that the 
 use O'f the crank for converting the reciprocating 
 motion of the steam engine into rotary was patented 
 by Pickard in 1780, and Murdock's was probably its, 
 first application to self-propelled carriages. 
 
 The first experiment with this little engine \vas 
 made in Murdock's house at Redruth, when the loco- 
 motive successfully hauled a wagon round the room, 
 the single wheel, placed in front of the engine, fixed 
 in such a position as to enable it to run round a circle. 
 
 Dr. Smiles, in his work on inventors, tells an 
 amusing story concerning this machine. He says: 
 35 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 "Another experiment was made out of doors, on 
 which occasion, small though the engine was, it fairly 
 outran the speed of its inventor. One night, after 
 returning from his duties at the mine at Redruth, 
 Murdock went with his model locomotive to the 
 avenue leading to the church, about a mile from the 
 town. The walk was narrow, straight and level. 
 Having lit the lamp, the water soon boiled, and off 
 started the engine with the inventor after it. Shortly 
 after he heard distant shouts of terror. It was too 
 dark to perceive objects, but he found, on following 
 up the machine, that the cries had proceeded from the 
 worthy vicar, who, while going along the walk, had 
 met the hissing and fiery little monster, which he 
 declared he took to be the Evil One in propria 
 persona !" 
 
 But Murdock was too useful a man to Boulton & 
 Watt to be allowed to have free rein, and his inclina- 
 tion toward steam locomotion invention was appar- 
 ently curbed, though it would appear Watt thought 
 the roads of that time an insurmountable obstacle to 
 the development of road vehicles, and wanted Mur- 
 dock to devote his time to mechanical matters more 
 ripe for success. Boulton, writing to Watt from 
 Truro, in September, 1 796, tells how he met Murdock 
 on his way to London to get a patent on a new model, 
 and how he persuaded him to turn back. This model 
 was for a steam carriage that was afterward shown 
 as able to travel freely around a room with a light 
 load of shovel, poker and tongs upon it. His was 
 probably the first high-pressure steam-engine vehi- 
 cle run in England. Though only a small model, it 
 did its proportionate work well. 
 
 36 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 Watt continued to oppose Mur dock's scheme, but 
 on one occasion suggested that he should be allowed 
 an advance of five hundred dollars to enable him to 
 prosecute his experiments, and if he succeeded within 
 a year in making an engine capable of drawing a 
 post chaise, carrying two passengers and the driver, 
 at four miles an hour, it was suggested that he should 
 be taken as partner into the locomotive business, for 
 which Boulton and Watt w r ere to provide the neces- 
 sary capital. This proposition was never carried 
 out. Again, in 1786, Watt said: "I wish William 
 could be brought to do> as we do, to mind the business 
 in hand, and let such as Symington and Sadler throw 
 away their time and money in hunting shadows." 
 Murdock continued to speculate about steam locomo- 
 tion on common roads, but never carried his ideas 
 further. He retired from the employment of Boul- 
 ton & Watt in 1830, and practically retired from all 
 work at the same time. 
 
 Murdock seems to have had a very clear idea of the 
 possibilities of steam propulsion on the common 
 roads. Had circumstances permitted he might well 
 have been expected to have solved the problem in 
 1/96 quite as completely as his successors did in 
 1835. But he was a quarter of a century ahead of 
 the time. Even the moderate public interest that ex- 
 isted later on had not manifested itself at all in his 
 day and the condition of the English highways of- 
 fered almost insuperable obstacles to steam vehicular 
 travel. Personally his lack of self-assertiveness and 
 his feeling of dependence upon Boulton and Watt 
 also held him back. So he remained simply one of 
 the pioneer investigators pointing the way for others. 
 37 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 OLIVER EVANS 
 
 Born in 1755 or 1756, in Newport, Del. Died in 
 Philadelphia, April 21, 1819. 
 
 Little has been preserved respecting the early his- 
 tory of Oliver Evans, who has been aptly styled "The 
 Watt of America." His parents w r ere farming peo- 
 ple, and he had only an ordinary common-school edu- 
 cation. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed 
 to a wheelwright or wagonmaker, and continued his 
 meager education by studying at night time by the 
 light that he made by burning chips and shavings in 
 the fireplace. 
 
 While yet an apprentice his attention was turned 
 to the subject of propelling land carriages without 
 animal power. But the lack of definite knowledge 
 in regard to steam power compelled him to abandon 
 his plans, although his experiments were continued 
 for a long time. Soon after attaining his majority 
 he was engaged in making card-teeth by hand, and in 
 connection therewith developed several labor-saving 
 improvements. He also invented improvements in 
 the construction of machinery of flour mills that ef- 
 fected a complete revolution in the manufacture of 
 flour. These improvements consisted of the elevator, 
 the conveyor, the hopper-boy, the drill and the de- 
 scender, which various machines were applied in dif- 
 ferent mills so as to perform mechanically every nec- 
 essary movement of the grain and meal from one part 
 of the mill to the other, causing a saving of fully one- 
 half in the labor of mill attendance and manufactur- 
 ing the flour better. These improvements were not 
 accepted by the mill owners at the outset, and Evans 
 spent many discouraging years before he could finally 
 
 38 
 
OLIVER EVANS 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 persuade the manufacturers of the utility of his in- 
 ventions. In the end, however, he lived to see his 
 inventions generally introduced, and he profited 
 largely thereby. 
 
 In the year 1786, Evans petitioned the Legisla- 
 ture of Pennsylvania for the exclusive right to use 
 his improvements in flour mills and steam carriages 
 in that State, and in the year following presented a 
 similar petition to the Legislature of Maryland. In 
 the former instance he was only successful so far as 
 to obtain the privilege of the mill improvements, his 
 representations concerning steam carriages being 
 considered as savoring too much of insanity to de- 
 serve notice. He was more fortunate in Maryland, 
 for, although the steam project was laughed at, yet 
 one of his friends, a member, very judiciously ob- 
 served that the grant could injure no one, for he did 
 not think that any man in the world had thought of 
 such a thing before, and therefore he wished the en- 
 couragement might be afforded, as there was a pros- 
 pect that it would produce something useful. This 
 kind of argument had its effect, and Evans received 
 all that he asked for, and from that period considered 
 himself bound in honor to the State of Maryland to 
 produce a steam carriage, as soon as his means would 
 allow him. 
 
 For several years succeeding the granting of his 
 petition by the Legislature of Maryland, Evans en- 
 deavored to obtain some person of pecuniary re- 
 sources to join with him in his plans; and for this 
 purpose explained his views by drafts, and otherwise, 
 to some of the first mechanics in the country. Al- 
 though the persons addressed appeared, in several in- 
 39 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 stances, to understand them, they declined any as- 
 sistance from a fear of the expense and difficulty of 
 their execution. 
 
 In the year 1800, or 1801, Evans, never having 
 found anyone willing to contribute to< the expense, or 
 even to encourage him in his efforts, determined to 
 construct a steam carriage at his own expense. 
 Previous to commencing he explained his views to 
 Robert Patterson, Professor of Mathematics in the 
 University of Pennsylvania, and to an eminent Eng- 
 lish engineer. They both declared the principles 
 new to them, and advised the plan as highly worthy 
 of a fair experiment. They were the only persons 
 who had any confidence, or afforded encouraging 
 advice. He also communicated his plans to< B. F. 
 Latrobe, the scientist, who publicly pronounced them 
 as chimerical, and attempted to demonstrate the ab- 
 surdity of Evans' principles in his report to the 
 Philosophical Society of Pennsylvania on steam en- 
 gines. In this he also endeavored tO' show the im- 
 possibility of making steamboats useful. 
 
 Evans commenced and had made considerable 
 progress in the construction of a steam carriage, 
 when the idea occurred to him that as his steam en- 
 gine was altogether different in form, as well as in 
 principle, from any other in use, a patent could be 
 obtained for it, and then applied to mills more profit- 
 ably than to carriages. The steam carriage was 
 accordingly laid aside for a season of more leisure, 
 and the construction of a small engine was com- 
 menced, with a cylinder six inches in diameter and 
 a piston of eighteen inches stroke, for a mill to grind 
 plaster of paris. The expense of its construction 
 40 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 far exceeded Evans' calculation, and before the en- 
 gine was finished he found it cost him all he was 
 worth. He had then to begin the world anew, at the 
 age of forty-eight, with a large family to support, 
 and that, too, with a knowledge that if the trial 
 failed his credit would be entirely ruined, and his 
 prospects for the remainder of life dark and gloomy. 
 But fortune favored him, and his success was com- 
 plete. 
 
 In a brief account, given by himself, of his ex- 
 periments in steam, he says : "I could break and 
 grind three hundred bushels of plaster of pans, or 
 twelve tons, in twenty-four hours; and to> show its 
 operations more fully to the public, I applied it to 
 saw stone, on the side of Market Street, where the 
 driving of twelve saws in heavy frames, sawing at 
 the rate of one hundred feet of marble in twelve 
 hours, made a great show and excited much atten- 
 tion. I thought this was sufficient to convince the 
 thousands of spectators of the utility of my discov- 
 ery, but I frequently heard them inquire if the power 
 could be applied to saw timber as well as stone, to 
 grind grain, propel boats, etc., and though I an- 
 swered in the affirmative, they still doubted. I there- 
 fore determined to apply my engine to all new uses ; 
 to introduce it and them to the public. This experi- 
 ment completely tested the correctness of my princi- 
 ples. The power of my engine rises in a geometri- 
 cal proportion, while the consumption of the fuel has 
 only an arithmetical ratio; in such proportion that 
 every time I added one- fourth more to the consump- 
 tion of the fuel, its powers were doubled; and that 
 twice the quantity of fuel required to drive one saw, 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 would drive sixteen saws at least; for when I drove 
 two saws the consumption was eight bushels of coal 
 in twelve hours, but when twelve saws were driven, 
 the consumption was not more than ten bushels, so 
 that the more we resist the steam, the greater is the 
 effect of the engine. On these principles very light 
 but powerful engines can be made suitable for pro- 
 pelling boats and land carriages without the great 
 encumbrance of their weight as mentioned in La- 
 trobe's demonstration.'' 
 
 In the year 1840, Evans, by order of the Board 
 of Health of Philadelphia, constructed at his works, 
 situated a mile and a half from the water, a machine 
 for cleaning docks. It consisted of a large flat or 
 scow, with a steam engine of five horse-power on 
 board, to work the machinery to raise the mud into 
 the scows. This was considered a fine opportunity 
 to show the public that his engine could propel both 
 land and water conveyances. When the machine 
 was finished, he fixed, in a rough and temporary 
 manner, wheels with wooden axletrees, and, of 
 course, under the influence of great friction. Al- 
 though the whole weight was equal to two hundred 
 barrels of flour, yet his small engine propelled it up 
 Market Street and round the circle to the water- 
 works, where it was launched into the Schuylkill 
 River. A paddle-wheel was then applied to its stern, 
 and it thus moved down that river to the Delaware, 
 a distance of sixteen miles, leaving behind all vessels 
 that were under sail. 
 
 This demonstration was in the presence of thou- 
 sands of spectators, which he supposed would have 
 convinced them of the practicability of steamboats 
 42 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 and steam carriages. But no allowance was made 
 by the public for the disproportion of the engine to 
 its load, nor for the rough manner in which the 
 machinery was fixed, or the great friction and ill 
 form of the boat, and it was supposed that this was 
 the utmost it could perform. Some individuals un- 
 dertook to ridicule the experiment of driving so great 
 a weight on land, because the motion was too slow 
 to be useful. The inventor silenced them by answer- 
 ing that he would make a carriage propelled by 
 steam, for a wager of three thousand dollars, to run 
 upon a level road, against the swiftest horse that 
 could be produced. This machine Evans named the 
 Oructor Amphibolis. 
 
 On the 25th of September, 1804, Evans submitted 
 to the consideration o>f the Lancaster Turnpike Com- 
 pany a statement of the costs and profits of a steam 
 carriage to carry one hundred barrels of flour, fifty 
 miles in twenty- four hours ; tending to show that one 
 such steam carriage would make more net profits 
 than ten w r agons, drawn by five horses each, on a 
 good turnpike road, and offering to build one at a 
 very low price. His address closed as follows : "It 
 is too much for an individual to put in operation 
 every improvement which he may invent. I have no 
 doubt but that my engines will propel boats against 
 the current of the Mississippi, and wagons on turn- 
 pike roads, with great profit. I now call upon those 
 whose interest it is to carry this invention into' ef- 
 fect. All of which is respectfully submitted to your 
 consideration." Little or no attention was paid to 
 this offer, for it was difficult at that day to interest 
 anyone in steam locomotion. 
 
 43 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Evans' interest in the steam carriage forthwith 
 ceased, but in his writings, published about that time, 
 he remarked : "The time will come when people 
 will travel in stages moved by steam engines from 
 one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen 
 or twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air 
 with such velocity, changing the scene in such rapid 
 succession, will be the most rapid exhilarating exer- 
 cise. A carriage (steam) will set out from Wash- 
 ington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast 
 at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New 
 York in the same day.'' 7 To accomplish this he sug- 
 gested railways of wood or iron, or smooth paths of 
 broken stone or gravel, and predicted that engines 
 would soon drive boats ten or twelve miles an hour. 
 In the latter years of his life, Evans established a 
 large iron foundry in Philadelphia. 
 
 Although Evans' distinct contribution to the 
 problem of steam locomotion on the common roads 
 was not particularly practical it w^as at least im- 
 portant as being the first suggestion of anything of 
 the kind in the United States. Road conditions in 
 this country at that time were worse than they were 
 in England and yet under more discouraging cir- 
 cumstances he was as far advanced in ideas and plans 
 as his great contemporaries, Trevithick and others 
 across the water. To Evans must be given the credit 
 of perfecting the high-pressure, non-condensing 
 engine, and even Trevithick, "the father of the loco- 
 motive," was largely indebted to him for his progress 
 in the lines he was working on in England, his plans 
 and specifications having been sent abroad for the 
 English engineers to inspect in 1784. 
 44 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 WILLIAM SYMINGTON 
 
 Born at Leadhills, Scotland, October, 1783. Died 
 in London, March 22, 1831. 
 
 More fortunate than most of the English invent- 
 ors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with 
 whom he was associated, William Symington came 
 of a family that was able to give him a good educa- 
 tion. His father was a mechanic who had charge 
 of the engines and machinery at the Warlockhead 
 lead mines, and the son gained his first knowledge 
 of mechanics and engineering in the shops with his 
 father. Intended for the ministry, he was sent to 
 the University of Glasgow and the University of 
 Dublin to pursue his studies. But the ministry had 
 slight attractions for him, and when the time came 
 for him to choose a profession, he adopted that of 
 civil engineering. 
 
 In 1786 he worked out a model for a steam road- 
 car. This was regarded very highly by all who saw 
 it. It is said that Mr. Meason, manager of the lead 
 mines at Warlockhead, was so pleased with the 
 model, the merit of which principally belonged to 
 young Symington, that he sent him into Edinburgh 
 for the purpose of exhibiting it before the professors 
 of the University, and other scientific gentlemen of 
 the city, in the hope that it might lead in some way to 
 his future advancement in life. Mr. Meason became 
 the patron and friend of Symington, allowed the 
 model to be exhibited at his own house, and invited 
 many persons of distinction to inspect it. The car- 
 riage supported on four wheels had a locomotive be- 
 hind, the front wheels being arranged with 
 steering-gear. A cylindrical boiler was used 
 45 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 for generating steam, which communicated by 
 a steam-pipe with the two horizontal cylinders, 
 one on each side of the firebox of the boiler. 
 When steam was turned into the cylinder, 
 the piston made an outward stroke; a vacuum 
 was then formed, the steam being condensed in a cold 
 water tank placed beneath the cylinders, and the pis- 
 ton was forced back by the pressure of the atmos- 
 phere. The piston rods communicated their motion 
 to the driving-axle and wheels through rack rods, 
 which worked toothed wheels placed on the hind 
 axle on both sides of the engine, and the alternate 
 action of the rack rods upon the tooth and ratchet 
 wheels, with which the drums were provided, pro- 
 duced the rotary motion. The boiler was fitted with 
 a lever and weight safety valve. Symington's loco- 
 motive was abandoned, the inventor considering that 
 the scheme of steam travel on the common roads 
 was impracticable. 
 
 Henceforth, Symington gave his attention to the 
 study of boat propulsion by steam. In 1787 he got 
 out a patent for an improved form of steam engine, 
 in which he obtained rotary action by chains and 
 ratchet-wheels. This engine, with a four-inch cyl- 
 inder, was used to work the paddles of a pleasure 
 boat on Dais win ton Loch, in 1788, the boat steam- 
 ing at the rate of five miles an hour. This boat is 
 now in the South Kensington Museum, and it has 
 been termed "the parent engine of steam naviga- 
 tion." The experiment with this method of boat 
 propulsion was so successful that a year later larger 
 engines, with eighteen-inch cylinders, were fitted to 
 another boat, which attained a speed of seven miles 
 46 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 an hour. In 1801, Symington took out a patent for 
 an engine with a piston rod guided by rollers in a 
 straight path and connected by a rod with a crank 
 attached directly to the paddle-wheel shaft the sys- 
 tem that has been in use ever since. Although the 
 perfect practicability of this method of boat propul- 
 sion was fully demonstrated by a trial on the tug- 
 boat Charlotte Dundas, in March, 1802, the plan 
 for steam power on canals and lakes was not carried 
 further. The Forth and Clyde Company, and the 
 Duke of Bridgewater, who were backing Symington, 
 gave up the project and he could get help from no< 
 other sources. His inventions and experiments are 
 generally regarded as marking the beginning of 
 steam navigation. It is interesting to note that 
 among those who were guests on the Charlotte Dun- 
 das, on the occasion of this trial trip, was Robert 
 Fulton, who wrote a treatise on steam navigation in 
 1793, tried a small steamboat on the river Seine, in 
 France, in 1803, and in 1807 launched his famous 
 steamship, the Clermont, on the Hudson River. 
 
 Symington, disappointed and discouraged, gave 
 up his work and went to> London. The rest of his 
 life was for the most part thrown away, and he be- 
 came one of the waifs and strays of London. In 
 1825 he received a grant of one hundred pounds 
 from the privy purse, and later on fifty pounds more, 
 in recognition of his services for steam navigation. 
 He died in obscurity and although he was unques- 
 tionably the pioneer in his country of the successful 
 application of steam to navigation on inland waters 
 his name is only a bare memory. 
 
 47 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 NATHAN READ 
 
 Born in Warren, Mass., July 2, 1759. Died near 
 Belfast, Me., January 20, 1849. 
 
 Graduated from Harvard College in 1781, Read 
 was a tutor at Harvard for four years. In 1788 he 
 began experimenting to discover some way of utiliz- 
 ing the steam engine for propelling boats and car- 
 riages. His efforts were mainly directed toward de- 
 vising lighter, more compact machinery than then 
 generally in use. His greatest invention at that time 
 was a substitute for the large working-beam. This 
 was a cross-head beam which ran in guides and had 
 a connecting-rod with which motion was communi- 
 cated. The new cylinder that he invented to attach 
 to this working-frame was double-acting. In order 
 to make the boiler more portable he invented a multi- 
 tubular form, and this he patented, together with the 
 cylinder, chain-wheel, and other appliances. 
 
 The boiler was cylindrical and was placed upright 
 or horizontal, and the furnace was carried within it. 
 A double cylinder formed a water-jacket, connected 
 with a water and steam chamber above, and a water- 
 chamber below. Numerous small straight tubes 
 connected these two chambers. Read also invented 
 another boiler in which the fire went through small 
 spiral tubes, very much as it does in the present- 
 day locomotives, and this was a smoke-consuming 
 engine. For the purpose of acquiring motion he first 
 used paddle-wheels, but afterward adopted a chain- 
 wheel of his own invention. 
 
 Read planned a steam-car to be run with his tubu- 
 lar boiler, and it is said that this vehicle, when laden 
 with fifty tons weight, could make five miles per 
 
NATHAN READ 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 .* 
 
 hour. The model which was completed in 1790 had 
 four wheels, the front pair being pivoted at the center 
 and controlled by a horizontal sheave and rope. The 
 sheave was located back near the boiler, and in guid- 
 ing the machine it was operated by a hand-wheel 
 placed above the platform, within easy reach of the 
 engineer. A square boiler with Read's multi-tubular 
 system, overhung at the rear of the carriage. Two 
 driving-wheels w-ere forward of the boiler, and in 
 front of these were two horizontal cylinders on each 
 side of the engine. On the inside of each wdieel were 
 ratched teeth that fitted into corresponding teeth on 
 horizontal racks above and below the hub. The pis- 
 ton, moving back and forth from the cylinder, en- 
 gaged these teeth and caused a revolution of the 
 wheel. There were two steam valves and two* ex- 
 haust valves to each cylinder, the exhaust being into 
 the atmosphere. Although this was the first concep- 
 tion of propulsion by steam on land in America, Read 
 went no further in creating this model, inasmuch as 
 he received no encouragement from financial sources. 
 In 1796, Read established at Salem, Mass., the 
 Salem Iron Foundry, where he manufactured an- 
 chors, chain cables, and other machinery. In Jan- 
 uary, 1798, he invented a machine to cut and head 
 nails at one operation. He also invented a method 
 of equalizing the action of windmills by accumulat- 
 ing the force of the wind through winding up a 
 weight;- and a plan for harnessing the force of the 
 tides by means of reservoirs which, by being alter- 
 nately filled up and emptied, created a constant 
 stream of water. Among his other inventions were 
 a pumping engine and a threshing machine. 
 49 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 RICHARD TREVITHICK 
 
 Born in Illo-gan, in the west of Cornwall, England, 
 April 13, 1771. Died in Dartford, Kent, April 22, 
 
 1833- 
 
 Richard Trevithick had meager educational ad- 
 vantages. His father was manager of the Dolcoath 
 and other mines, and shortly after the birth of his 
 son moved to Penponds, near Camborne, where the 
 boy was sent to school to learn reading, writing and 
 arithmetic, which were the limits of his attainments. 
 Early in life he showed the dawning of remarkable 
 inventive genius, was quick at figures and clever in 
 drawing. He developed into a young man of nota- 
 ble physique, being six feet two inches high, and hav- 
 ing the frame and the strength of an athlete. He 
 was one of the most powerful wrestlers in the west 
 country, and it is related o<f him that he could easily 
 lift a thousand-weight mandril. 
 
 At the age of eighteen young Trevithick began to 
 assist his father as mine manager, and at once pro- 
 ceeded to* put his inventive faculty to practical test. 
 His initial success, in 1795, was an improvement 
 upon an engine at the Wheal Treasury mine, which 
 accomplished a great saving in fuel and in power, 
 and won for him his first royalty. Before his father 
 died, in 1797, he had attained to the position of en- 
 gineer at the Ding Dong mine, near Penzance, and 
 had already set up at the Herlancl mine the engine 
 built by William Bull, with improvements of his 
 ow r n. His earliest invention of importance was in 
 1797, when he made an improved plunger pump, 
 which, in the following year, he developed into a 
 double-acting water-pressure engine. One of these 
 50 
 
RICHARD TREVITHICK 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 engines, set up in 1804, at the Alport mine, in Derby- 
 shire, was run until 1850. 
 
 In 1780 he built a double-acting high-pressure en- 
 gine with a crank, for Cook's Kitchen mine. This 
 was known as the Puffer, from the noise that it 
 made, and it soon came into general use in Cornwall 
 and South Wales, a successful rival of the low- 
 pressure steam vacuum engine of Watt. 
 
 As early as 1796 Trevithick began to give atten- 
 tion to the subject of steam locomotion, and a model 
 constructed by him before 1800 is now in the South 
 Kensington Museum. He busied himself in design- 
 ing and building a steam vehicle to travel upon the 
 common highways. The work was done in a work- 
 shop at Camborne, and some of it in the shop of 
 Captain Andrew Vivian. It was Christmas Eve of 
 1 80 1 when this steam locomotive was completed and 
 was brought out for trial. 
 
 The following account of the first trial was made 
 by one who was present : "I knew Captain Dick 
 Trevithick very well. I was a cooper by trade, and 
 when Trevithick was making his steam carriage I 
 used to go every day into John Tyack's shop at the 
 Weith, close by here, where they put her together. 
 In the year 1801, upon Christmas Eve, towards 
 night, Trevithick got up steam, out on the high road, 
 just outside the shop. When we saw that Trevi- 
 thick was going to turn on steam, we jumped up, as 
 many as could, maybe seven or eight of us. 'Twas 
 a stiffish hill going up to Camborne Beacon, but she 
 went off like a little bird. When she had gone about 
 a quarter of a mile there was a rough piece of road 
 covered with loose stones. She didn't go quite so 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 fast, and as it was a Hood of rain, and we were very 
 much squeezed together, I jumped off. She was go- 
 ing faster than I could walk, and went up the hill 
 about half a mile further, when they turned her and 
 came back again to the shop." The next day the 
 engine steamed to Captain Vivian's house, and a few 
 days subsequently, Trevithick and Vivian started off 
 for Tehidy House, where Lord Dedunstanville lived, 
 some two or three miles from Camborne. On this 
 journey they met with an accident, the engine being 
 overturned in going around a curve; but they got 
 back safely. 
 
 This carriage presented the appearance of an or- 
 dinary stage coach on four wheels. The engine had 
 one horizontal cylinder which, together with the 
 boiler and the furnace-box, was placed in the rear of 
 the hind axle. The motion of the piston was trans- 
 mitted to a separate crank-axle, from which, through 
 the medium of spur-gear, the axle of the driving- 
 wheel, which was mounted with a fly-wheel, de- 
 rived its motion. The steam cocks and the force- 
 pump, as also the bellows used for the purpose of 
 quickening combustion in the furnace, were worked 
 off the same crank axle. This was one of the first 
 successful high-pressure engines constructed on the 
 principle of moving a piston by the elasticity of steam 
 against the pressure only of the outside atmosphere. 
 
 In the following year Trevithick went to London 
 with his cousin, Andrew Vivian, and secured a pat- 
 ent. Early in 1803 he made his second steam car- 
 riage. This was built at Camborne and taken to 
 London, via Plymouth, for exhibition. Its journey 
 along the highways thoroughly alarmed the country 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 people. Coleridge relates that a toll-gate keeper was 
 so frightened at the appearance of the sputtering, 
 smoke-spitting thing of fearsome mien that, trem- 
 bling in every limb and with teeth chattering, he 
 threw aside the toll-gate with the scared exclamation, 
 "No noth nothing to pay. My de dear Mr. 
 Devil, do drive on as fast as you can. Nothing to 
 pay!" 
 
 The engine in this carriage had a cylinder five and 
 one-half inches in diameter, with a stroke of two and 
 one-half feet, and with thirty pounds of steam it 
 worked five strokes per minute. In every way it 
 was superior to its predecessor. It was not so heavy ; 
 and the horizontal cylinder, instead of the vertical, 
 added very much to its steadiness of motion; while 
 wheels of a larger diameter enabled it the more easily 
 to pass over rough roads which had brought the 
 Camborne one to a standstill. The boiler was made 
 entirely of wrought iron, and the cylinder was in- 
 serted horizontally, close behind the driving axle, 
 A forked piston-rod was used, the ends working in 
 guides, so that the crank axle might be brought near 
 to the cylinder. Spur gearing and couplings were 
 used on each side of the carriage for communicating 
 motion from the crank shaft to the main driving 
 axle. The driving-wheels were about ten feet diam- 
 eter, and made of wood. The framing was of 
 wrought iron. The coach was intended to seat eight 
 or ten persons, and the greater part of the weight 
 came on the driving axle. The coach was suspended 
 upon springs. 
 
 The London steam carriage was put together at 
 Felton's carriage shop, in Leather Lane, and after its 
 53 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 completion, Vivian one day ran the locomotive from 
 Leather Lane, Gray's Inn Lane, on to Lords' Cricket 
 Ground, to Paddington, and home again by way of 
 Islington, a journey of ten miles through the streets 
 of London. Several trips were made in Tottenham 
 Court Road and Euston Square, and only once did 
 they meet with accident. Finally, however, the 
 frame of the carriage got twisted, and the engine 
 was detached and set to driving a mill. 
 
 Trevithick's next experiment was made in 1803-4, 
 while he was engineer of the Pen-y-darran iron 
 works, near Merthyr Tydvil, where he built and ran 
 on a railway a locomotive that was fairly successful. 
 In 1808 he built a locomotive for a circular railway 
 or steam circus that he and Andrew Vivian set up in 
 London, near Euston Square. This ran for several 
 weeks, carrying passengers at the rate of twelve or 
 fifteen miles an hour around curves of fifty or one 
 hundred feet radius. One day a rail broke and the 
 engine was overturned, which ended the exhibition. 
 
 Subsequently, Trevithick applied his high-pressure 
 engine to rock-boring and breaking, and dredging. 
 He laid out a system of dredging the Thames River, 
 planned a tunnel under the Thames, invented a high- 
 pressure steam threshing engine in 1812, constructed 
 iron tanks and buoys, and modeled an iron ship. He 
 was one of the first to conceive the practical use of 
 steam in agriculture, declaring that the use of the 
 steam engine for this purpose would "double the 
 population of the kingdom and make our markets the 
 cheapest in the world." 
 
 In 1814, Trevithick became interested in a plan 
 to work the silver mines of Peru by Cornish meth- 
 54 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 ods, and nine of his high-pressure engines were sent 
 to South America in charge of Henry Vivian and 
 other engineers. He himself followed in 1816, and 
 remained in that country ten years, making and los- 
 ing several fortunes during that time. Finally, in a 
 revolution, the mining plants were destroyed, and he 
 was forced to leave the country, penniless. For a 
 time he was prospecting in Costa Rica, where he 
 planned a railroad across the Isthmus from the At- 
 lantic to the Pacific. In 1827 he returned to Eng- 
 land, still a poor man, and settling in Dartford, Kent, 
 devoted himself to new inventions, unsuccessfully en- 
 deavoring to secure the help of the government in 
 his work. His later years were spent in poverty, 
 and when he died, the expense of his burial was 
 borne by his fellow-workmen of Dartford. 
 
 Undoubtedly, Trevi thick was one of the foremost 
 English engineers of his clay, a period that was rich 
 with strong men of distinction in his profession. By 
 many he has been considered as having contributed 
 more even than James Watt to the development of 
 the steam engine and its broader adaptation to prac- 
 tical uses. In his early years he was restrained in 
 putting his ideas and experiments to practical test by 
 the restrictions of Watt's patents. Finally when that 
 difficulty was removed he at once took a leading posi- 
 tion in his profession. Especially in the development 
 of the high pressure engine he is entitled to at least 
 as much credit as any man of his day. His genius 
 was fully recognized in his generation and his impov- 
 erished old age was the result of financial reverses in 
 business operations and not from the lack of substan- 
 tial rewards for his inventive achievements. 
 55 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 DAVID GORDON 
 
 The first experiments of David Gordon, who in 
 1819 was working with William Murdock, in Soho, 
 were for the purpose of using compressed air for com- 
 mon road locomotives. He also invented a portable 
 gas apparatus, and originated a society of gentlemen, 
 with the intention of forming a company for the pur- 
 pose of running a mail coach and other carriages by 
 means of a high-pressure engine, or of a gas vacuum 
 or pneumatic engine, supplied with portable gas. 
 Alexander Gordon, his son, states that "the commit- 
 tee of the society had only a limited sum at their dis- 
 posal, nor were there to be more funds until a car- 
 riage had been propelled for a considerable distance 
 at the rate of ten miles an hour." David Gordon 
 then tried to prevail upon the committee to make use 
 of a steam engine, but evidently without success. 
 
 In 1821 he took out a patent for improvements in 
 wheel carriages, and his locomotive is fully described 
 in the interesting Treatise on Elemental Locomotion, 
 by Mr. Alexander Gordon. The machine consisted 
 of a large hollow cylinder about nine feet in diam- 
 eter and five long, having its internal circumference 
 provided with a continuous series of cogged teeth, 
 into which were made to' work the cogged running 
 wheels of a locomotive steam engine, similar to that 
 of Trevithick. The steam power being communi- 
 cated to the wheels of the carriage, caused them to' 
 revolve, and to climb up the internal rack of the large 
 cylinder. The center of gravity of the engine being 
 thus constantly made to change its position, and to 
 throw its chief weight on the forward side of the 
 axis of the cylinder, the latter was compelled to roll 
 
 56 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 forward, propelling the vehicle before it, and what- 
 ever train might be added. 
 
 Gordon's next attempt to construct locomotive 
 carriages for the common road was in 1824. The 
 means proposed was a modification of the method 
 invented by William Brunton. But instead of the 
 propellers being operated upon by the alternating 
 motion of the piston-rod, as in Brunton's vehicle, 
 Gordon contrived to give them a continuous rotatory 
 action and to apply the force of the engines in a more 
 direct manner. The carriage ran upon three wheels, 
 one in the front to steer by, and two behind to bear 
 the chief weight. Each o<f the wheels had a sepa- 
 rate axle, the ends of which had their bearings upon 
 parallel bars, the wheels rolling in a perpendicular 
 position. This arrangement, by avoiding the usual 
 cross-axle, afforded an increased uninterrupted space 
 in the body of the vehicle. 
 
 In the fore part of the carriage were placed the 
 steam engines, consisting of two brass cylinders, in a 
 horizontal position, but vibrating upon trunnions. 
 The piston-rods of these engines gave motion to an 
 eight-throw crank, two in the middle for the cylin- 
 ders, and three on each side, to which were attached 
 the propellers; by the revolution of the crank, these 
 propellers or legs were successively forced outwards, 
 with the feet of each against the ground in a back- 
 ward direction, and were immediately afterwards 
 lifted from the ground by the revolution of another 
 crank, parallel to the former, and situated at a proper 
 distance from it on the same frame. The propelling- 
 rods were formed of iron gas-tubes, filled with wood, 
 to combine lightness with strength. To the lower 
 57 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ends of these propelling-rods were attached the feet, 
 in the form of segments of circles, and made on their 
 under side like a short and very stiff brush of whale- 
 bone, supported by intermixed iron teeth, to take 
 effect in case the whalebone failed. These feet 
 pressed against the ground in regular succession, by 
 a kind of rolling, circular motion, without digging it 
 up. The guide had the power of lifting these legs 
 off the ground at pleasure, so that in going down 
 hill, when the gravity was sufficient for propulsion, 
 nothing but a brake was put into requisition to re- 
 tard the motion, if necessary. If the carriage was 
 proceeding upon a level, the lifting of the propellers 
 was equivalent to the subtraction of the power, and 
 soon brought it to a full stop. When making turns 
 in a road the guide had only to lift the propellers on 
 one side of the carriage and allow the others to ope- 
 rate alone, until the curve was traversed. 
 
 Gordon got fair results from this locomotive, but 
 the speed was not satisfactory. In his first trials he 
 found the power insufficient. He afterwards fitted 
 one of Gurney's light boilers in the hinder part O'f 
 the carriage, though even after this improvement 
 had been added the experiments were disappointing. 
 Gordon w T as convinced that the application of the 
 power to the wheels was the proper mode of propul- 
 sion, and his project was abandoned after six or 
 seven years had been spent in inventing, construct- 
 ing, and carrying out experiments with four distinct 
 carriages. 
 
 If Iffi 
 
 li,; . </... I ''. . ! , : 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY JAMES 
 
 Born at Henley, England, March, 1776. Died at 
 Dulwich College Alms House, December 16, 1873. 
 
 The father of William Henry James was William 
 James, of Warwickshire, the great railway projector 
 of his time. He was a solicitor in early life, but be- 
 came wealthy, worked a colliery in South Stafford- 
 shire, and in 1815 removed to London, where he had 
 a large land agency business. He became interested 
 in tramways in 1806, and from that date on devoted 
 most of his energies and fortune to projecting rail- 
 ways in the United Kingdom. He had an interest in 
 one of George Stephenson's patents, made numerous 
 railway surveys, and by many has been considered 
 to have done more than any single individual in lay- 
 ing the foundations of the English railroad system. 
 
 William Henry James assisted his father in his 
 railway surveys in early life, and then began business 
 independently as an engineer, in Birmingham. He 
 made experiments in steam locomotion on common 
 roads, and took out patents for locomotive steam en- 
 gines, boilers, driving apparatus, and so on. His 
 patent for a water-tube boiler for road locomotives 
 was secured in 1823, and his first car was built in 
 1824. This was a twenty-passenger steam coach. 
 Each rear wheel had a double-cylinder engine, and 
 the pistons were worked at a pressure of two hun- 
 dred pounds per square inch. Separate engines to 
 each driver gave each wheel an independent motion, 
 so that power and speed might be varied for turning 
 corners, the outer wheel travelling over a much 
 greater space than the inner wheel. When the front 
 wheels were so placed that the carriage proceeded 
 59 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 in a straight line an equal amount of steam was ad- 
 mitted to each pair of cylinders, but when the front 
 wheel was in the lock the engine driving the outer 
 wheel received a greater amount of steam and thus 
 developed more power and traveled faster than the 
 inner wheel. This arrangement was said to be so 
 efficient that the carriage could be made to describe 
 every variety of curve, repeatedly making turns of 
 less than ten feet radius. The whole of the machinery 
 was mounted upon laminated carriage springs. This 
 arrangement caused the engines and their frame- 
 work to vibrate altogether upon the crank-shaft as 
 a center, at the same time connecting these engines 
 to the boiler by means of hollow axles moving in 
 stuffing boxes. Each engine had two cylinders of 
 small diameter and long stroke ; to these separate en- 
 gines steam was supplied from the boiler by means 
 of the main pipe, which moved through steam-tight 
 stuffing boxes to> the slide valve-boxes by small pipes. 
 The locomotive was entirely distinct from the 
 passenger carriage. 
 
 Sir James C. Anderson became associated with 
 James, and in 1829 they built another carriage. This 
 weighed nearly three tons, and the first trials were 
 made round a circle of one hundred and sixty feet 
 in diameter. When it was finally ready to be brought 
 out it was loaded with fifteen passengers and driven 
 several miles on a rough gravel road across Epping 
 Forest, with a speed varying from twelve to fifteen 
 miles an hour. Steam was supplied by two tubular 
 boilers, each forming a hollow cylinder four feet six 
 inches long. The tubes of which the boilers were 
 composed were common gas pipe, one of which split 
 60 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 on one of the trips, thus letting the water out of one 
 of the boilers and extinguishing its fire. Under 
 these circumstances, with only one boiler in opera- 
 tion, the carriage returned home at the rate of about 
 seven miles an hour, carrying more than twenty pas- 
 sengers at one period, indeed, it is said, a much 
 greater number; showing that sufficient steam could 
 be generated in such a boiler to be equal to the pro- 
 pulsion of between five and six tons weight. In 
 consequence of this demonstration that the most 
 brilliant success was attainable, the proprietors dis- 
 mantled the carriage and commenced the construc- 
 tion of superior tubular boilers with much stronger 
 tubes. 
 
 Shortly after Anderson and James commenced to 
 build another steam carriage, which was ready for 
 use in November, 1829. This engine was not in- 
 tended to carry passengers, but to* be employed for 
 drawing carriages behind. Four tubular boilers 
 were used, the total number of tubes being nearly 
 two hundred. These boilers were enclosed in a space 
 four feet wide, three feet long, and tw r o feet deep. 
 The steam from each boiler was conducted into one 
 main steam pipe one and one-half inches in diam- 
 eter, and the communication from any one of the 
 boilers could be cut off in case of leakage. Four 
 cylinders, each two and one-quarter inch bore and 
 nine inch stroke, were arranged vertically in the hind 
 part of the locomotive, and two of them acted upon 
 each crank-shaft as before, giving a separate motion 
 to each driving wheel. 
 
 The exhaust steam was conducted through two 
 copper tanks for heating the feed water to a high 
 61 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 temperature, and thence passed to' the chimney. The 
 steering-gear consisted of an external pillar contain- 
 ing a vertical shaft, at the upper end of which small 
 bevel-gearing was used, giving motion to the vertical 
 shaft, whose bottom end carried a pinion gearing into 
 a sector attached to the fore axle. The motion of 
 the crank-shafts was communicated to the separate 
 axles of the driving-wheels by spur-gearing with two 
 speeds. 
 
 In experiments made with this carriage, the great- 
 est speed obtained upon a level, on a very indifferent 
 road, was at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and it 
 never ran more than three or four miles without 
 breaking some of the steam joints. The Mechanic's 
 Magazine, reporting one of these trials, said : "A 
 series of interesting experiments were made through- 
 out the whole of yesterday with a new steam car- 
 riage belonging to Sir James Anderson, Bart., and 
 W. H. James, Esq., on the Vauxhall, Kensington, 
 and Clapham roads, with the view of ascertaining the 
 practical advantages of some perfectly novel appara- 
 tus attached to the engines, the results of which were 
 so satisfactory that the proprietors intend immediate- 
 ly establishing several stage coaches on the principle. 
 The writer was favored with a ride during the last 
 experiment, when the machine proceeded from 
 Vauxhall Bridge to the Swan at Clapham, a distance 
 of two and a half miles, which was run at the rate 
 of fifteen miles an hour. From what I had the pleas- 
 ure of witnessing, I am confident that this carriage 
 is far superior to every other locomotive carriage 
 hitherto brought before the public, and that she will 
 easily perform fifteen miles an hour throughout a 
 62 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 long journey. The body o-f the carriage, if not ele- 
 gant, is neat, being the figure of a parallelogram. It 
 is a very small and compact machine, and runs upon 
 four wheels.'' 
 
 W. H. James patented another steam carriage in 
 August, 1832. This varied much from his earlier 
 engines in the working parts, and it was not gener- 
 ally considered to be as satisfactory as the others. 
 Sir James Anderson was not able, for pecuniary 
 reasons, to continue to back James in his experiment- 
 ing, and it does not appear that these plans of 1832 
 were ever consummated in a completed vehicle. 
 
 James was a man of strong mind, an original 
 thinker and thoroughly well-trained by his appren- 
 ticeship with his father. He spent a good part of his 
 life in experimenting with common-road steam pro- 
 pulsion, but he had not monetary resources or finan- 
 cial ability commensurate with his mechanical genius. 
 When the support of Anderson was withdrawn from 
 him he seems to have been compelled to give up. 
 Little has been recorded concerning the latter years 
 of his life, and his death in the almshouse sufficiently 
 indicates the poverty in which his last years were 
 spent. His father also sacrificed his life to the cause 
 of railroad advancement, losing his entire fortune 
 and dying a poor man. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY 
 
 Born at Treator, near Padstow, Cornwall, Eng- 
 land, February 14, 1793. Died at Reeds, near Bade, 
 February 28, 1875. 
 
 The son of John Gurney, Goldsworthy Gurney 
 received a good elementary education at the Truro 
 Grammar School, and then studied medicine. He 
 settled at Wadebridge as a surgeon, but although 
 very successful, gradually turned his attention to 
 scientific and mechanical investigations. He con- 
 structed an organ, studied chemistry and mechanical 
 science, and removing to London in 1820, delivered 
 a series of lectures on heat, electricity and gases at 
 the Surrey Institute. His investigations resulted in 
 the invention of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and the 
 discovery of the powerful lime-light known as the 
 Drummond light, and he engaged in other experi- 
 ments in this field of research. 
 
 In 1804, while on a holiday at Camborne, he saw a 
 Trevithick engine on wheels. Recalling this in after 
 years he began experimenting on steam locomotion 
 in 1823, and soon abandoned his surgical and medi- 
 cal practice for this new pursuit. His first efforts 
 were toward the construction of an engine to travel 
 on the common roads. The weight of the steam 
 engines that were then being built seemed to him to 
 offer great objections to their use for this purpose, 
 but he succeeded, with his first machine, in reducing 
 weight from four tons to thirty hundredweight. 
 Then he secured a sufficiency of power by the in- 
 vention of the high-pressure steam jet. This inven- 
 tion differed from those of Stephenson and Trevi- 
 thick, who sent their waste steam up through the 
 64 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 chimney instead of utilizing it. The Gurney jet was 
 applied to the Stephenson Rocket engine on the 
 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in October, 
 1829, and also to steamboats and steam carriages. 
 
 In 1823, Gurney made his first experiments with 
 a model steam carriage, on which propellers or feet 
 were used. Two years later, in 1825, he completed 
 a full-size carriage on the same plan, and in May 
 of that year he took out his first patent for this 
 vehicle. The carriage was impelled by these legs 
 being alternately drawn forwards and pressed back- 
 wards by a steam engine acting upon them through 
 movable oblong blocks, to which they were at- 
 tached. As a first experiment this carriage was 
 driven up Windmill Hill, near Kilburn. Another 
 trip, between London and Edgeware, demonstrated 
 the inefficiency of these propellers, and led to the dis- 
 covery that there was sufficient friction between 
 wheels and the ground to insure propulsion. 
 
 In 1826 he constructed a coach about twenty feet 
 long, \vhich would accommodate six inside and fif- 
 teen outside passengers, besides the engineer. The 
 driving-wheels were five feet diameter, and the lead- 
 ing wheels three feet nine inches diameter. Two 
 propellers were used, which could be put in motion 
 when the carriage was climbing hills. Gurney's 
 patent boiler was used for supplying steam to the 
 twelve horse-power engine. The total weight of the 
 carriage was about a ton and a half. In front of 
 the coach was a capacious boot, while behind, that 
 which had the appearance of a boot, was the case for 
 the boiler and the furnace, from which it was cal- 
 culated that no inconvenience would be experienced 
 
 65 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 by the outside passenger, although in cold weather 
 a certain degree of heat might be obtained, if re- 
 quired. In descending a hill, there was a brake 
 fixed on the hind wheel, to increase the friction ; but, 
 independently of this, the guide had the power of 
 lessening the force of the steam to any extent by 
 means of the lever at his right hand, which operated 
 upon the throttle valve, and by which he could stop the 
 action of the steam altogether and effect a counter 
 vacuum in the cylinders. By this means also- he regu- 
 lated the rate of progress on the road. There was 
 another lever by which he could stop the vehicle 
 instantly, and in a moment reverse the motion of the 
 wheels. 
 
 This carriage traveled up Highgate Hill to Edge- 
 ware, and also to Stanmore, and went up both Stan- 
 more Hill and Brockley Hill. In ascending these 
 hills the driving-wheels did not slip, so that the legs 
 were not needed. After these experiments the pro- 
 pellers were removed. 
 
 Gurney obtained another patent in 1827, and un- 
 der this worked a steam carriage resembling the 
 common stage coach, with the boiler in the hind boot. 
 This carriage was run experimentally to- Barnet, 
 Edgeware, Finchley, and other places, and in 1828 
 it was said that a trip was made from London to 
 Melksham, thirteen miles from Bath, a distance of 
 nearly two hundred miles. On the return trip the 
 rate of speed was about twelve miles an hour. 
 
 Gurney's carriage so fully established its practica- 
 bility, that in 1830, Sir Charles Dance contracted 
 for several, and ran them successfully from London 
 to Holyhead, and from Birmingham to Bristol. In 
 66 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 the following year he ran over the turnpike road be- 
 tween Gloucester and Cheltenham for four months 
 in succession, four times a day, without an accident 
 or delay of consequence. The distance of nine miles 
 was regularly covered in from forty-five to fifty-five 
 minutes. Nearly three thousand persons were car- 
 ried, and nearly four thousand miles traveled. 
 
 A strong public sentiment against the use of the 
 common roads by these vehicles sprang up, and Par- 
 liament was prevailed upon to impose upon steam 
 carriages heavy highway tolls that were in effect 
 prohibitory. Sir Charles Dance suspended his 
 operations. Gurney petitioned the House of Com- 
 mons for relief. Several committees in 1831, 1834 
 and 1835 investigated the subject and reported 
 strongly in favor of steam carriages, but no legisla- 
 tion could be secured, and Gurney was forced to give 
 up further introduction of steam carriages. 
 
 He continued his experimenting in other direc- 
 tions, invented the stove that bore his name, intro- 
 duced new methods of lighting and ventilating the 
 Houses of Parliament, and was otherwise active in 
 scientific pursuits. He was a magistrate for Corn- 
 wall and Devonshire, and in 1863 was knighted in 
 recognition of his discoveries and inventions. 
 
 By writers of that period Gurney received a great 
 deal of credit and an abundance of advertising for 
 his work. He was especially conspicuous in the 
 Parliamentary investigations regarding steam car- 
 riages. On the whole, however, it is generally con- 
 sidered that he was proclaimed far beyond his 
 merits, especially in comparison with such rivals as 
 Hancock, Maceroni and others. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Died, 
 April 1 6, 1864. 
 
 Blanchard received a common school education, 
 and before he had entered his teens his mechanical 
 genius began to show itself. At thirteen years of 
 age he invented a machine for paring apples, and 
 shortly after, ' a machine for making tacks. His 
 great work was the invention of a machine for turn- 
 ing out articles of irregular form from wood and 
 metals. His lathes for this purpose were put in 
 operation by the United States Government in the 
 armories at Harper's Ferry, Va., and Springfield, 
 Mass. 
 
 Becoming interested in the subject of steam pro- 
 pulsion he made, in 1826, a steamboat that was suc- 
 cessfully tried on the Connecticut River, running 
 from Hartford, Conn., to Springfield, Mass. After- 
 ward, he built a boat of larger size, that drew eight- 
 een inches of water, and ran this up the Connecticut 
 River, from Springfield, Mass., to Vermont. He 
 also built other boats for use on the Alleghany 
 River. 
 
 The subjects of railroads and locomotive power 
 on land interested him for a short time, and in 1825, 
 after he had completed his engagement with the 
 United States armories, he built, at Springfield, 
 Mass., a carriage driven by steam for use on the 
 common road. This was the first real steam car- 
 riage constructed in this country, the Philadelphia 
 machine of Evans being but a rude affair, although 
 it involved the essential principles of steam propul- 
 sion. The Blanchard carriage was perfectly man- 
 68 
 
THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 ageable, could turn corners and go backwards and 
 forwards with all the readiness of a well-trained 
 horse, and on ascending a hill the power could be 
 increased. Its performance on the highway was al- 
 together satisfactory, and a patent was issued to its 
 inventor. 
 
 Blanchard endeavored to secure support to build a 
 railroad in Massachusetts, and the joint committee 
 on roads and canals of the Massachusetts Legisla- 
 ture, in January, 1826, endorsed the model of his 
 railway and steam carriage, and recommended them 
 "to all the friends of internal improvements." Not- 
 withstanding this report, capitalists viewed the pro- 
 ject as visionary, and Blanchard met with no greater 
 success when he subsequently applied to the Legisla- 
 ture of New York. Giving up his plans he thence- 
 forward devoted his attention to the subject of steam 
 navigation. 
 
 Blanchard was a prolific inventor, having taken 
 out no less than thirty or forty patents for as many 
 different inventions. He did not reap great benefit 
 from his labors, for many of his inventions scarcely 
 paid the cost of getting them up, while others were 
 appropriated without payment to him, or even giving 
 him credit. His machine for turning irregular forms 
 was his most notable work, and even of that, others 
 sought to defraud him. To defend himself he was 
 forced to go to the courts and even to Congress, be- 
 fore he succeeded in establishing his rights. After 
 the success of this machine he made other improve- 
 ments in the manufacture of arms, constructing thir- 
 teen different machines that were operated in the 
 government armories. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 JOHNSON 
 
 Two brothers Johnson had a small engineering es- 
 tablishment in Philadelphia, in 1828. They put 
 upon the streets in that year a vehicle that J. G. 
 Pangborn, in his The World's Rail Way, says was 
 "the first steam wagon built, and actually operated 
 as such, in the United States." The same writer, 
 describing this wagon, says that it had a single cyl- 
 inder set horizontally, with a connecting-rod attach- 
 ment with a single crank at the middle of the driv- 
 ing-axle. Its two driving-wheels were eight feet in 
 diameter and made of wood, the same as those on an 
 ordinary road wagon. The two forward or guiding 
 wheels were much smaller than the others, and were 
 arranged in the usual manner of a common wagon. 
 It had an upright boiler hung up behind, shaped like 
 a huge bottle, the smoke-stack coming out through 
 the center of the top. The safety-valve was held 
 down by a weight and lever, and the horses in the 
 neighborhood did not take at all kindly to the puffing 
 of the machine as it jolted over the rough streets. 
 Generally it ran well, and could take without diffi- 
 cult) 7 reasonable grades in the streets and roadways. 
 During its existence, however, it knocked down a 
 number of awning-posts, ran into and broke several 
 window fronts, and sometimes was altogether un- 
 manageable. Like all others of their day, however, 
 the Johnsons were ahead of their time. There was no 
 demand for their steam wagon, road conditions made 
 it unavailable and the machine itself was, despite 
 much merit, really not much more than a sug- 
 gestion of better things three-quarters of a century 
 later. 
 
 70 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 WALTER HANCOCK 
 
 Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, June 
 1 6, 1799. Died May 14, 1852. 
 
 The father of Walter Hancock was James Han- 
 cock, a timber merchant and cabinet maker. Walter 
 received a common school education, and then was 
 apprenticed to a watchmaker and jeweler in London. 
 The bent of his inclination, however, was toward 
 engineering, and he turned his attention to experi- 
 menting along the lines that were at that time ab- 
 sorbing the thoughts and efforts of those men of 
 England interested in mechanical and scientific 
 subjects. 
 
 He was foremost among those who in the early 
 part of the nineteenth century were engaged in trying 
 to solve the problem of steam carriage locomotion 
 on the common highways. The story of his work 
 in this direction is fully told by himself in his Narra- 
 tive of Twelve Years' Experiments, 1824-36, Dem- 
 onstrative of the Practicability and Advantage of 
 Employing Steam Carriages on Common Roads, a 
 book published in London, in 1838. This volume 
 contains a full account of his labors, and descrip- 
 tions of all the carriages that he built and ran. The 
 following extract from the introduction of the book 
 shows in what esteem Hancock regarded himself 
 and what estimate he placed upon the value of his 
 work : 
 
 "The author of these pages believes he should of- 
 fend alike against truth and genuine modesty were 
 he to yield to any of the steam carriage inventors 
 who have appeared in his day, in a single particular 
 of desert; he began earlier (with one abortive ex- 
 7 1 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ception) and has persevered longer and more un- 
 ceasingly than any of them. He was the first to 
 run a steam carriage for hire on a common road, and 
 is still the only person who has ventured in a steam 
 vehicle to traverse the most crowded streets of the 
 metropolis at the busiest periods of the day; he has 
 built a greater number of steam carriages (if not 
 better) than anyone else, and has been thus enabled 
 to try a greater variety of forms of construction, out 
 of which to choose the best." 
 
 In 1824, Hancock invented a steam engine in 
 which the ordinary cylinder and piston were replaced 
 by two flexible steam receivers, composed of several 
 layers of canvas firmly united together by coatings 
 of dissolved caoutchouc, or india-rubber, and thus 
 enabled to resist a pressure of steam of sixty pounds 
 upon the square inch. This engine he tried to 
 adapt to steam carriages, but found that he could not 
 get the requisite degree of power for locomotion, al- 
 though it worked very well as a stationary engine of 
 four horse-power at his factory in Stratford. Next 
 he invented a tubular boiler with sixteen horizontal 
 tubes, each connected with each other by lesser tubes, 
 so that the water or steam might circulate through 
 the entire series. This boiler was subsequently 
 changed by arranging the tubes vertically, and a pat- 
 ent was taken out in 1825. 
 
 After further experiments and improvements, 
 Hancock finally made a vehicle to travel on three 
 wheels, getting power from a pair of vibrating or 
 trunnion engines fixed upon the crank-axle of the fore 
 wheels. Experimental trips of this carriage were 
 made from the Stratford shop to Epping Forest, 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 Paddington, Hounslow, Croydon, Fulham, and else- 
 where. Some changes were made in the vehicle, and 
 finally the trunnion engines were put aside and fixed 
 ones substituted. 
 
 This improved carriage, the first in a long series 
 built by Hancock, was named the Infant. The body 
 was in the form of a double-body coach, or omnibus, 
 with seats for passengers inside and out. The bulk 
 of the machinery was placed in the rear o>f the car- 
 riage, a boiler and a fire being beneath it. Between 
 the boiler and the passengers' seats was the engine 
 and a place for the engineer. A pair of inverted 
 fixed engines working vertically on a crank-shaft 
 furnished the power. The steering apparatus was 
 in front. The whole carriage was on one frame 
 supported by four springs on the axle of each wheel. 
 The carriage was capable of carrying sixteen passen- 
 gers besides the engineer and guide. Its total weight, 
 including coke and water, but exclusive of attend- 
 ants and passengers, was about three and one-half 
 tons. The wheel tires were three and one-half inches 
 wide, and the diameter of the hind wheels four feet. 
 
 In February, 1831, the Infant began to run on 
 regular trips between Stratford and London. In 1832 
 a second carriage, similar to the Infant, was built, 
 and called the Era. It was constructed for the Lon- 
 don and Brighton Steam Carriage Company, to ply 
 between London and Greenwich. The following 
 year a third carriage, the Enterprise, was completed, 
 for the London and Paddington Steam Car Com- 
 pany, and was run between London and Paddington. 
 
 Hancock took the Infant on a long trip from 
 Stratford to London and Brighton, in October, 1832. 
 73 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Eleven passengers were carried, and the carriage 
 kept a speed of nine miles an hour on the level, and 
 six to eight miles an hour up grade. On the return 
 one mile up hill was made at the rate of seventeen 
 miles an hour. Another trip to Brighton was made 
 in September oi the next year at an average speed of 
 twelve miles an hour actual traveling. At Brigh- 
 ton the new carriage attracted much attention, and 
 was exhibited for several days on trips in and around 
 the to\vn. After the Enterprise, the Autopsy came 
 from the Hancock shops, in September, 1833. This 
 carriage was run on trial about Brighton and in Lon- 
 don streets, and for about a month was run for hire 
 between Finsbury Square and Pentonville. 
 
 A small steam drag or tug to draw an attached 
 coach or omnibus was the next production of the 
 Hancock establishment, which had already attained 
 more than local fame. This was built for a Herr 
 Voigtlander, of Vienna, and on one of its trial 
 trips it carried ten persons and an attached four- 
 wheeled carriage with six persons in it. With this 
 load a speed of fourteen miles an hour on the level 
 was attained, and eight to nine miles an hour on 
 up grades. 
 
 Beginning in August, 1834, the Era and the Au- 
 topsy were run daily in London between the City, 
 Moorgate and Paddington. During the ensuing four 
 months over four thousand passengers were carried. 
 Each coach carried from ten to twelve passengers, 
 and the trip from Moorgate to Paddington, five 
 miles, was made in a half hour, including stops. 
 On the trial trip a speed of twelve miles an hour, 
 exclusive of stops, was maintained. 
 74 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 Later in the same year the Era, with its name 
 changed to the Erin, was sent to Dublin, Ireland, 
 where it was exhibited and run in and about the city, 
 by Hancock, for eight days, before it was reshipped 
 to Stratford. Next in turn came a drag of larger 
 size than any before built, with an engine of greater 
 capacity. On the trial trip this drew, on a level 
 road, at a speed of ten miles an hour, three omni- 
 buses and one stage coach with fifty passengers. In 
 July, 1835, the trip to Reading, a distance of thirty- 
 eight miles, was made in three, hours forty minutes 
 twenty-five seconds; actual running time, exclusive 
 of stops, three hours eight minutes ten seconds, at 
 a moving rate of over twelve miles an hour. Sub- 
 sequently, this drag was made over into a carriage, 
 like the others of the Hancock type, fitted for eight- 
 een passengers, and named the Automaton. 
 
 In August, 1835, the Erin ran from London to 
 Marlborough, a distance of seventy-eight miles, in 
 seven hours forty-nine minutes, exclusive of stops, 
 averaging nine and six-tenths miles an hour. The 
 return from Marlborough to London was accom- 
 plished in seven hours thirty-six minutes, exclusive 
 of stops, an average of nine and eight-tenths miles 
 an hour. In the same month the Erin made the run 
 from London to Birmingham at the rate of ten miles 
 an hour. 
 
 In 1836, Hancock ran all his carriages on a regular 
 route on the Stratford and Islington roads for a 
 period of twenty weeks, making in that time seven 
 hundred and twelve trips, covering four thousand 
 two hundred miles, and carrying twelve thousand 
 seven hundred and sixty-one passengers. 
 75 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 After running his carriages for several years dis- 
 sensions in the companies that were promoting the 
 new means of travel, and the increasing efficiency of 
 railways, led to the discontinuance of Hancock's 
 energy in this direction. Thereafter he built only a 
 steam phaeton for his personal use; this had seats 
 for three, and was used about the City, Hyde Park 
 and the London suburbs. Hancock's steam vehicles 
 were ten in number the experimental three-wheel- 
 er, the trunnion-engine Infant, the fixed engine In- 
 fant, the Era, afterward the Erin, the Enterprise, the 
 Autopsy, the Austrian drag, the Irish drag, the 
 Automaton, and the phaeton. 
 
 Hancock turned his attention in the later years of 
 his life to developing the use of india-rubber, in 
 connection with his brother, Thomas Hancock, who 
 was one of the foremost rubber manufacturers of 
 England. He secured several patents for improve- 
 ments in manufacturing rubber. 
 
 At the time when Hancock was at work upon his 
 steam carriages, Gurney was also in the front and 
 there was considerable jealousy between the two. 
 Dr. Larclner and others were active in exploiting 
 Gurney, while Hancock was supported in contro- 
 versies by Alexander Gordon, Luke Hebert and 
 others. That Hancock achieved most in the way of 
 definite results and that his experimenting and ac- 
 complishments were more markedly along thor- 
 oughly intelligent and conservatively practical me- 
 chanical lines than any of his rivals is now generally 
 conceded. His carriages were admirable produc- 
 tions as road vehicles, well-built, attractive and com- 
 fortable. 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 WILLIAM T. JAMES 
 
 An engineer of New York, who was engaged in 
 experimenting about 1829 James made, in his shop in 
 Eldridge Court, several small models of vehicles that 
 proved sufficiently satisfactory. His first engine had 
 two-inch cylinders and four-inch stroke. This ran 
 . around a track on the floor of his shop, and drew a 
 train of four cars, carrying an apprentice boy on each 
 car. James' second locomotive was mounted on 
 three wheels, two drivers in the rear and a steering 
 wheel, and it ran on the floor or sidewalk. 
 
 In 1829, James, satisfied with his experimenting, 
 built a steam carriage capable of carrying passen- 
 gers, and with this he made very good time over the 
 streets and roadways in and about the metropolis. 
 He then adopted the rotary cylinders instead of the 
 reciprocating, in his engine, which had two six-inch 
 cylinders, and was supported on three wheels. On 
 each cylinder were two fixed eccentrics, one for the 
 forward and one for the backing motion. The slide 
 valve of one cylinder had a half-inch lap at each 
 end, and exhausted its steam into the other. 
 
 In 1830, James made his fourth full-size steam 
 carriage. This was a three-wheeled vehicle, the 
 rear wheels being drivers three feet in diameter, and 
 the third the front or steering wheel. In 1831, in a 
 competition for the best locomotive engine adapted 
 to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, 
 James built his fifth locomotive, and the first 
 one to run on rails. His engine did not secure the 
 prize, but the company, thinking his machine con- 
 tained valuable ideas, entered into an arrangement 
 with him for further experimenting. 
 
 77 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 FRANCIS MACERONI 
 
 Born in Manchester, England, in 1788. Died in. 
 London, July 25, 1846. 
 
 The father of Francis Macaroni was Peter Au- 
 gustus Maceroni who, with two brothers, served in 
 a French regiment in the American Revolution. 
 After that conflict was ended he went to England 
 and settled in Manchester, where he was Italian 
 agent for British manufacturers. 
 
 Francis Maceroni was educated in the Roman 
 Catholic school, in Hampshire; at the Dominican 
 Academy, in Surrey, and at the college at Old Hall 
 Green, near Puckerbridge, Hertfordshire. During 
 a period of ten years, from 1803 to 1813, he lived in 
 Rome and Naples as a young gentleman of elegant 
 leisure. In 1813 he began the study of anatomy and 
 medicine, but had not gone far in those pursuits be- 
 fore his vagrom disposition took him in another di- 
 rection. He became aide-de-camp to Murat, King 
 of Naples, with the rank of Colonel of Cavalry. His 
 service with Murat took him on missions to England 
 and France, and for a time he was a prisoner of the 
 French authorities. 
 
 After two years of this military service, he re- 
 turned to England, and retained his residence there 
 for the rest of his life. He did not remain at home 
 long, however, for he was with Sir George Mac- 
 Gregor at Porto Bello, in 1819; became a brigadier- 
 general of the new republic of Colombia, and in 
 1821 saw service in Spain with General Pepe. 
 
 Returning again to England, he came before the 
 public as an advocate of a ship canal across the 
 Isthmus, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, 
 
 78 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 and also promoted a company, called The Atlantic 
 and Pacific Junction and South American Mining 
 and Trading Company, with a capital of one million 
 pounds sterling. The company collapsed in the 
 commercial panic of 1825, and this soldier of fortune 
 in 1829 went to Constantinople to> assist the Turks 
 against the Russians. In London again in 1831, 
 Maceroni was engaged for the rest of his life in the 
 cause of highway steam locomotion, in which he ac- 
 complished a great deal. 
 
 Maceroni was second only to Walter Hancock as 
 an inventor and builder of steam road carriages and 
 as a promoter of travel by those vehicles. From 
 1825 to 1828 he was with Golds worthy Gurney in 
 London, but his real activity did not begin until 
 1831, when he became associated with John Squire. 
 In 1833, Maceroni and Squire took out a patent for 
 a multi-tubular boiler, which they applied to< a steam 
 carriage that one writer of that day described as "a 
 fine specimen of indomitable perseverance." It often 
 traveled at the rate of from eighteen to twenty miles 
 an hour. The engines were placed horizontally un- 
 derneath the carriage body, the boiler was arranged 
 at the back, and a fan was used to urge the combus- 
 tion of the fuel, the supply of which was regulated 
 by the engineman, who had a seat behind. The pas- 
 sengers were placed in the open carriage body, and 
 their seats were upon the tops of the water tanks. 
 There were two cylinders seven and one-half inches 
 in diameter, the stroke being fifteen and three-quar- 
 ter inches. The diameter of the steam pipe was two 
 and one-quarter inches, and that of the exhaust pipe 
 was two and three-quarter inches. 
 79 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 The carriage attracted a great deal of attention, 
 and much was written about it in the newspapers of 
 the time. Once the trip was taken to Harrow-on- 
 the-Hill, a distance of nine miles, in fifty-eight min- 
 utes, without the full power of steam being on at any 
 time. For several weeks in the early part of 1834 
 the carriage was running daily from Oxford Street 
 to Edgeware. Several trips were made to Uxbridge, 
 when the roads were in very bad condition, but the 
 journey from the Regent's Circus, Oxford Street, a 
 distance of sixteen miles, was often performed in a 
 little over an hour. A trip to Watford was made, 
 and one of the passengers thus described the experi- 
 ence from Bushby Heath into the village of Watford : 
 
 "We set off from the starting place amid the cheers 
 of the villagers. The motion was so steady that w r e 
 could have read with ease, and the noise was no 
 worse than that produced by a common vehicle. On 
 arriving at the summit of Clay Hill, the local and in- 
 experienced attendant neglected to clog the wheel 
 until it became impossible. We went thundering 
 down the hill at the rate of thirty miles an hour. 
 Mr. Squire was steersman, and never lost his pres- 
 ence of mind. It may be conceived what amazement 
 a thing of this kind, flashing through the village of 
 Bushy, occasioned among the inhabitants. The peo- 
 ple seemed petrified on seeing a carriage without 
 horses. In the busy and populous town of Watford 
 the sensation was similar the men gazed in speech- 
 less wonder; the women clapped their hands. We 
 turned round at the end of the street in magnificent 
 style, and ascended Clay Hill at the same rate as the 
 stage coaches drawn by five horses." 
 80 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 Macaroni made two steam carriages, but in 1834 
 he separated from Squire, and becoming short of 
 funds fell into the clutches of Asda, an Italian Jew, 
 who persuaded him to let the two carriages go to the 
 Continent. One was sent to Brussels, where it ran 
 successfully, and the other went to Paris. The per- 
 formance of the latter was thus described in the 
 columns of a Paris journal : "The steam carriage 
 brought to perfection in England by Colonel Ma- 
 ceroni, ran along the Boulevards as far as the Rue 
 Faubourg du Temple. It turned with the greatest 
 facility, ran the whole length of the Boulevards back 
 again, and along the Rue Royale, to the Place Louis 
 XV. This carriage is very elegant, much lighter, 
 and by no means so noisy as the one we saw here 
 some months ago, and it excited along its way the 
 surprise and applause of the astonished spectators. 
 All the hills on the paved Boulevard were ascended 
 with astonishing rapidity. One of our colleagues 
 was in this carriage the whole of its running above 
 described, and he declares that there is not the least 
 heat felt inside from the fire, and that conversation 
 can be kept up so as to be heard at a much lower tone 
 than in most ordinary carriages." 
 
 Asda sold the carriage and the patent for a large 
 sum of money, and swindled Maceroni out of all his 
 share. For years the inventor was in the direst ex- 
 tremes of poverty. In 1841 he succeeded in secur- 
 ing the support of The General Steam Carriage Com- 
 pany to construct and run carriages under his patent. 
 Disagreement between the directors and the manu- 
 facturing engineer again brought to Maceroni disas- 
 ter, from which he was never able to recover. 
 81 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 RICHARD ROBERTS 
 
 Born in 1789. Died in March, 1864. 
 
 Roberts was best known as a Manchester, Eng- 
 land, engineer, of the firm of Sharp, Roberts & Co. 
 He built a steam road locomotive that was first tried 
 in December, 1833. Three months later the ma- 
 chine was subjected to a second trial. The carriage 
 went out under the guidance of Mr. Roberts, with 
 forty passengers. It proceeded about a mile and a 
 half, made a difficult turn where the road was nar- 
 row, and returned to the works without accident. 
 The maximum speed on the level was nearly twenty 
 miles an hour. Hills were mounted easily. No 
 doubt existed of the engine being speedily put in 
 complete and effective condition for actual service. 
 During another experimental trip in April of the 
 same year, the locomotive 'met with an accident 
 caused by some of the boiler tubes giving way, al- 
 lowing the steam to escape and the fuel to be scat- 
 tered about. No one was seriously injured, and 
 none of the passengers was hurt. 
 
 Roberts invented the compensating gear that he 
 first used on his steam carriage. This gear super- 
 seded claw clutches, friction bands, ratchet-wheels, 
 and other arrangements for obtaining the full power 
 of both the driving-wheels, and at the same time al- 
 lowing for the engine to turn the sharpest corner. 
 In 1839, Roberts invented an arrangement for com- 
 municating power to both driving-wheels at all 
 times, whether turning to the right or left. During 
 the latter years of his life this famous engineer lived 
 in exceedingly straitened circumstances, and he 
 died in poverty. 
 
 82 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL 
 
 Born at Parkhead, near Glasgow, Scotland, May 
 8, 1808. Died June 8, 1882, at Ventnor. 
 
 The father of John Scott Russell was David Rus- 
 sell, a Scottish clergyman, and the son was origi- 
 nally intended for the church. His mind was more 
 inclined toward mechanics than theology, and he 
 entered a workshop in order to learn the trade of en- 
 gineering. Studying at the Universities of Edin- 
 burgh, St. Andrews and Glasgow, he was graduated 
 from Glasgow when he was sixteen years of age. 
 In 1832, upon the death of Sir John Leslie, Profes- 
 sor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University,. 
 Russell was elected to fill the vacancy temporarily. 
 Shortly after that he began his celebrated investiga- 
 tions into the nature of the sea waves, as a prelimin- 
 ary study to improving the forms of ships. As a 
 result of these researches he developed the wave-line 
 system for the construction of vessels. In 1837 he 
 received a gold medal of the Royal Society of En- 
 gineers, and was elected a member of the Council of 
 that Society for a paper that he read "on the laws 
 by which water opposes resistance to the motion of 
 floating bodies/' At that time he was manager of 
 the shipbuilding words at Greenock, and under his 
 supervision and according to his designs several 
 ships were built with lines based on his wave sys- 
 tem. Among these were four of the new fleet of the 
 West India Mail Company. 
 
 Russell removed to London in 1844, an d became a 
 Fellow of the Royal Society in 1847. He was vice- 
 president of the Institute of Civil Engineers and 
 secretary of the Society of Arts. For many years he 
 83 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 was a shipbuilder on the Thames, and supervised 
 the construction of the celebrated steamship Great 
 Eastern. He was one of the promoters and vice- 
 president of the Institute of Naval Architects, and a 
 pioneer in advocating the construction of iron-clad 
 men-of-war. He published many papers, princi- 
 pally upon naval architecture. 
 
 It was while he was residing in Edinburgh that 
 he took out a patent for a steam locomotive to be 
 used on the common roads. The boiler that he in- 
 vented was multi-tubular, with the furnace and the 
 return tubes on the same level, and similar to a 
 marine boiler. The boiler everywhere consisted of 
 opposite and parallel surfaces, and these surfaces 
 were connected by stays of small diameter. The 
 copper plates of the boiler were only one-tenth of an 
 inch thick. When put to actual test the weakness 
 of the boiler thus constructed was fully demon- 
 strated. 
 
 The engine had two vertical cylinders, twelve 
 inches in diameter and with twelve inches stroke. 
 The engine was mounted upon laminated springs, 
 arranged so that each spring in its flexure described, 
 at a particular point, such a circle as was also de- 
 scribed by the main axle in its motion round the 
 crank shaft. This arrangement was intended to 
 correct any irregularities in the road so that they 
 would not interfere with the proper working of the 
 spur gearing. Exhaust steam was turned into the 
 chimney to create a blast. Water and coke were 
 carried on a separate tender on two wheels, coupled 
 to the rear of the engine. Spare tenders, filled, were 
 kept in readiness at different stations on the road. 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 These tenders, mounted upon springs, had seats back 
 and front for passengers. To work the locomotive 
 three persons were required, a steersman on the front 
 seat, an engineer on the back seat outside above the 
 engines, and a fireman stationed on the footplate in 
 front of the boiler. 
 
 On the order of the Steam Carriage Company, of 
 Scotland, six of these coaches were built by the 
 Grove House Engine Works, of Edinburgh. They 
 were substantially constructed and very elaborately 
 fitted up. As was said at the time, they were "in 
 the style and with all the comfort and elegance of 
 the most costly gentleman's carriage." They ran 
 very successfully for some time, during 1834, be- 
 tween St. George's Square, Glasgow, and Paisley. 
 There was a service of six coaches once an hour. 
 Each carriage accommodated six passengers inside 
 and twenty outside, and sometimes drew, in addi- 
 tion, a dogcart laden with six passengers, and the 
 necessary fuel and water. These dogcarts were 
 used as relays on the road, being kept ready con- 
 stantly. Public opposition to these coaches devel- 
 oped here as it had done in London about the same 
 period. Road trustees objected to them on the 
 ground that they wore out the roads too 1 rapidly. 
 Obstructions of stones, logs of wood, and other 
 things were placed in their way, but the coaches gen- 
 erally went on in spite of these. Ordinary horse- 
 drawn road carriages were more damaged and hin- 
 dered than the Russell coaches, and even heavy carts 
 were compelled to abandon travel on the obstructed 
 roads and take roundabout courses, greatly to the dis- 
 comfiture of the drivers. 
 
 85 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 One day, however, a heavy strain, unusually 
 severe, caused by jolting over the rough road, broke 
 a wheel, and the weight of the coach falling on the 
 boiler caused an explosion. Five persons were 
 killed, and as a result of this accident the Court of 
 Session interdicted the further travel of these car- 
 riages in Scotland. The Steam Carriage Company 
 brought an action for damages against the trustees 
 of the turnpike road for having compelled them to 
 withdraw the carriages from the Glasgow and Pais- 
 ley road by " wantonly, wrongfully and maliciously 
 accumulating masses of metal, stones and rubbish on 
 the said road, in order to create such annoyance and 
 obstruction as might impede, overturn, or destroy 
 the steam coaches belonging to the plaintiffs," but 
 nothing seems to have come of this action. 
 
 No longer used in Scotland, two of Russell's 
 coaches were sent to London. There they were en- 
 gaged in running with passengers between London 
 and Greenwich, or Kew Bridge. Several trips were 
 made to Windsor. After about a year they were 
 offered for sale, and, on exhibition preparatory to 
 sale, they started every day from Hyde Park Corner 
 to make a journey to Hammersmith. But they re- 
 mained unsold, and were shortly forgotten. 
 
 Had conditions been more encouraging Russell 
 might have achieved as great success in his land as 
 in his water vehicles. He was a man of rare scien- 
 tific attainments, and his w^ork in ship designing and 
 building put him in the front rank of naval archi- 
 tects and builders of his day. In addition to his 
 work, already mentioned, he built a big steamer to 
 transport railway trains across Lake Constance. 
 86 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 W. H. CHURCH 
 
 A physician of Birmingham, England, Dr. W. H. 
 Church gave many years to the study of steam loco- 
 motion. Several patents were secured by him be- 
 tween 1832 and 1835, and in the latter year a 
 common road carriage, built according to his plans, 
 was brought out. 
 
 The Church vehicle had a framework of united 
 iron plates or bars, bolted on each side of the wood- 
 work to obtain strength. Well trussed and braced, 
 this framework enclosed a space between a hind and 
 fore body of the carriage, and of the same height as 
 the latter, and contained the engine, boiler, and other 
 machinery. The boiler consisted of a series of ver- 
 tical tubes, placed side by side, through each of which 
 a pipe passed, and was secured at the bottom of the 
 boiler tube; the interior pipe constituted the flue, 
 which first passed in through a boiler tube, and was 
 then bent like a syphon, and passed down another 
 until it reached as low or lower than the bottom of 
 the fireplace, whence it passed off into a general flue 
 in communication with an exhausting apparatus. 
 Two fans were employed, one to blow in air, and 
 the other to draw it out ; they were worked by straps 
 from the crank shaft. The wheels of the carriage 
 were constructed with the view to rendering them 
 elastic, to a certain degree, in two different ways : 
 First, the felloes were made of several successive 
 layers of broad wooden hoops, covered with a thin 
 iron tire, having lateral straps to bind the hoops to- 
 gether; second, these binding straps were connected 
 by hinge joints to a kind of flat steel springs, some- 
 what curved, which formed the spokes of the wheels. 
 8? 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 These spring spokes were intended to obviate the 
 necessity, in a great measure, of the ordinary springs, 
 and the elasticity of the periphery was designed so 
 that the yielding of the circle should prevent the 
 wheel from turning without propelling. 
 
 Church also proposed, in addition to spring fel- 
 loes, spring spokes, and the ordinary springs, to em- 
 ploy air springs, and for that purpose provided two or 
 more cylinders, made fast to the body of the carriage, 
 in a vertical position, closed at top, and furnished 
 with a piston, with packing similar to the cap-leather 
 packing of the hydraulic press. This piston was 
 kept covered \vith oil, to preserve it in good order, 
 and a piston rod connected it with the supporting 
 frame of the carriage. Motion was communicated 
 by two oscillating steam cylinders suspended on the 
 steam and exhaust pipes over the crank shaft. The 
 crank shaft and driving-wheel axle were connected 
 by means of chains passing about pitched pulleys. 
 
 To introduce the Church coach, the London and 
 Birmingham Steam Carriage Company was organ- 
 ized. The first carriage built for the company was 
 an imposing vehicle, something like a big circus van, 
 elaborately ornamented and with a large spheroidal 
 wheel in front. It carried about forty passengers on 
 top, in omnibus fashion, and the driver sat on a raised 
 seat near the roof. A fair rate of speed was main- 
 tained, fifteen miles on the level, but the boiler was 
 damaged, and horses hauled the engine back to the 
 factory. Other carriages w r ere subsequently brought 
 out, but they all failed to meet the requirements of 
 travel on the rough roads that existed at that time in 
 England. 
 
 88 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 JEAN JOSEPH ETIENNE LENOIR 
 
 Born at Mussy-la-Ville, Luxembourg, January 12, 
 1822. Died, July, 1900, at La Varnne Chemevieves, 
 near Paris. 
 
 When Lenoir came to Paris in 1838 he had but an 
 ordinary education and was without resources. For 
 a time he served as a waiter in order to earn money 
 to become an enameler and decorator. In 1847, ne 
 invented a new white enamel and four years after 
 invented a galvano plastic process for raised work. 
 Many other inventions were made by him, among 
 them being an electric motor in 1856, a water meter 
 in 1857, an automatic regulator for dynamos, the 
 well-known gas motor that bears his name, and a sys- 
 tem of autographic telegraphing. 
 
 It is claimed that in September, 1863, Lenoir put 
 a gas engine of his non-compressor type, of one and 
 a half horse-power, on wheels and made an experi- 
 mental run to Joinville-le- Paris and back. The motor, 
 running at one hundred revolutions, it is said, took 
 them there in one and a half hours. He thereupon 
 abandoned such trials, and tried his engines in a boat, 
 and in 1865 P ut a s ' lx horse-power in one, but the 
 insignificant speed possible with his engine caused 
 him to abandon that also. 
 
 The Academy of Science of Paris decorated M. 
 Lenoir and the Society of Encouragement gave him 
 the grand prize of Argenteuil, amounting to twelve 
 thousand francs. For his patriotic services at the 
 siege of Paris, during the Franco-Prussian war, he 
 was made a naturalized Frenchman. In 1880, he 
 published in Paris a work treating of his researches 
 into the tanning of leather. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPH IES 
 
 AMEDEE BOLLEE 
 
 In April, 1873, Amedee Bollee, of Le Mans, 
 France, the noted French engineer, filed a patent for 
 a steam road vehicle and two years later he built the 
 steam stage that he named Obeissante. Toward the 
 end oi that year this stage was run in and about 
 Paris, where it created something of a sensation. It 
 was even chronicled in the songs of the day and was 
 made a topic of amusement at the variety theatres. 
 This steam omnibus made twenty-eight kilometers 
 in an hour. It is claimed to have been the first crea- 
 tion of the man to whose family much credit is due 
 for the modern French automobile. 
 
 Between 1873 an d I ^75, Bollee made several car- 
 riages. In 1876, he worked with Dalifol and made a 
 tram-car that would carry fifty passengers. This 
 vehicle was put into the steam omnibus service in 
 Rouen. Two years later he made another steam 
 omnibus that he called La Mancelle. This vehicle, 
 in June of that year, was run from Paris to Vienna 
 and developed a speed on level roads of twenty-two 
 miles an hour. In Vienna this vehicle was the sub- 
 ject of much talk and was largely caricatured. 
 
 In 1880, Bollee built another omnibus, La Nou- 
 velle. This vehicle was entered in the Paris-Bor- 
 deaux competition in 1895, and was the only steam 
 carriage that covered the course in that race. Bollee 
 has been a conspicuous exponent of the steam car- 
 riage in France from the time he commenced as far 
 back as 1873. The vehicles that he has built were 
 in many instances pioneers in their class, and have 
 been exceedingly serviceable and successful. They 
 have made the name of Bollee notable. 
 90 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 GEORGE B. SELDEN 
 
 Born in the fifties, George B. Selden came of a 
 family of jurists, whose ancestors were early Con- 
 necticut settlers. Among them were several eminent 
 scientific men. His father, Henry Rogers Selden, 
 was born in Lyme, Conn., October 14, 1805, and 
 died in Rochester, N. Y., September 18, 1885; was 
 Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New 
 York, and is still remembered by men of that genera- 
 tion as one of the most accomplished lawyers and 
 jurists who occupied that bench in the last century. 
 
 George B. Selden attended Yale University, and 
 while equipping himself for his legal career, fol- 
 lowing in the footsteps of his father, indulged his 
 natural predilection for scientific work. While 
 practicing law in Rochester, N. Y., he devoted much 
 time to the problem of self-propelled vehicles on com- 
 mon roads, in which, as early as the sixties, he was 
 then interested. The study of this art led to a very 
 full analysis of the possibilities of different means of 
 propulsion, with, as a result, the conclusion that the 
 light, liquid hydrocarbon concussion engine must 
 eventually fill the exacting requirements of road 
 vehicles. His further experimenting that was car- 
 ried on during the seventies, and the actual construct- 
 ing, so convinced him in hisdeductions that the record 
 is found in the United States Patent Office of his 
 filing an application for patent in May, 1879, with a 
 Patent Office model of his gasoline vehicle. For more 
 details, reference must be made to his patent, No. 
 549160, subsequently issued in November, 1895. 
 Thereafter in a general report treating of impor- 
 tant and leading inventions in various fields this was 
 91 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 referred to by the Commissioner of Patents as the 
 pioneer patent in its class. 
 
 Of Selden's voluminous and persistent work and 
 his many engines and models more detailed informa- 
 tion cannot be here given. His fundamental patent 
 at present is involved in extensive litigation, al- 
 though it is recognized by manufacturers of gasoline 
 vehicles who*, to-day, are producing from eighty to 
 ninety per cent of the output of the United States. 
 Of his work along the lines of improvements in de- 
 tails of his main invention, the gasoline automobile 
 per sc, and kindred matters all of which have or will 
 have a great bearing upon automobile construction 
 and operation, it is riot at this time possible to dwell 
 at length. 
 
 Selden is known as an exceedingly able attorney 
 in his specialty, while his active connection with the 
 extensive reaper and binder litigation, in all of which 
 he appeared prominently, established for him an en- 
 viable reputation. Those who have had the privilege 
 of a closer personal acquaintance know of his great 
 fund of scientific knowledge in various arts, as well 
 as his most interesting accumulations of data as a 
 result of his personal researches. 
 
 Selden is a patentee in other fields beside that of 
 the gasoline automobile and his achievements have 
 been numerous and of exceeding importance. He is 
 also a chemist of more than ordinary ability and has 
 applied himself as a close student to this line of scien- 
 tific investigation. As a result he has made notable 
 discoveries that, although not yet given to the world, 
 will, it is confidently believed by those acquainted 
 with them, prove to be of the greatest scientific value. 
 92 
 
SIEGFRIED MARCUS 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 SIEGFRIED MARCUS 
 
 Marcus was an ingenious mechanic. In early life 
 he made dental instruments and apparatus for a 
 magician in Vienna. For his construction of a 
 thermopile he received a prize and to his further 
 credit as an inventor are placed an arc lamp, Rhum- 
 koff coil carbureter, a high candle-power petroleum 
 lamp, magneto-electro machines, a microphone and 
 various other things in many branches of science. 
 
 It is claimed that about the middle seventies of the 
 last century he carried on experiments with a gas 
 engine that had a spring-connected piston rod. He 
 mounted this vertically on an ordinary horse vehicle 
 arid connected it directly with a cranked rear axle, 
 carrying two flywheels in place of the regular road 
 wheels. He is said to have made trials of this vehi- 
 cle at night in Vienna. If this was so he was ap- 
 parently trying to keep his plan secret and succeeded 
 very well. Aside from general references nothing of 
 importance revealed itself concerning this vehicle 
 and Marcus' experiments with it, until very recently 
 when interest in the historic development of the auto- 
 mobile has stimulated anew investigation into the 
 endeavors of the early inventors. 
 
 In 1882 the motor work of Marcus was principally 
 preparatory to his new engine construction. It in- 
 cluded experimenting with an Otto engine run with 
 petroleum and a vaporizer and electric ignition with 
 magneto. In 1883 he constructed a closed or two- 
 cyckd motor and thereafter had engines made in 
 Budapest and elsewhere. One of these motors he put 
 on wheels, but this was abandoned for other ideas 
 that came from his fertile mind. 
 93 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 CARL BENZ 
 
 Born, November 26, 1844, at Karlsruhe, Baden, 
 Germany. 
 
 The early education of Carl Benz was acquired at 
 the Lyceum until his seventeenth year and then at 
 the Technical High School of his native city for 
 four more years. This was followed by three years 
 of practical work in the shops of the Karlsruhe Ma- 
 chine Works. When he was twenty-eight years of 
 age, in 1872, after further experience in Mannheim, 
 Pforzheim and Vienna, he opened workshops of his 
 own in Mannheim. 
 
 In 1880 he began to commercialize a two-cycle 
 stationary engine. In 1883 he organized his busi- 
 ness as Benz & Co., and produced his first vehicle in 
 1884. In the beginning of 1885 his three-wheeled 
 vehicle ran through the streets of Mannheim, Ger- 
 many, attracting much attention with its noisy ex- 
 haust. This was the subject of his patent dated 
 January 29, 1886, claimed by him to be the first 
 German patent on a light oil motor vehicle. This 
 embodied a horizontal flywdieel belt transmission 
 through a differential and two chains to the wheels ; 
 but it is noteworthy primarily as having embodied 
 a four-cycle, water jacketed, three-quarter horse- 
 power engine, with electric ignition. 
 
 In 1888, the Benz Company exhibited their vehi- 
 cles at the Munich Exposition, where they attracted 
 wide attention. This was followed by the exhibition 
 at the Paris show in 1889, by the engineer Roger, of 
 another vehicle made under license that Roger had 
 acquired from Benz and constructed by Panhard 
 and Levassor. 
 
 94 
 
CARL BENZ 
 
c r r r o 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 While in 1899 the firm was converted into a stock 
 company of three million marks capital, and then 
 employed three hundred men, Carl Benz remained 
 the leading spirit of the concern, technically, while 
 the commercial work came under the direction of 
 Julius Ganz. The able co-operation of these two has 
 established the world-famous automobile enterprise 
 looked upon by many as the pioneer producing works 
 of its kind in Germany. Of late years motor boats 
 have also been made by them, but their automobiles 
 and those of their affiliated companies or licensees 
 in other countries still stand in the first rank. 
 GOTTLIEB DAIMLER 
 
 Born at Schorndorf, Wurtemburg, March 17, 
 1834. Died at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, March 6, 
 1899. 
 
 After receiving a technical and scientific training 
 at the Polytechnic School at Stuttgart, 1852-59, 
 Daimler spent two years, 1861-63, as an engineer in 
 the Karlsruhe Machine Works, becoming foreman 
 there. In 1872 he entered the Gas Engine Works at 
 Deutz, near Cologne, and became director of that 
 establishment. Within ten years that shop, better 
 known as the Otto Engine W r orks, grew from a 
 small place into a large, well-organized and famous 
 establishment. In 1882 he removed to Cannstadt to 
 give his entire attention to' the light-weight internal- 
 combustion auto motor, with which his career was 
 so completely identified, and the successful applica- 
 tion of which earned for him the title, "the father 
 of the automobile," in Germany, though that is, in 
 fact, contested by those familiar with the work of 
 Benz. 
 
 95 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Instead of using the uncertain-acting flame with 
 the inconvenient speed limitations, Daimler invented 
 and introduced in 1883 the so-called hot-tube igni- 
 tion. This consisted of a metal or porcelain tube 
 attached to the compression space of the cylinder 
 in such a manner that the interior of the tube was in 
 continual communication with the compression 
 space. A gas flame, continually burning under the 
 tube, maintained it at a glowing red heat, so that 
 the mixed charge of air and gas, when compressed 
 into the tube, became fully and effectively ignited. 
 Experience showed that by a proper regulation of the 
 temperature of the hot tube the ignition could be 
 made to take place at any desired point in the com- 
 pression, and thus the complicated, slow and uncer- 
 tain slide flame ignition was replaced by a 
 simple device, without moving parts, altogether 
 satisfactory and reliable. The especial feature 
 of the hot-tube ignition, however, was soon 
 found to he the increased speed which it per- 
 mitted. By its use the rotative speed could be in- 
 creased eight to ten times over the older motor, and 
 hence the weight could be reduced in nearly the same 
 proportion. 
 
 This fact at once showed Daimler that the applica- 
 tion of the internal-combustion motor to mechanically 
 propelled vehicles had become a possibility, and that, 
 with the use of hydro-carbon vapor as fuel, and the 
 high-speed hot-tube motor, the petroleum automobile 
 might become a practical possibility. He therefore 
 severed his connection with the Otto' Engine Works 
 at Deutz, and returning to Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, 
 his early home, he devoted his entire time and atten- 
 
GOTTLIEB DAIMLER 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 tion to the design of a light petroleum motor and 
 motor vehicle. The result was the production, in 
 1885, of a motor-bicycle, in which the motor was 
 placed directly under the seat, between the legs of 
 the rider. The petroleum was drawn from a tank, 
 the supply being regulated by the valve. The motor 
 was first set in motion by lighting a lamp and turn- 
 ing the crank a few times, the discharge passing 
 through the chamber into an exhaust-pipe. After 
 the motor had been fully started, the vehicle was 
 set in motion by moving a lever, which drew a tight- 
 ening pulley against the belt, and so caused the power 
 to be transmitted from the shaft pulley to the wheel 
 pulley. Changes of speed were attained by using 
 pulleys of different sizes, similar to the cone pulleys 
 on a lathe. This machine was put into successful 
 action at Cannstadt on November 10, 1885. 
 
 An interesting feature in connection with the 
 Daimler motor is the arrangement of the cooling- 
 water circulation for the cylinder jacket. The water 
 is contained in a tank, from which it is circulated in 
 the cylinder jacket by means of a small rotary pump. 
 From the jacket it passes to the cooler. This con- 
 sists of a system of several hundred small tubes over 
 which a blast of air is driven by a fan operated from 
 the motor shaft. Since the speed of the fan increases 
 with the speed of the motor, the cooling is propor- 
 tional to the production of heat in the cylinder. 
 
 In addition to gas, which is applicable for sta- 
 tionary motors only, the fuel may be benzine of a 
 specific gravity of sixty-eight or seventy one-hun- 
 dredths, or ordinary lamp petroleum. The consump- 
 tion varies according to the size of the motor, rang- 
 97 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ing from thirty-six to forty-five one-hundredths kilo- 
 grams per horse-power hour for vehicles, or some- 
 what less for boats. He adapted these light motors 
 to vehicles of many styles, and his persistent work 
 in this connection has made the world-wide reputa- 
 tion of the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, now flour- 
 ishing at Cannstadt, Germany. 
 
 In 1888-89 the French interest in the light motors 
 led to their adoption by Panhard and Levassor. The 
 type then developed and known as Phenix motors, 
 were soon copied in part at least by many other 
 French makers, resulting in a modified form there 
 known as the Pygmee. Work at Cannstadt pro- 
 gressed steadily, however, and many pleasure vehicles 
 were made as well as small boats. 
 
 The able assistance of William Maybach brought 
 further credit to the company, particularly in view 
 of the aspirating carbureter which, with such de- 
 tails as clutch and transmission mechanism, helped 
 to perfect the Cannstadt automobiles. In the latter 
 nineties the prominence of the Daimler Works as 
 vehicle makers, distinguished from motor makers, 
 again began to be noticed and soon their now famous 
 Mercedes cars appeared. In recent years these ma- 
 chines have made remarkable records in races and all 
 other branches of the sport. With a magnificent re- 
 finement of details in construction they are to-day 
 looked upon as the pleasure vehicles par excellence. 
 
 They have had a large vogue in all parts of Europe 
 and are accepted there as among the most satisfac- 
 tory vehicles in their class that are now made. Many 
 of them have been brought to the United States, 
 where they have been and still are in great demand. 
 
LEVASSOR 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 EVASSOR 
 
 Born at Marolles, in Hurepoix (Seine and Oise) r 
 January 21, 1843. Died, April 14, 1897. 
 
 Levassor was graduated from the Central School 
 of Arts and Manufactures, Paris, in 1864. He was 
 employed as an engineer at the CocKerill Works at 
 Seriang, Belgium, and also with Durenne at Cour- 
 bevoie, near Paris. In 1872 he entered the firm of 
 Perrin & Panhard, the name of the concern being 
 changed to Perrin, Panhard & Co. Upon the death 
 of M. Perrin, he became the junior partner and the 
 name of Panhard & Levassor was adopted. When 
 Levassor died in 1897, the corporation of Panhard 
 & Levassor was formed. 
 
 Levassor made many improvements in the ma- 
 chinery and output of Panhard & Levassor. Espe- 
 cially lie perfected machines for wood-working and 
 made important changes in the processes used for 
 the cold cutting of hard metals. On the first ap- 
 pearance of gas motors he undertook their construc- 
 tion in France. It was in the establishment of Pan- 
 hard & Levassor that the first motors were con- 
 structed under the system of Otto and Langen with 
 atmospheric pressure, then the four-cycle engine of 
 Otto and finally the two-cycle system of Benz and 
 Ravell. 
 
 In 1886, when the Daimler petroleum motor ap- 
 peared, he recognized the great part that it would 
 play in practical application to the propulsion of 
 vehicles and boats. He acquired the right to use it 
 in France, and in 1887 exhibited, in Paris, a boat 
 thus propelled. After several years he put forth the 
 first automobile vehicle with motor in front. 
 99 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 LEON SERPOLLET 
 
 Serpollet is noted in France to-day as the cham- 
 pion of the steam automobile. In 1887, he appeared 
 in Paris with his three-wheeler, two rear drive and 
 one front steering wheel. With its light and safe 
 generator his machine attracted much attention, but 
 its use in the streets of the capital was temporarily 
 prohibited, until the granting to him in 1891 of the 
 first unrestricted license for such use resulted from 
 his initiation of the prefect of police by driving that 
 important personage in the steamer. 
 
 His generator, known as the "flash boiler," has 
 been developed to a high state of perfection. The 
 tubes of his boiler were heavy, flattened tubing, 
 strengthened in that form by being transversally 
 bent or grooved. He was helped doubtless to no 
 small extent, in his work, by his association, about 
 1897, with a wealthy American, F. L. Gardner, who 
 made possible the development of the large Gardner- 
 Serpollet establishment in the Rue Stendhal, Paris. 
 
 While Serpollet has achieved a brilliant and well- 
 deserved reputation in his native land, he is also 
 recognized in other countries as one of the greatest 
 living promoters of the steam branch of the auto- 
 mobile industry. His adherence to steam as the 
 motive power in self-propelled road vehicles has been 
 unremitting and energetic, Few men have done more 
 than he to improve carriages in this class. 
 
 In 1900, Serpollet was made a Chevalier of the 
 Legion of Honor. His sales to that date of five 
 machines for the Shah of Persia and landaulets for 
 the Maharajah of Mysore and other notables had 
 given him much prominence at that time. 
 
 100 
 
LEON SERPOLLET 
 
PIONEER INVENTORS 
 
 Louis AND MARCEL RENAULT 
 
 Born in Boulogne, France, the Renault Brothers, 
 with general technical education, perseverance and 
 ability, entered the field of automobile manufactur- 
 ing only some six years ago, although they earlier 
 gave to the subject much attention and study. 
 
 Having appreciated through personal experience 
 -the shortcomings of the gasoline tricycle, Louis Re- 
 nault in October, 1898, manufactured, in his private 
 shop, a small two-passenger vehicle, with a one and 
 three-quarters horse-power motor, which eliminated 
 the pedalling for starting, but was otherwise small 
 and light as a tricycle. In January, 1899, he brought 
 out a small four-wheeler with one and three-quarters 
 horse-power motor in front, three speeds and chain- 
 less, or as now called propeller drive. The demand 
 was immediate and large and resulted in the estab- 
 lishment of the works of Renault Freres, who began 
 to make the first lot of these small vehicles in March 
 of the same year. These won prizes in the Paris- 
 Trouville, the Ostende and the Rambouillet runs, and 
 one completed a three thousand six hundred kilo- 
 meter tour through different parts of Europe and 
 over the Alps. 
 
 The new model of 1900 had a three and one-half 
 horse-power motor and thermo-syphon cooling sys- 
 tem. Many honors were won with these, and nota- 
 bly that o>f Louis Renault's most successful use of 
 one in the grand army maneuvers. But the output 
 of three hundred and fifty showed the necessity for 
 larger works. With the increased facilities of 1901, 
 the product was doubled and the model increased to 
 four and one-half horse-power, while eight and nine 
 IOI 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 horse-power were winners in the Paris-Bordeaux and 
 Paris-Berlin races. 
 
 In 1902 came another addition to the Billancourt 
 works of Cloise to four thousand square meters area, 
 and the Renault Brothers then changed their models 
 to voiture legere, six to eight horse-power, steel tube 
 frame and wood wheels a full-fledged vehicle. 
 They succeeded in the Circuit du Nord, organized by 
 the Minister of Agriculture, for alcohol-motored 
 vehicles. Then came the triumph of their twenty 
 horse-power four-cylinder type in the great Paris- 
 Vienna race, where it was pitted against forty and 
 even seventy horse-power vehicles. The result was 
 a great impetus commercially, and new shops accom- 
 modating a thousand workmen and covering thirteen 
 thousand, square meters, which produced one thou- 
 sand four hundred vehicles in the following year. 
 
 Both brothers, who had always been at the wheel 
 of their own cars in the years of racing, entered the 
 memorable "race-of-death," Paris-Madrid, in May, 
 1903. Louis arrived first at Bordeaux, but his un- 
 fortunate brother Marcel, while close to victory, was 
 killed with the overturning oi his machine only a few 
 kilometers from the goal. In memory of Marcel 
 Renault a simple monument was unveiled at Billan- 
 court May 26, 1904, on ground contributed by the 
 municipal council; a bronze plate on one side of 
 this perpetuates his triumphant entry into Vienna, 
 showing his arrival at the finish. 
 
 Louis Renault, since continuing the business, has 
 now produced larger machines, including the sixty 
 to ninety horse-power made for the Vanderbilt race 
 in America, October, 1904. 
 102 
 
MARCEL RENAULT 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 SIMON STEVIN, 
 THOMAS WILDGOSSE, 
 DAVID RAMSEY, 
 JOHANN HAUTSCH, 
 CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS, 
 STEPHEN FARFLEUR, 
 FERNANDO VERBIEST, 
 ISAAC NEWTON, 
 VEGELIUS, 
 ELIE RICHARD, 
 
 GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ, 
 HUMPHREY MACKWORTH, 
 DENIS PAPIN, 
 VAUCAUSON, 
 ROBINSON, 
 ERASMUS DARWIN, 
 RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, 
 FRANCIS MOORE, 
 PLANTA, 
 J. S. KESTLER, 
 BLANCHARD, 
 
 THOMAS CHARLES AUGUSTE DALLERY, 
 JAMES WATT, 
 ROBERT FOURNESS, 
 GEORGE MEDHURST, 
 ANDREW VIVIAN, 
 105 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Du QUET, 
 J. H. GENEVOIS, 
 JOHN DUMBELL, 
 WILLIAM BRUNTON, 
 THOMAS TINDALL, 
 JOHN BAYNES, 
 JULIUS GRIFFITHS, 
 EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, 
 T. BURTSALL, 
 T. W. PARKER, 
 GEORGE POCOCK, 
 SAMUEL/BROWN, 
 JAMES NEVILLE, 
 T. S. HOLLAND, 
 JAMES NASMYTH, 
 
 F. ANDREWS, 
 HARLAND, 
 PECQUEUR, 
 JAMES VINEY, 
 CHEVALIER BORDINO, 
 CLIVE, 
 
 SUMMERS AND OGLE, 
 
 GIBBS, 
 
 CHARLES DANCE, 
 
 JOSHUA FIELD, 
 
 DIETZ, 
 
 YATES, 
 
 G. MILLICHAP, 
 
 JAMES CALEB ANDERSON, 
 ROBERT DAVIDSON, 
 W. G. HEATON, 
 1 06 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 F. HILL, 
 GOODMAN, 
 NORRGBER, 
 
 J. K. FISHER, 
 
 R. W. THOMPSON, 
 
 ANTHONY BERNHARD, 
 
 BATTIN, 
 
 RICHARD DUDGEON, 
 
 LOUGH AND MESSENGER, 
 
 THOMAS RICKETT, 
 
 DANIEL ADAMSON, 
 
 STIRLING, 
 
 W. O. CARRETT, 
 
 RICHARD TANGYE, 
 
 T. W. COWAN, 
 
 CHARLES T. HAYBALL, 
 
 ISAAC W. BOULTON, 
 
 ARMSTRONG, 
 
 PIERRE RAVEL, 
 
 L. T. PYOTT, 
 
 A. RlCHTER, 
 
 RAFFARD, 
 
 CHARLES JEANTEAUD, 
 
 SYLVESTER HAYWOOD ROPER, 
 
 COPELAND. 
 
 G. BOUTON, 
 COUNT A. DE DION, 
 ARM AND PEUGEOT, 
 RADCLIFFE WARD, 
 MORS, 
 
 MAGNUS VOLK, 
 .107 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 BUTLER, 
 
 LL BLANT, 
 
 EMILE DELAHAYE, 
 
 ROGER, 
 
 GEORGES RICHARD, 
 
 PocHAiN, 
 
 Louis KRIEGER, 
 
 DE DETRICH, 
 
 DAVID SALOMONS, 
 
 LEON BOLLEE, 
 
 JOSEPH GUEDON, 
 
 RENE DE KNYFF, 
 
 ADOLF CLEMENT, 
 
 A. DARRACQ, 
 
 JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 
 
 108 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 SIMON STEVIN 
 
 Born in Bruges, Holland, in 1548. Died in 1620. 
 Stevin was a noted mathematician, and also ex- 
 perimented in the construction of wheel vehicles about 
 1600. He built in his workshop at The Hague a 
 wheeled vehicle that was propelled by sails. This 
 was simply a tray or boat of wood, which hung 
 close to the ground. It was borne on four wooden 
 wheels, each one of which was five feet in diameter, 
 and the after-axle was pivoted to form a rudder. 
 A tall mast was carried amidships, and there was a 
 small foremast that was stayed aft. Large square 
 sails were carried on these masts. A trial trip of 
 this sailing ship on land was made in 1600, when 
 the journey from Scheveningen to> Petten, a distance 
 of forty-two miles, was made in about two hours. 
 On this occasion some twenty-two passengers were 
 carried. Prince Maurice of Holland steered, and 
 among the passengers were Grotius, and the Spanish 
 Admiral, Mendoza, who was then a prisoner of war 
 in Holland. 
 
 Stevin also built a smaller sail vehicle, similar to 
 the one just described, that carried from five to 
 eight persons. Both carriages were used a great 
 deal, running many miles on the Dutch coast. The 
 smaller one was to be seen at Scheveningen as late 
 as 1802. Grotius wrote a poem on these carriages. 
 Bishop Wilkens, in England, also wrote about them 
 in 1648, and showed a drawing that was made from 
 a description given to him by those who had seen the 
 car at work. Howell, a writer of the period, thus 
 quaintly described the Stevin carriage: "This en- 
 gine, that hath wheels and sails, will hold above 
 109 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn 
 or moved by nothing else, and will run, the wind 
 being good and the sails hois' d up, about fifteen 
 miles an hour upon the even hard sands." 
 
 THOMAS WILDGOSSE 
 
 In 1618, Thomas Wildgosse got out a patent for 
 "newe, apte, or compendious formes or kinds of 
 engines or instruments to ploughe grounds without 
 horse or oxen ; and to make boates for the carryage 
 of burthens and passengers runn upon the water as 
 swifte in calmes, and more safe in stormes, than 
 boats full sayled in great wynnes." It is agreed by 
 the best authorities that these vehicles were set in 
 motion by gear worked by the hand of a driver, al- 
 though Fletcher thinks that steam engines were in- 
 tended. Additional patents were granted to Wild- 
 gosse in 1625. 
 
 DAVID RAMSEY 
 
 Associated with Thomas Wildgosse in his experi- 
 menting and patenting, in 1618, was David Ramsey, 
 who at that time was Page of the Bed Chamber to 
 James I. of England, and afterwards was Groom of 
 the Privy Chamber to the same monarch. In 1644, 
 Ramsey was again a partner in the grant of a pat- 
 ent for "a farre more easie and better wave for 
 soweing of corne and grayne, and alsoe for the 
 carrying of coaches, carts, drayes, and other things 
 goeing on wheels, than ever yet was used and 
 discovered." This may have been a manually or a 
 steam propelled vehicle. It is most reasonable to 
 suppose that it was the former. 
 no 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 JOHANN HAUTSCH 
 
 Born in 1595. Died in 1670. 
 
 Hautsch was a noted mathematician, and, experi- 
 menting in the construction of road vehicles, he 
 built a mechanical carriage for use on common 
 roads. This carriage was successfully run in 
 Nuremberg, Germany, in 1649, an d thereafter at- 
 tracted a great deal of attention. It was propelled 
 by a train of gears that turned the axle, being ope- 
 rated by two men who, secreted in the interior of 
 the body, worked cranks. The finish of the body of 
 this coach was very elaborate, being heavily carved 
 and having fashioned in front the figure of a dragon, 
 arranged to roll its eyes and spout steam and water, 
 in order to terrify the populace and clear the way. 
 On each side of the body were carved angels hold- 
 ing trumpets, which were constantly blown, the pre- 
 cursors, perhaps, of the automobile horns of to-day. 
 The Hautsch coach was said to have gone as rapidly 
 as one thousand paces an hour. One of the car- 
 riages which he built was sold to the Crown Prince 
 of Sweden, and another to the King of Denmark. 
 Not much more is known of the Hautsch vehicles, 
 but it is a matter of record that the inventor was 
 preceded by one whose name is unknown, but who 
 ran a coach, mechanically propelled somewhat like 
 this car, in January, 1447, near Nuremberg. 
 
 CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS 
 
 Born at The Hague, Holland, April 14, 1629. 
 Died at The Hague, June 8, 1695. 
 
 Huygens received a good education, and at early 
 age showed a singular aptitude for mathematics. 
 in 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Soon after he was sixteen years of age he prepared 
 papers on mathematical subjects that gave him pre- 
 eminent distinction. He became noted as a physicist, 
 astronomer and mathematician. He devoted some 
 time to the consideration of improvements in road 
 vehicular travel. 
 
 STEPHEN FARFLUER 
 
 Born in 1663. 
 
 Farfluer was a contemporary of Johann Hautsch, 
 and was a skillful mechanician of Altderfanar, Nu- 
 remberg, Germany. About 1650 he made a dirigible 
 vehicle propelled by man power, but as distinguished 
 from that of his rival, Hautsch, this was a small car- 
 riage, being calculated only for one person. Being 
 crippled, Farfluer used the wagon as his only means 
 of getting about alone. It had hand cranks that 
 drove the single front wheel by gears. 
 
 FERNANDO VERBIEST 
 
 Born near Courtrai, Belgium, 1623. Died in 
 China in 1688. 
 
 Verbiest became a Jesuit missionary, and was a 
 man of marked ability. After going to China he 
 acquired a thorough knowledge of the language of 
 that country, where he spent the greater part of his 
 life. Under his Chinese name he wrote scientific 
 and theological works in Chinese. He was appointed 
 astronomer at the Pekin observatory, undertook the 
 reformation of the Chinese calendar, superintended 
 the cannon foundries, and was a great favorite of 
 the Emperor. 
 
 About 1655 he made a small model of a steam 
 carriage. This is described in the English edition 
 
 112 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 of Hue's Christianity in China, in Muirhead's Life 
 of James Watt, and in the Astronomia Europia, a 
 work that is attributed to Verbiest, but was prob- 
 ably compiled from his works by another Jesuit 
 priest and was published in Europe in 1689. The 
 Verbiest model was for a four-wheeled carriage, 
 on which an aeolipile was mounted with a pan of 
 burning coals beneath it. A jet of steam from the 
 aeolipile impinged upon the vanes of a wheel on a 
 vertical axle, the lower end of the spindle being 
 geared to the front axle. An additional wheel, 
 larger than the supporting wheels, was mounted on 
 an adjustable arm in a manner to adapt the vehicle 
 to moving in a circular path. Another orifice in the 
 aeolipile was fitted with a reed, so that the steam 
 going through it imitated the song of a bird. 
 
 ISAAC NEWTON 
 
 Born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, 
 December 25, 1642. Died at Kensington, March 
 20, 1727. 
 
 Isaac Newton, who became one of the greatest 
 mathematicians that the world ever knew, was the 
 son of a farmer. He was educated at Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, and in his early youth he mastered 
 the principles of mathematics, as then known, and 
 began original investigations to discover new meth- 
 ods. His great achievement was the discovery of 
 the law of universal gravitation, but his genius was 
 active in other directions, as the investigation of the 
 nature of light, the construction of improved tele- 
 scopes, and so on. He was a Member of Parlia- 
 ment in 1689 and 1701, and master of the mint, a 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 lucrative position, from 1696 until the time of his 
 death. In 1671 he was elected a member of the 
 Royal Society, and was annually chosen to be its 
 president, from 1703 until his death. 
 
 Newton was one of the first Englishmen to con- 
 ceive the idea of the propulsion of vehicles by the 
 power o<f steam. Taking up for consideration 
 Hero's hollow ball filled with water from which 
 steam was generated by the outward application of 
 heat, he added these conclusions : "We have a more 
 sensible effect of the elasticity of vapors if the hole 
 be made bigger and stopped, and then the ball be laid 
 upon the fire till the water boils violently ; after this, 
 if the ball be set upon little wheels, so as to move 
 easily upon a horizontal plane, and the hole be 
 opened, the vapors will rush out violently one way, 
 and the wheels and the ball at the same time will be 
 carried the contrary way." Beyond this philosophi- 
 cal suggestion, however, Newton never went. The 
 steam carriage attributed to him by some writers is 
 merely an imaginative creation, by writer or artist, 
 based upon the above proposition. 
 
 VEGELIUS 
 
 A professor at Jena, Saxony, in the seventeenth 
 century, Vegelius constructed, in 1679, a mechanical 
 horse, which was propelled by springs and cased in 
 the skin of a real horse. This machine is said to have 
 traveled four German miles an hour. 
 
 ELIE RICHARD 
 
 Born on the Island of Re in 1645. 
 A physician of La Rochelle, France, Elie Richard 
 was a man of science, and a considerable celebrity in 
 114 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 his day. He had built, in 1690, a dirigible vehicle 
 that he used to travel about in on his professional 
 work. The carriage was propelled by mechanism 
 operated by a man-servant by means of a treadle. 
 The operator was placed on the rear of the carriage r 
 and the occupant, seated in front, steered by a winch 
 attached to a small wheel. This construction was 
 frequently referred to by contemporaries of Richard, 
 and even later on, and was copied by others during 
 the following hundred years or so. 
 
 GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ 
 
 Born at Leipsic, Germany, July 6, 1646. Died at 
 Hanover, November 14, 1716. 
 
 Leibnitz, in addition to his work as a philosopher 
 and mathematician, was also interested in mechanics. 
 He gave some attention to the study of the possi- 
 bility of making improvements in common road 
 vehicles, and he endeavored to encourage, though 
 without results, his contemporary, Denis Papin. 
 
 HUMPHREY MACKWORTH 
 
 Born in 1647. Died in 1727. 
 
 A celebrated English politician and capitalist, Sir 
 Humphrey Mackworth matriculated at Magdalene 
 College, Oxford, December IT, 1674. He was en- 
 tered at the Middle Temple, in June, 1675, and 
 called to the bar in 1682. In 1695 he was engaged 
 in developing collieries and copper and smelting 
 works at Melencryddan, near Neath, Wales, and the 
 improvements introduced by him there were of the 
 greatest value. Among other improvements he con- 
 structed a wagon-way from the mines, and propelled 
 his coal-carrying cars by sails. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 DENIS PAPIN 
 
 Born at Bloys, France, August 22, 1647. Died in 
 England, 1712. 
 
 Papin was a son and nephew of a physician. He 
 studied medicine in Paris and practiced for some 
 time, attaining distinction in his profession. A pas- 
 sion for the sciences, mathematics and physics drew 
 him away from medical practice and he became skill- 
 ful in other lines. He followed assiduously the foot- 
 steps of Huygens and in some respects became a 
 rival of his master in original thought and experi- 
 menting and in professional attainments. 
 
 Papin invented in 1698 a carriage that was fitted 
 with a steam engine as such is now understood ; that 
 is, a cylinder and a piston. This was probably the 
 first vehicle of its kind known in Europe. The con- 
 struction was a model merely, a toy which ran 
 around the room, but it is said to have worked well. 
 Concerning this invention, Papin said : "I believe 
 that one might use this invention for other things 
 besides raising water. I have made a little model 
 of a carriage that is propelled by this force. I have 
 in mind what I can do, but I believe that the uneven- 
 ness and turns of the highway will make this inven- 
 tion very difficult to perfect for carriages or road 
 use." Although encouraged to* prosecute his work 
 by the Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, his 
 doubts could not 'be overcome in regard to the prac- 
 ticability of his proposed carriage. He still claimed, 
 however, that by the aid of such vehicles, infantry 
 could probably be moved as quickly as cavalry and 
 without the necessity of heavy impedimenta of food 
 and other supplies. 
 
 116 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 VAUCAUSON 
 
 A celebrated French mechanician, Vaucauson, in 
 April, 1740, built a vehicle "to go without horses." 
 He was visited at his palace in Rue Charonne, Paris, 
 by King Louis Fifteenth, and the exhibition of this 
 vehicle, which, according to reports, was propelled by 
 a "simple watch spring," was reviewed in a journal 
 of the time as follows : 
 
 "Yesterday, at 3 P. M. His Majesty, accompanied 
 by several officers and high court functionaries, re- 
 paired to the palace of M. Vaucauson and took his 
 seat on a species of throne specially prepared for his 
 reception on a raised platform, whence he could 
 clearly discern all the mechanism of the carriage in 
 its gyrations through the avenues and alleys. The 
 vehicle would seat two persons, and was painted 
 scarlet, bordered in blue, ornamented with much 
 gilding; the axle trees of the wheels were provided 
 with brakes and set in motion by a fifth wheel, like- 
 wise well braked and bound with long ribbons of in- 
 dented steel. Two chains communicated with a re- 
 volving lever in the hands of the conductor, who 
 could at will start or stop the carriage without need 
 of horses. His Majesty congratulated the skillful 
 mechanician, ordering from him for his own use a 
 similar vehicle to grace the royal stables. The Duke 
 of Montemar, the Baron of Avenac and the Count of 
 Bauzun, who had witnessed the trial, were unable 
 to credit their own vision, so marvelous did the in- 
 vention appear to them. Nevertheless, several mem- 
 bers of the French Academy united in declaring that 
 such a piece of mechanism could never circulate 
 freely through the streets of any city." 
 117 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Either from royal forgetfulness or thanks to the 
 customary court intrigues to turn His Majesty from 
 his purpose, or possibly because of the somewhat 
 crude nature of the invention itself, the fact is that 
 from that time forth not the slightest mention is to 
 be found in history of the motor carriage of Vau- 
 causon. 
 
 ROBINSON 
 
 It is on the authority of James Watt that Dr. 
 Robinson is credited with having conceived the idea 
 of driving carriages by steam pow r er. Watt wrote 
 as follows : 
 
 "My attention was first directed to the subject of 
 steam engines by the late Dr. Robinson, then a 
 student in the University of Glasgow, afterwards 
 Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University 
 of Edinburgh. He, in 1759, threw out the idea of 
 applying the power of the steam engine to the mov- 
 ing of wheel carriages, and to other purposes, but 
 the scheme was soon abandoned on his going 
 abroad." 
 
 ERASMUS DARWIN 
 
 Born at Elton, Nottinghamshire, England, De- 
 cember 12, 1731. Died at Derby, April 18, 1802. 
 
 Having studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, 
 and at Edinburgh, Darwin settled as a physician at 
 Litchfield and gained a large practice. In 1781 he 
 moved to Derby. He was a man of remarkable 
 scientific attainments and a voluminous writer of 
 poetry that was pervaded by enthusiasm and love of 
 nature, but had little poetic quality. 
 118 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 Darwin wrote most of his poetry and evolved 
 most of his ideas as he drove about the country in 
 a doctor's covered sulky that was piled high with 
 books and writing materials. He was in correspon- 
 dence with Benjamin Franklin and Matthew Boulton 
 about 1765 in regard to steam, and writing to Boul- 
 ton, said : "As I was riding home yesterday I con- 
 sidered the scheme of the fiery chariot, and the 
 longer I contemplated this favorite idea, the more 
 practicable it appeared to me. I shall lay my 
 thoughts before you, crude and undigested as they 
 appeared to me, and by these hints you may be led 
 into various trains of thinking upon this subject, and 
 by that means (if any hints can assist your genius, 
 which, without hints, is above all others I am ac- 
 quainted with) be more likely to approve or dis- 
 approve. And as I am quite mad of the scheme, 
 I hope you will not show this paper to anyone. 
 These things are required : ( i ) a rotary motion ; 
 (2) easily altering its direction to any other direc- 
 tion; (3) to be accelerated, retarded, destroyed, re- 
 vived, instantly and easily; (4) the bulk, the weight, 
 the expense of the machine to be as small as possible 
 in proportion to its weight." Darwin gave sketches 
 and suggested that the steam carriage should have 
 three or four wheels, and be driven by an engine 
 having two cylinders open at the top, and the steam 
 condensed in the bottom of the cylinder, on New- 
 comen's principle. The steam was to be admitted 
 into the cylinders by cocks worked by the person in 
 charge of the steering wheel, the injection cock be- 
 ing actuated by the engine. The "fiery chariot" never 
 went beyond this suggestion, however. 
 119 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH 
 
 An English gentleman of fortune, and much in- 
 terested in mechanics, Richard Lovell Edgeworth 
 was influenced by Dr. Erasmus Darwin to take up 
 the subject of steam locomotion. In 1768, Dr. Small, 
 in correspondence with James Watt, spoke of Edge- 
 worth and his experiments in the problem of moving 
 land and water carriages by steam. Two years later 
 Edgeworth patented a portable railway system and 
 then spent nearly forty years on that one idea. 
 
 When an old man of seventy, Edgeworth wrote 
 to James Watt : "I have always thought that steam 
 would become the universal lord, and that in time 
 we should scorn the post horses." Dr. Smiles says : 
 "Four years later he died, and left the problem 
 which he had nearly all his life been trying ineffect- 
 ually to solve, to be worked out by younger men." 
 
 FRANCIS MOORE 
 
 In 1769, Francis Moore, of London, a linen 
 draper, invented a machine which he described as 
 made of wood, iron, brass, copper, or other metals, 
 and constructed upon peculiar principles, and capable 
 of being wrought or put in motion by fire, water, or 
 air, without being drawn by horses or any other 
 beast or cattle; and which machines, or engines, 
 upon repeated trials, he has discovered would be 
 very useful in agriculture, carriage of persons and 
 goods, either in coaches, chariots, chaises, carts, 
 wagons, or other conveyances, and likewise in navi- 
 gation, by causing ships, boats, barges, and other 
 vessels to move, sail, or proceed, with more swift- 
 ness or despatch. 
 
 120 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 It was said that, so confident was the inventor of 
 the success of his machine, he sold all his own horses, 
 and by his advice many of his friends did the same, 
 expecting that the price of that animal would be so 
 affected by the invention, that it would not be again 
 one-fourth of what it was then. Moore made sev- 
 eral trials with his steam carriage, and took out 
 three patents for it. Like many others of that time, 
 however, Moore's carriages never got into use. 
 
 PLANTA 
 
 A Swiss army officer who was contemporary with 
 Cugnot in the seventeenth century. He was en- 
 gaged upon the problem of a steam road wagon at 
 about the same time that Cugnot conceived and ex- 
 ecuted his vehicle in 1769. General Gribeauval, to 
 whom Cugnot's plan had been referred, engaged 
 Planta to pass upon it and to examine the new 
 vehicle. The Swiss officer found it in all respects 
 so much better than his own that he so reported to 
 the French Ministry of War and abandoned further 
 endeavors on that line. 
 
 J. S. KESTLER 
 
 In 1680 a description was published of a carriage 
 designed by J. S. Kestler. This was merely a toy, 
 set in motion by mercury in a tube heated by a can- 
 dle. 
 
 BLANCHARD 
 
 In connection with his partner, Masurier, Blanch- 
 ard brought out in Paris, in 1779, a vehicle that was 
 somewhat patterned after the man-propelled carriage 
 of Elie Richard. It was very successful and at- 
 tracted a great deal of attention. 
 121 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 THOMAS CHARLES AUGUSTE DALLERY 
 
 Born at Amiens, France, September 4, 1754. 
 Died. at Jouy, near Versailles, in June, 1835. 
 
 About 1780, Dallery made a steam vehicle with a 
 multi-tubular boiler which he claimed was an orig- 
 inal invention of his own. This vehicle was run in 
 Amiens and in 1790 was seen on the streets of Paris. 
 In March, 1803, he secured a patent on the tubular 
 boiler for use on his steamboat, or on his steam 
 carriage. This vehicle was a boat-shaped wagon, 
 driven by a steam engine. 
 
 JAMES WATT 
 
 Born at Greenock, Scotland, January 19, 1736. 
 Died at Birmingham, Staffordshire, England, 
 August 25, 1819. 
 
 Watt came of a respectable and industrious fam- 
 ily. His grandfather was a professor of mathe- 
 matics, while his father was an instrument maker, 
 councillor and manufacturer. After a limited edu- 
 cation young Watt went to London, in 1755, and 
 became a mathematical and nautical instrument 
 maker. In that capacity he became connected with 
 Glasgow University, and there made his discov- 
 eries that resulted in the practical improvements in 
 the steam engine which made him famous. He was 
 associated with Matthew Boulton, under the firm 
 name of Boulton & Watt, from 1774 to 1800, and 
 the Watt engines that were built by that concern at 
 Soho revolutionized England's mining industries. 
 His steam engines represented a great step beyond 
 the Newcomen engines, though still using low- 
 pressure steam. 
 
 122 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 Watt's connection with steam carriages for use on 
 the common roads, a subject that was of much mo- 
 ment in his day, was limited to a single patent and 
 generally to discouraging the plans of others in that 
 direction, owing to his fear that the introduction 
 of high-pressure steam use would harm the engine 
 business. In the patent granted to him in 1784 he 
 proposed that the boiler of his carriage should be 
 made of wooden staves, fastened with iron hoops, 
 like a cask, and the furnace to be of iron, and placed 
 in the inside of the boiler, surrounded with water. 
 
 Watt, however, never built the steam carriage. 
 He retained the deepest prejudices against the use 
 of high-pressure steam, saying: "I soon re- 
 linquished the idea of constructing an engine on this 
 principle; from being sensible it would be liable to 
 some of the objections against Savery's engine, viz., 
 the danger of bursting the boiler, and also that a 
 great part of the power of the steam would be lost, 
 because no vacuum was formed to assist the descent 
 of the piston." 
 
 ROBERT FOURNESS 
 
 Born in Otley, Yorkshire, England. Died at an 
 early age. 
 
 Fourness became a practical engineer and invented 
 several labor-saving machines. One of his first in- 
 ventions was for a machine to split hides, that was 
 set up and operated in the establishment of his 
 father. Later in life he established works for him- 
 self in Sheffield, and afterwards in Gainsborough. 
 In 1788, he was a resident of Elland, Halifax, and 
 there made a steam carriage that was run by a three- 
 123 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 cylinder inverted engine. Spur-gearing transmitted 
 the driving power from the crank shaft to the axle. 
 His patent was taken out in conjunction with James 
 Ashworth. This vehicle was mounted on two driv- 
 ing wheels and had a smaller steering wheel in front. 
 
 GEORGE MEDHURST 
 
 Born at Shoreham, Kent, England, in February, 
 1759. Died in September, 1827. 
 
 Medhurst was educated as a clock maker, but in 
 1789 started as an engineer. In the same year he 
 secured a patent for a windmill and pumps for com- 
 pressing air to obtain motive power. One of the 
 first investigators in this direction, the idea on which 
 he worked and which continued to absorb his energy 
 throughout life, was to make use of the wind when 
 it served in order to compress large bodies of air for 
 use when needed. In 1800, he took out a patent on 
 an aeolian engine and demonstrated how carriages 
 could be driven upon the common roads by com- 
 pressed air stored in reservoirs underneath the body 
 of the vehicle. He also contemplated applying this 
 engine to other useful purposes and calculated that 
 small carriages could be worked by a rotary engine 
 and larger ones by reciprocating engines with special 
 gear for varying power. 
 
 In describing his inventions and explaining his 
 ideas regarding compressed air, Medhurst said : 
 "The power applied to the machinery is compressed 
 air, and the power to compress the air I obtain gen- 
 erally by wind, assisted and improved by machinery 
 described in this specification, and in order to render 
 my invention universally useful I propose to adapt 
 124 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 my machinery and magazine so that it may be 
 charged by hand, by a fall of water, by a vacuum 
 obtained by wind and also by explosive and efferves- 
 cent substances, for the rapid conveyance of pas- 
 sengers, mails, dispatches, artillery, military stores, 
 etc., and to establish regular stage coaches and 
 wagons throughout the kingdom, to convey goods 
 and passengers, for public accommodation, by erect- 
 ing windmills, water-mills, etc., at proper intervals 
 upon the roads, to* be employed in charging large 
 magazines at these stations with compressed air, or 
 in raising large magazines of water by wind, etc., 
 by the power of which portable magazines may be 
 charged when required by machinery for that pur- 
 pose." 
 
 Medhurst contemplated establishing regular lines 
 of coaches, with pumping stations at regular stop- 
 ping places. He endeavored to form a company to 
 work his inventions and develop his plans and pub- 
 lished a pamphlet on the subject of compressed air. 
 About 1800, he established himself as a machinist 
 and ironmaster in Denmark street, Soho, and about 
 ten years later was the first to suggest pneumatic 
 tubes for the carriage of parcels or passengers. 
 Some two years later he brought out the proposition 
 for what has come to be known as the atmospheric 
 railway, an appliance for conveying goods and pas- 
 sengers by the power of a piston in a continuous 
 tube laid between the rails. 
 
 ANDREW VIVIAN 
 
 A resident of Cornwall, England, Andrew Vivian, 
 a cousin of Richard Trevithick, became much inter- 
 '25 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ested in the engineering experiments of his famous 
 relative. He worked with his cousin and particu- 
 larly assisted him in experiments on steam engines 
 for propelling road carriages. In 1802, he was a 
 joint patentee with Trevithick, in the early steam 
 vehicle that was taken to London and was exhibited 
 in that city, where for a short time it occasioned a 
 great deal of public curiosity. 
 
 Du QUET 
 
 A Frenchman who, in 1714, designed a small 
 windmill to give motion to the wheels of his car- 
 riages. 
 
 J. H. GENEVOIS 
 
 A Swiss clergyman of the early part of the 
 eighteenth century. He proposed to use windmills 
 or sails on his wagon and by a system of springs to 
 store the energy thus obtained until such time as it 
 should be needed for driving purposes. 
 
 JOHN DUMBELL 
 
 In 1808, John Dumbell secured a patent for an 
 engine that had many peculiar features. He 
 planned to have the steam act on a series of vanes, 
 or fliers, within a cylinder, "like the sails of a wind- 
 mill," causing them to rotate together with the shaft 
 to which they were fixed. Gearing transmitted the 
 motion of this shaft to the driving wheels. The in- 
 ventor proposed to raise steam by permitting water 
 to drop upon a metal plate, kept at an intense heat 
 by means of a strong fire, which was stimulated by a 
 pair of bellows. 
 
 126 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 WILLIAM BRUNTON 
 
 Born at Dalkeith, Scotland, May 26, 1777. Died 
 at Camborne, Cornwall, England, October 5, 1857. 
 
 The eldest son of Robert Brunton, a watch and 
 clock maker, William Brunton studied mechanics 
 first in his father's shop and then in England, under 
 the guidance of his grandfather, who was a colliery 
 viewer. When he was thirteen years of age, in 1790, 
 he began work in the fitting shops of the New 
 Lanark cotton mills of David Dale and Richard 
 Arkwright. Remaining in that establishment for 
 six years he then went to the Boulton & Watt shops, 
 at Soho, where he was gradually promoted, until he 
 finally became the foreman and superintendent of 
 engine manufacturing. 
 
 In 1813, he went to the Jessop's Butterley Works, 
 but remained there only three years, when he be- 
 came a partner and mechanical manager of the 
 Eagle Foundry, at Birmingham, a connection that 
 he maintained for ten years. From 1825 to 1835, he 
 was engaged in the practice of civil engineering in 
 London. In the last-mentioned year, he became a 
 share owner in the Cwm Avom tin works in 
 Glamorganshire, Wales, where he superintended the 
 erection of copper-smelting furnaces and rolling 
 mills. He was also connected with the Maesteg 
 Works in the same county and a brewery at Neath. 
 Through the failure of these enterprises he lost the 
 savings of his lifetime and was never again engaged 
 actively in business. He invented many ingenious 
 modes of reducing and manufacturing metals ; made 
 some of the original engines used on the Humber 
 and the Trent and also some of the earliest that were 
 127 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 seen on the Mersey, including those four vessels first 
 operated on the Liverpool ferries in 1814. He also 
 invented the calciner that was put in use in the tin 
 mines at Cornwall and the silver ore works in 
 Mexico. 
 
 Like nearly all the other engineers of his day, 
 Brunton planned a steam carriage. This was built 
 when he was at the Butterley Works, in 1813, and 
 was called "the mechanical traveller." Although a 
 peculiar machine it worked with some degree of suc- 
 cess, at a gradient of one in thirty-six, all the winter 
 of 1814, at the Newbottle Colliery. The machine 
 was a steam horse rather than a steam carriage. It 
 consisted of a curious combination of levers, the ac- 
 tion of which nearly resembled that of the legs of a 
 man in walking, with feet alternately made to press 
 against the ground of the road or railway, and in 
 such a manner as to adapt themselves to the various 
 inclinations or inequalities of the surface. The feet 
 were of various forms, the great object being to pre- 
 vent them from injuring the road, and to* obtain a 
 firm footing, so that no jerks should take place at the 
 return of the stroke, when the action of the engine 
 came upon them; for this purpose they were made 
 broad, with short spikes to lay hold of the ground. 
 The boiler was a cylinder of wrought iron, five feet 
 six inches long, three feet in diameter, and of such 
 strength as to be capable of sustaining a pressure of 
 upwards of four hundred pounds per square inch. 
 The working cylinder was six inches in diameter, 
 and the piston had a stroke of twenty-four inches; 
 the step of the feet was twenty-six inches, and the 
 whole machine, including water, weighed about 
 128 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 forty-five hundredweight. In 1815, the engine of 
 this carriage exploded and killed thirteen persons. 
 
 THOMAS TINDALL 
 
 A steam engine was patented, in 1814, by Thomas 
 Tindall, of Scarborough. The inventor proposed to 
 use this for an infinitude of purposes, such as driving 
 carriages for the conveyance of passengers, plough- 
 ing land, mowing grass and corn, or working thrash- 
 ing machines. The carriage had three wheels one 
 for steering. The steam engine drove, by spur gear- 
 ing, four legs, which, pushing against the ground, 
 moved the carriage. The engine could also be made 
 to act upon the two hind wheels for ascending hills, 
 or for drawing heavy loads. A windmill, driven 
 partly by the action of the wind, and partly by the 
 exhaust steam from the engine, was used as adjunct 
 power, 
 
 JOHN BAYNES 
 
 A very ingenious modification of William Brun- 
 ton's mechanical traveler, was the subject of a patent 
 granted to John Baynes, a cutler, of Sheffield, Eng- 
 land, in September, 1819. The mechanism was de- 
 signed to be attached to carriages for the purpose of 
 giving them motion by means of manual labor, or by 
 other suitable power, and consisted of a peculiar 
 combination of levers and rods. The patentee also 
 stated that there might be several sets of the ma- 
 chinery above described for working each set with a 
 treadle, or even only one set and treadle. Then he 
 added : "I prefer two for ordinary purposes, partic- 
 ularly when only a single person is intended to> be 
 129 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 conveyed in the carriage, who may work the same 
 by placing one foot on each treadle, in which the 
 action will be alternate. The lower parts of the leg 
 should be so formed or shod as not to slip upon the 
 ground. This machinery may be variously applied 
 to carriages, according to circumstances, so as that 
 the treadles may be worked either behind or before 
 the carriage, still producing a forward motion; in 
 some cases it may be advantageous to joint the front 
 end of the treadles to the carriage and press the feet 
 on the hind ends." 
 
 JULIUS GRIFFITHS 
 
 Among those who came to the front with plans 
 for steam carriages for the public highways, soon 
 after the roads began to be improved, was Julius 
 Griffiths, of Brompton Crescent. In 1821, he 
 patented a steam carriage that was built by Joseph 
 Bramhah, a celebrated engineer and manufacturer. 
 It is said that part of the mechanism was designed 
 by Arzberger, a foreigner. 
 
 The carriage has been termed by some English 
 authorities "the first steam coach constructed in this 
 country, expressly for the conveyance of passengers 
 on common roads." It was repeatedly tested dur- 
 ing a period of three or four years, but failed on ac- 
 count of boiler deficiencies. Alexander Gordon said 
 of it : "The engines, pumps, and connections were 
 all in the best style of mechanical execution, and had 
 Mr. Griffiths' boiler been of such a kind as to gen- 
 erate regularly the required quantity of steam, a per- 
 fect steam carriage must have been the consequence." 
 The carriage moved easily and answered very readily 
 130 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 *, 
 
 to guidance. The vehicle was a double coach and 
 could carry eight passengers. 
 
 This locomotive had two vertical working steam 
 cylinders, which with the boiler, condenser, and other 
 details were suspended to a wood frame at the rear 
 of the carriage. The engineer was seated behind 
 and did his own firing. The boiler was a series of 
 horizontal water tubes, one and one-half inches in 
 diameter and two feet long; at each end the flanges 
 were bolted to the vertical tubes forming the sides 
 of the furnace. Attached to the wood frame in front 
 of the driving wheels, was a small water tank, and a 
 force pump supplied the boiler with water. The 
 steam, passing through the cylinder, went into> an 
 air condenser. The power of the engines was com- 
 municated from the piston rods to the driving 
 wheels of the carriage by sweep rods, the lower ends 
 of which were provided with driving pinions and 
 detents, which operated upon toothed gear fixed to 
 the hind carriage axle. The object of this mechan- 
 ism was to keep the driving pinions always in gear 
 with the toothed wheels, however the engine and 
 other machinery might vibrate or the wheels be jolted 
 upon uneven ground. The boiler, engine, and other 
 working parts were suspended to- the wood frame by 
 chain slings, having strong spiral springs so as to 
 reduce the vibration from rough roads. 
 
 EDMUND CARTWRIGHT 
 
 Born at Marnham, Nottinghamshire, England, 
 April 24, 1743. Died at Hastings, October 30, 1823. 
 
 Cartwright was educated at Oxford and secured a 
 living in the English church. He devoted himself to 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 the ministry and to literature until 1784, when he 
 became interested in machinery and in the following 
 year invented the power loom. He took out other 
 patents and also gave some attention to devising a 
 mechanical carriage propelled by man power. In 
 1822, he made a vehicle that was moved by a pair 
 of treadles and cranks worked by the driver. 
 
 Even the steam engine engaged his attention. 
 Some improvements which he proposed in it are re- 
 corded in works on mechanics. While residing at 
 Eltham, in Lincolnshire, he used frequently to tell 
 his son that, if he lived to be a man, he would see 
 both ships and land-carriages impelled by steam. At 
 that early period he constructed a model of a steam 
 engine attached to a barge, which he explained, 
 about the year 1793, to Robert Fulton. It appears 
 that even in his old age, only a year before his death, 
 he was actively engaged in endeavoring to contrive a 
 plan of propelling land-carriages by steam. 
 
 T. BURTSALL 
 
 An engineer, of Edinburgh, Scotland, T. Burtsall, 
 in conjunction with J. Hill, of London, got out, in 
 1824, a patent for flash or instantaneous generation 
 boilers. His aim was to make the metal of the boiler 
 store heat instead of a mass of water, and he ac- 
 complished this by heating the boiler to anywhere 
 from two hundred and fifty degrees to six hundred 
 degrees Fahrenheit, keeping the water in a separate 
 vessel and pumping it into the boiler as steam was re- 
 quired. A coach that he built to run with this boiler 
 weighed eight tons, and it was a failure, simply be- 
 cause the boiler could not make steam fast enough. 
 132 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 T. W. PARKER 
 
 A working model of a light steam carriage was 
 made by T. W. Parker, of Illinois, in 1825. Three 
 wheels supported the carriage, the two hind wheels 
 being eight feet in diameter. The double-cylinder 
 engine was used. 
 
 GEORGE POCOCK 
 
 One of the most curious of the wind vehicle pro- 
 ductions that held the fancy of scientists to a slight 
 extent in the early part of the nineteenth century was 
 the charvolant or kite carriage that was devised by 
 George Pocock in 1826, and built by Pocock and his 
 partner, Colonel Viney. This was a very light one- 
 seated carriage, drawn by a string of kites harnessed 
 tandem. With a good wind these kites developed 
 great power and it is said that the carriage whirled 
 along, even on heavy roads, at the rate of a mile in 
 three or even two and one-half minutes. Once 
 Viney and Pocock made the trip from Bristol to 
 London, and they often ran their carriage around 
 Hyde Park and the suburbs of London. As the wind 
 could not always be depended upon the charvolant 
 was provided with a rear platform, upon which a 
 pony was carried for emergencies. 
 
 SAMUEL BROWN 
 
 In 1826, Samuel Brown applied his gas- vacuum 
 engine to the propulsion of a carriage, which was 
 effectively worked along the public roads in Eng- 
 land. It even ascended the very steep acclivity of 
 Shooter's Hill, in Kent, to the astonishment of num- 
 erous spectators. The expense of working this ma- 
 133 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 chine was, however, said far to exceed that of steam, 
 and this formed a barrier to its introduction. Ex- 
 periments with this engine for the propulsion of ves- 
 sels on canals or rivers were also made by the Canal 
 Gas Engine Company. Brown patented a locomo- 
 tive for common roads in 1823. 
 
 JAMES NEVILLE 
 
 In January, 1827, James Neville, an engineer of 
 London, took out a patent for a "new-invented im- 
 proved carriage," to be worked by steam, the chief 
 object of which appears to have been to provide 
 wheels adapted to take a firm hold of the ground. 
 He proposed to make each of the spokes of the 
 wheels by means of two rods of iron, coming nearly 
 together at the nave, but diverging considerably 
 apart to their other ends, where they were fastened 
 to an iron felly-ring of the breadth of the tire, and 
 this tire was to be so provided with numerous point- 
 ed studs about half an inch long as to stick into the 
 ground to prevent the wheel from slipping round. 
 A second method of preventing this effect was to 
 fasten upon the tire a series of flat springing plates, 
 each of them forming a tangent to the circumference, 
 so that as the wheels rolled forward each plate should 
 be bent against the tire and recover its tangential 
 position as it left the ground in its revolution. It 
 was considered that the increased bearing surface of 
 the plate, and the resistance of its farthest edge, 
 would infallibly prevent slipping. For propelling 
 the carriage Neville proposed to use a horizontal 
 vibrating cylinder to give motion direct to the crank 
 axis by means of the compound motion of the piston 
 134 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 rod, as invented by Trevi thick, the motion to the 
 running wheels to be communicated through gear of 
 different velocities. 
 
 T. S. HOLLAND 
 
 Among the singular propositions for producing a 
 locomotive action that were brought out early in the 
 eighteenth century was that invented by T. S. Hol- 
 land, of London, for which he took out a patent in 
 December, 1827. The invention consisted in the ap- 
 plication of an arrangement of levers, similar to that 
 commonly known by the name of lazy-tongs, for the 
 purpose of propelling carriages. The objects ap- 
 peared to be to derive from the reciprocating motion 
 of a short lever a considerable degree of speed, and 
 to obtain an abutment against which the propellers 
 should act horizontally, in the direction of the mo- 
 tion of the carriage, instead of obliquely to that mo- 
 tion, as is the case when carriages are impelled by 
 levers striking the earth. 
 
 JAMES N AS MYTH 
 
 Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 19, 1808. 
 Died in South Kensington, England, May 6, 1890. 
 
 While yet in his teens James Nasmyth showed 
 great mechanical ability and constructed a small 
 steam engine. In 1821, he became a student at the 
 Edinburgh School of Arts. Six years later he had 
 made a very substantial advance in his experiments. 
 The story of what he endeavored to accomplish is 
 best told by himself. In later life he wrote: 
 
 "About the year 1827, when I was nineteen years 
 old, the subject of steam carriages to run upon com- 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 mon roads occupied considerable attention. Several 
 engineers and mechanical schemers had tried their 
 hands, but as yet no substantial results had come of 
 their attempts to solve the problem. Like others, I 
 tried my hand. Having made a small working 
 model of a steam carriage, I exhibited it before the 
 members of the Scottish Society of Arts. The per- 
 formance of this active little machine was so gratify- 
 ing to the Society, that they requested me to con- 
 struct one of such power as to enable four or six per- 
 sons to be conveyed along the ordinary roads. The 
 members of the Society, in their individual capacity, 
 subscribed three hundred dollars, which they placed 
 in my hands as the means for carrying out their 
 project. I accordingly set to work at once, and com- 
 pleted the carriage in about four months, when it 
 was exhibited before the members of the Society of 
 Arts. Many successful trials were made with it on 
 the Queensferry Road, near Edinburgh. The runs 
 were generally of four or five miles, with a load of 
 eight passengers sitting on benches about three feet 
 from the ground. The experiments were continued 
 for nearly three months, to the great satisfaction of 
 the members. 
 
 "I may mention that in my steam carriage I em- 
 ployed the waste steam to create a blast or draught, 
 by discharging it into the short chimney of the boiler 
 at its lowest part; and I found it most effective. I 
 was not at that time aware that George Stephenson 
 and others had adopted the same method ; but it was 
 afterwards gratifying to me to find that I had been 
 correct as regards the important uses of the steam 
 blast in the chimney. In fact, it is to this use of the 
 
 136 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 waste steam that we owe the practical success of the 
 locomotive engine as a tractive power on railways, 
 especially at high speeds. 
 
 "The Society of Arts did not attach any commer- 
 cial value to my road carriage. It was merely as a 
 matter of experiment that they had invited me to 
 construct it. When it proved successful they made 
 me a present of the entire apparatus. As I was 
 anxious to get on with my studies, and to prepare 
 for the work of practical engineering, I proceeded 
 no further. I broke up the steam carriage, and sold 
 the two small high-pressure engines, provided with 
 a strong boiler, for three hundred and thirty-five dol- 
 lars, a sum which more than defrayed all the ex- 
 penses of the construction and working of the ma- 
 chine." 
 
 F. ANDREWS 
 
 It is said that F. Andrews, of Stamford Rivers, 
 Essex, England, was the inventor of the pilot steer- 
 ing wheel which was used by Gurney and has been 
 often used since then. He also made other improve- 
 ments in steam carriages in 1826. One of his patents 
 was for the oscillating cylinders that were used by 
 James Neville in his steam carriage. Andrews' 
 steam carriage was a failure, like many others of that 
 period, on account of imperfect working of the 
 boiler. 
 
 HARLAND 
 
 Dr. Harland, of Scarborough, in 1827 invented 
 and patented a steam carriage for running on com- 
 mon roads. A working model of the steam coach 
 
 137 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 was perfected, embracing a multi-tubular boiler for 
 quickly raising high-pressure steam, with a revolving 
 surface condenser for reducing the steam to water 
 again by means of its exposure to the cold draught 
 of the atmosphere through the interstices of ex- 
 tremely thin laminations of copper plates. The en- 
 tire machinery placed under the bottom of the car- 
 riage, was borne on springs; the whole being of an 
 elegant form. 
 
 This model steam carriage ascended with ease the 
 steepest roads. Its success was so complete that 
 Harland designed a full-sized carriage; but the de- 
 mands upon his professional skill were so great that 
 he was prevented going further than constructing a 
 pair of engines, the wheels, and a part of the boiler. 
 Harland spent his leisure time in inventions and in 
 that work was associated with Sir George Cayley. 
 He was Mayor of Scarborough three times. He died 
 in 1866. 
 
 PECQUEUR 
 
 Chief of shops at the Conservatoire des Arts et 
 Metier, Paris, Pecqueur made a steam wagon in 
 1828. His vehicle had two drive wheels keyed to 
 two pairs of axles. His planet gearing was the origin 
 of the balance gear. 
 
 JAMES VINEY 
 
 Colonel James Viney, Royal Engineers, in 1829 
 patented a boiler intended for steam carriages. His 
 plan was to have two, three, four, or six concentric 
 hollow cylinders containing water, between which 
 the fire from below passed up. An annular space for 
 
 138 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 water, and an annular space or flue for the ascending 
 fire, were placed alternately, the water being between 
 two fires. 
 
 CHEVALIER BORDINO 
 
 An Italian officer of engineers, Bordino devised 
 and constructed a steam carriage for the diversion of 
 his little daughter. It was a carriage a la Dumont, 
 and for forty years was used regularly in the carnival 
 festivities of Turin in the early part of the nineteenth 
 century. It is still preserved as donated by the 
 widow of Bordino to the Industrial Museum of 
 Turin. 
 
 CLIVE 
 
 Best known as a writer of articles on the steam 
 carriage, over the signature of Saxula, in the 
 Mechanic's Magazine, Clive, of Cecil House, Staf- 
 fordshire, England, also< engaged in experimenting 
 with steam. In 1830, he secured patents for two im- 
 provements in locomotives, one increasing the diam- 
 eter of the wheels and the other increasing the throw 
 of the cranks. After a time he seems to have lost 
 faith in the steam carriage, for in 1843 ne wrote: 
 "I am an old common road steam carriage projector, 
 but gave it up as impracticable ten years ago, and I 
 am a warm admirer of Colonel Maceroni's inven- 
 tions. My opinion for years has been, and often so 
 expressed, that it is impossible to build an engine 
 sufficiently strong to run even without a load on a 
 common road, year by year, at the rate of fifteen to 
 twenty miles an hour. It would break down. Cold 
 iron at that speed cannot stand the shock of the mo- 
 139 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 mentum of a constant fall from stones and ruts of 
 even an inch high." 
 
 SUMMERS AND OGLE 
 
 Two steam carriages built by Summers and Ogle, 
 in 1831, were among the most successful vehicles of 
 their kind in that day. One of these carriages had 
 two steam cylinders, each seven and one-half inches 
 in diameter and with eighteen-inch stroke. It was 
 mounted on three wheels and its boiler would work 
 at a pressure of two hundred and fifty pounds per 
 square inch. Passengers were carried in the front 
 and the middle of the coach, while the tank and the 
 boiler were behind. The second carriage had three 
 steam cylinders, each four inches in diameter, with a 
 twelve-inch stroke. When the committee of the 
 House of Commons was investigating the subject of 
 steam locomotion on the common roads Summers and 
 Ogle appeared and gave interesting particulars con- 
 cerning their vehicles. The greatest velocity ever 
 obtained was thirty-two miles an hour. They went 
 from the turnpike gate at Southampton to the four- 
 mile stone on the London road, a continued elevation, 
 with one slight descent, at the rate of twenty-four 
 and a half miles per hour, loaded with people; twenty 
 passengers were often carried. Their first steam 
 carriage ran from Cable Street, Wellclose Square, to 
 within two miles and a half of Basingstoke, when the 
 crank shaft broke, and they were obliged to put the 
 whole machine into a barge on the canal and send it 
 back to London. This same machine had previously 
 run in various directions about the streets and out- 
 skirts of London. With their improved carriage 
 140 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 they went from Southampton to Birmingham, Liver- 
 pool and London, with the greatest success. 
 
 The Saturday Magazine, of October 6, 1832, gave 
 an account of one of their trials as follows : "I have 
 just returned from witnessing the triumph of science 
 in mechanics, by traveling along a hilly and crooked 
 road from Oxford to Birmingham in a steam car- 
 riage. This truly wonderful machine is the inven- 
 tion of Captain Ogle, of the Royal Navy, and Mr. 
 Summers, his partner, and is the first and only one 
 that has accomplished so long a journey over chance 
 roads, and without rails. Its rate of traveling may 
 be called twelve miles an hour, but twenty or per- 
 haps thirty down hill if not checked by the brake, a 
 contrivance which places the whole of the machinery 
 under complete control. Away went the splendid 
 vehicle through that beauteous city (Oxford) at the 
 rate of ten miles an hour, which, when clear of the 
 houses, was accelerated to fourteen. Just as the 
 steam carriage was entering the town of Birming- 
 ham, the supply of coke being exhausted, the steam 
 dropped ; and the good people, on learning the cause, 
 flew to the frame, and dragged it into the inn yard.' 7 
 
 GIBBS 
 
 An English engineer, Gibbs made a special study 
 of the steam carriage of Sir Charles Dance in 1831. 
 As a result of his investigations he built a steam drag 
 in 1832. This was intended to draw passenger car- 
 riages and it had a boiler with spirally descending 
 flue placed behind the driving wheels. In 1832, in 
 conjunction with his partner, Applegate, he patented 
 a steam carriage with a tubular boiler and oscillating 
 141 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 engine cylinders. The power from the axle was 
 transmitted to the driving wheels through friction 
 bands, arranged in the bases of the wheels so that one 
 or both wheels could be coupled to the axles. 
 
 CHARLES DANCE 
 
 An enthusiastic motorist, Sir Charles Dance, of 
 London, in the first third of the ninteenth century 
 did a great deal to encourage the engineers who were 
 inventing steam road vehicles. He was financially 
 interested in several of the companies that were or- 
 ganized to run steam coaches over the common roads. 
 He was the backer of Goldsworthy Gurney, and was 
 also engaged in building for himself. His most 
 famous car was a coach that ran every day from the 
 Strand, London, to Brighton. This was an engine 
 mounted on four wheels with a tall rectangular fun- 
 nel that narrowed toward the top. Above the engine 
 were seats for six or seven persons besides the 
 driver. Behind the engine was a vehicle like a box- 
 car, low hung on wheels. On the side of this 
 box was emblazoned the coat of arms of its owner. 
 On the roof seat in front were places for four pas- 
 sengers. On a big foot-board behind, stood the foot- 
 man. This carriage was one of the spectacular sights 
 of London at that time and great crowds gathered in 
 the Strand every day to witness its departure. 
 
 Dance ran Gurney' s coaches on the Cheltenham 
 and Gloucester Road until public opposition compelled 
 his withdrawal, but after that he was a joint patentee 
 with Joshua Field, of an improved boiler. This was 
 applied to the road carriage above mentioned and the 
 first trips were made in September, 1833, with a 
 142 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 drag and omnibus attached, a speed of sixteen miles 
 an hour being attained. On the first trip from Lon- 
 don to Brighton, fifteen passengers were carried and 
 the distance o<f fifty-two miles was covered in five 
 and a half hours, the return journey being performed 
 in less than five hours. About the middle of October 
 the steam drag and omnibus were put upon the road 
 between Wellington Street, Waterloo Bridge, and 
 Greenwich, where it continued to run for a fortnight, 
 with a view of showing the public in London what 
 could be clone in this direction. The proprietor had 
 no intention of making it a permanent mode of con- 
 veyance, and therefore kept the company as select as 
 he could by charging half a crown for tickets each 
 way. 
 
 JOSHUA FIELD 
 
 Born in 1786. Died in 1863. 
 
 A member of the well-known firm of Maudsley, 
 Sons & Field, marine engineers, of London, Eng- 
 land, Joshua Field took out a patent for an improved 
 boiler, in conjunction with Sir Charles Dance. The 
 firm made an improved vehicle for Dance, and in 
 1835 Field constructed for himself a steam carriage 
 that made a trip in July with a party of guests. The 
 carriage was driven up Denmark Hill, and did the 
 distance, nine miles, in forty-four minutes. It also 
 ran several times to Reading and back, at the rate 
 of twelve miles an hour. One of the subscribers to- 
 wards the building of this carriage, said that it was a 
 success mechanically, but not economical. Field was 
 one of the six founders of the Institution of Civil 
 Engineers. 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 PlETZ 
 
 Previous to the time that the carriage of Francis 
 Maceroni was taken to France, an engine designed 
 by Dietz was run in the streets of Paris. In the re- 
 ports of the Academy of Sciences and Academy of 
 Industry in Paris, in 1840, this vehicle was described. 
 The carriage had eight wheels, two of which were 
 large and gave the impulsion. The six smaller 
 wheels rose and fell according to the irregularity of 
 the road, and at the same time assisted in bearing the 
 weight of the carriages. The wheels were bound 
 with wood tires, having cork underneath. The loco- 
 motive was a drag, drawing a carriage for pas- 
 sengers. The engine was of thirty horse-power, and 
 a speed of ten miles an hour was made. 
 
 YATES 
 
 A steam carriage was built by Messrs. Yates & 
 Smith, London, in 1834. It had a trial in July of 
 that year, running from the factory in Whitechapel, 
 along High and several other streets, at the rate of 
 ten to twelve miles an hour. Vibrating engines, 
 working on horizontal framing, were used. The 
 coach resembled an ordinary stage-coach. 
 
 G. MlLLICHAP 
 
 In a letter to an English engineering paper in 
 1837, G. Millichap, of Birmingham, claimed to have 
 a locomotive carriage building. He wrote : "If your 
 correspondent will take the trouble to call at my 
 house I shall be happy to show him a locomotive car- 
 riage in a state of great forwardness, intended de- 
 cidedly for common roads." 
 144 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 JAMES CALEB ANDERSON 
 
 Born in Cork, Ireland, July 21, 1782. Died in 
 London, April 4, 1861. 
 
 The father of Sir James Caleb Anderson, of But- 
 tevant Castle, Ireland, was John Anderson, a cele- 
 brated merchant of Ireland, famous as the founder 
 of the town of Fermoy. The son gave much atten- 
 tion to the subject of steam and steam propulsion, 
 and made many experiments, taking out several 
 patents. In 1831, he lodged a specification for im- 
 provements in machinery for propelling vessels on 
 water; in 1837, for improvements in locomotive 
 engines, and in 1846, for improvements in obtaining 
 motive power and applying it to the propulsion of 
 cars and vessels and the driving of machinery. His 
 1831 patent was for a manually-propelled vehicle, a 
 carriage in which twenty-four men were arranged on 
 seats, like rowers in a boat, but in two tiers, one 
 above the other. The action was nearly the same as 
 the pulling of oars, the only difference being that all 
 the men sitting on one seat pulled at one horizontal 
 cross-bar, each extremity of which was furnished 
 with an anti-friction roller that ran between guide 
 rails on the opposite sides of the carriage. The ends 
 of each of these horizontal bars were connected to 
 reciprocating rods that gave motion to a crank shaft, 
 on which were mounted spur gear that actuated sim- 
 ilar gear on the axis of the running wheels of the 
 carriage; so that by sliding the gear on the axis of 
 the latter any required velocity could be communi- 
 cated to the carriage, or a sudden stop made. It was 
 proposed to employ this as a drag, to draw one or 
 more carriages containing passengers after it. The 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 patentee had chiefly in view the movement of troops 
 by this method. 
 
 Anderson gave financial support to W. H. James, 
 in 1827, until he fell into pecuniary difficulties. Ten 
 years later he re-engaged in steam carriage construc- 
 tion on his own account, and according to his own 
 reports he expended over one hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars on experiments. It was said that 
 he failed in twenty-nine carriages before he succeed- 
 ed in the last. He patented a boiler that was said to 
 be a poor copy of Walter Hancock's boiler. Then he 
 organized a joint-stock company, the Steam Car- 
 riage and Wagon Company, which proposed to con- 
 struct steam drags in Dublin and in Manchester, 
 which, when completed, were to convey goods and 
 passengers at double the speed and at half the cost of 
 horse carriages. 
 
 Anderson said : "I produce and prove my steam 
 drags before I am paid for them, and I keep them in 
 repair ; consequently, neither the public nor the com- 
 pany runs any risk. The first steam carriage built for 
 the company is nearly completed. It will speak for 
 itself." In the Mechanic's Magazine, June, 1839, a 
 Dublin correspondent writes : "I was fortunate 
 enough to get a sight of Sir James Anderson's steam 
 carriage, with which I was much pleased. It had 
 just arrived from the country, and was destined for 
 London in about three weeks. The engine weighs 
 ten tons, and will, I dare say, act very well. I shall 
 have an opportunity of judging that, as the tender is 
 . at Cork. It has a sort of diligence, not joined, but 
 to be attached to the tender, making in all three 
 carriages. I talked a great deal about it to one of his 
 146 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 principal men, who was most lavish in its praises, 
 especially as regards the boiler." In August, 1839, 
 the carriage arrived in London. 
 
 In 1840, a report said: "Several steam carriages 
 are being built at Manchester and Dublin, under Sir 
 James Anderson's patents, and one has been com- 
 pleted at each place. At Manchester the steam drag 
 had been frequently running between Cross Street 
 and Altrincham, and the last run was made at the 
 rate of twenty miles an hour, with four tons on the 
 tender, in the presence of Mr. Sharp, of the firm of 
 Sharp, Roberts and Company, of Manchester, and 
 others.' 1 ' A newspaper of the same year reported 
 that an experimental trip of Anderson's steam drag 
 for common roads took place on the Howth Road, 
 Dublin. It ran about two hours, backing, and turn- 
 ing about in every direction the object being chiefly 
 to try the various parts in detail. It repeatedly 
 turned the corners of the avenues at a speed of twelve 
 miles an hour, the steam pressure required being only 
 forty-six pounds per square inch. No smoke was 
 seen, and little steam was observed. The whole ma- 
 chinery was ornamentally boxed in, so that none of 
 the moving parts was exposed to view, and it was 
 found that the horses did not shy at this carriage. 
 
 The company had great plans for travel communi- 
 cation by means of these drags between the chief 
 towns in Ireland, as soon as a few of the steam car- 
 riages were finished. An even more pretentious 
 scheme involved a service in conjunction with the 
 railway trains from London, carriages to be run from 
 Birmingham to Hoiyhead, whence passengers were 
 to be conveyed to Dublin by steamer ; from Dublin to 
 
 147 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Galway the steam drags were to be employed; and 
 thence to New York per vessel touching at Halifax ; 
 thus making Ireland the stepping-stone between Eng- 
 land, Nova Scotia, and the United States of Amer- 
 ica. But all these plans came to naught. 
 
 Anderson continued to take out patents down to as 
 late as 1858. He devoted more than thirty years of 
 his life to the promotion of steam locomotion on 
 common roads. 
 
 ROBERT DAVIDSON 
 
 Robert Davidson, of Aberdeen, was probably the 
 first to make an electrically propelled carriage large 
 enough to carry passengers. This he did in 1839. 
 His carriage could carry two persons when traveling 
 over a fairly rough road, and though the prospects 
 were enticing enough to cause investment in the 
 enterprise, Davidson's subsequent work was on rail 
 vehicles. 
 
 W. G. HEATON 
 
 W. G. and R. Heaton, of Birmingham, England, 
 built several steam carriages which operated with 
 various degrees of success in their neighborhood. 
 Their patent was dated in October, 1830. The patent 
 aimed particularly at the guidance of a locomotive 
 carriage, and the management of the steam appa- 
 ratus so that the power and speed might be accom- 
 modated to the nature of the road, the quantity of the 
 load, and so on. 
 
 For the purpose of steering the carriage, a vertical 
 spindle was placed at some distance before the axle 
 of the front wheels and on its lower end a small 
 148 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 drum was fixed. Around this drum was coiled a 
 chain with its middle fixed upon the drum, and its- 
 ends made secure to the front axle formed a triangle 
 with the drum, situated at the angle opposite the 
 longest side. The other end of the vertical spindle 
 was connected with a frame situated in front of the 
 coachman's or rather the steersman's seat and here 
 on the spindle was a horizontal beveled-toothed 
 wheel. Over this wheel an axis extended, terminat- 
 ing in two crank handles proceeding from the axes 
 in different directions, so that one was down when 
 the other was up. Upon this axis was fixed another 
 beveled-toothed wheel taking into the first. When 
 these wheels were turned in one direction the right- 
 hand fore wheel of the carriage advanced and the 
 coach turned towards the left, while when they were 
 turned in the other direction the left-hand wheel ad- 
 vanced and the carriage turned towards the right.. 
 
 The driving wheels were connected with the axle 
 by means of a pair of ratchets furnished with a dou- 
 ble set of ratchet teeth and a reversing pall. By this 
 one wheel could be advanced or backed while the 
 other remained stationary, or moving in a contrary 
 direction, an arrangement necessary for turning and 
 backing. The steersman controlled the reversing 
 pail by connecting rods and lever. 
 
 Motion was communicated to the driving wheels 
 by a double set of spur wheel gear, arranged to give 
 different powers or velocities, by having both a large 
 and a small wheel fixed on the driving as well as the 
 driven axis. By shifting the large wheel on the driv* 
 ing axis into gear with the small wheel on the driven 
 axis speed was obtained, and by shifting their rela- 
 149 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 tive position till the small wheel on the driving axis 
 came into gear with the large wheel on the driven 
 axis, power was obtained at the expense of speed. 
 These two axes were kept at the same distance from 
 each other by means of connecting rods, although the 
 relative positions might be changed by the motion of 
 the carriage on rough roads. 
 
 In August, 1833, the Heatons placed a steam drag 
 on the road between Worcester and Birmingham. 
 A slight accident occurred at the start, but after re- 
 pairs were made the trial was a success. Attached 
 to the engine was a stage-coach, carrying twenty 
 passengers, the load weighing nearly two tons. 
 Lickey Hill was ascended, a rise of one in nine, and 
 even one in eight in some places. Many parts of the 
 hill were very soft, but by putting both wheels in 
 gear they ascended to the summit, seven hundred 
 yards in nine minutes. A company was formed in 
 Birmingham to construct and run these carriages, 
 subject to the condition of keeping up an average 
 speed of ten miles an hour. A new carriage was 
 built and tried in 1834, but after trials, the Messrs. 
 Heaton dissolved their contract, as they were unable 
 to do more than seven or eight miles an hour. After 
 spending upwards of ten thousand dollars in endeav- 
 ors to effect steam traveling, they retired from the 
 field, stating that the wear and tear were excessive 
 at ten miles an hour, and that the carriage was heavy, 
 and wasteful in steam. 
 
 F. HILL 
 
 An English engineer, connected with the Deptford 
 Chemical Works, Hill was among the first to be 
 150 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 interested in steam-road locomotion. He was 
 familiar with Hancock's experiments and made a 
 carriage of his own that was tried in 1840. He jour- 
 neyed to Sevenoaks and elsewhere and ran up steep 
 hills with the carriage, fully loaded, at twelve miles 
 an hour, and on the level at sixteen miles an hour. 
 He adopted the compensating gear that was invented 
 by Richard Roberts and that by some writers has 
 been credited to him. 
 
 To put Hill's patents to practical use The Gen- 
 eral Steam Carriage Company was formed in 1843. 
 The probable success of the company was based upon 
 the belief that there was a demand for additional 
 road accommodations in order that road locomotion 
 should counteract the exorbitant charges made by the 
 gigantic railway monopoly for conveying goods short 
 distances. The company stated in its prospectus u that 
 while they confidently believe the improved steam 
 coach which they have engaged and propose to em- 
 ploy in the first instance to be the most perfect now 
 known in England, they do not bind themselves to 
 adhere to any particular invention, but will avail 
 themselves of every discovery to 1 promote steam 
 coach conveyance." 
 
 Trial trips were made on the Windsor, Brighton, 
 Hastings, and similar roads, and with success. Once 
 the carriage made a trip to Hastings and back, a 
 distance of one hundred and twenty-eight miles, in 
 one day, half the time occupied by the stage coaches. 
 The Mechanic's Magazine said : "We accompanied 
 Hill, about a year ago, in a short run up and down 
 the hills about Blackheath, Bromley, and neighbor- 
 hood ; and we had again the pleasure of accompany- 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ing him in a delightful trip, on the Hastings Road, as 
 far as Tunbridge and back. The manner in which 
 his carriage took all the hills, both in the ascent and 
 the descent, proved how completely every difficulty 
 on this head had been surmounted." 
 
 In the Hill carriage, both the coach and the ma- 
 chinery were erected upon a strong frame mounted 
 upon substantial springs. In the rear were the 
 boiler, furnace, and water tanks, with a place for the 
 engineer and fireman. In front was a coach body 
 with seats for six inside, three on the box, and the 
 conductor in front. The front part of the carriage 
 was also suspended upon springs. The carriage was 
 propelled by a pair of ten-inch cylinders and pistons, 
 horizontally placed beneath the carriage. These 
 acted upon two nine-inch cranks, coupled to the main 
 axle through compensating gear ; the two six-foot 
 six-inch diameter driving wheels had the full power 
 of the engines passed through them. The weight of 
 the boiler when empty was two thousand three hun- 
 dred pounds, and it had a capacity of about sixty 
 gallons of water, while one hundred gallons more 
 were contained in the tanks. The total weight of the 
 carriage, including water, coke, and twelve pas- 
 sengers, was less than four tons. On heavy and 
 rough roads the steam pressure was seventy pounds 
 per square inch, but on good roads only sixty pounds. 
 The average speed was sixteen miles an hour, but on 
 a level t\venty miles an hour was reached. As late 
 as 1843, Hill's carriages were running from London 
 to Birmingham, having been in operation four or 
 five years. Smooth in motion, they carried their 
 passengers comfortably, but soon went out of use. 
 
 '5* 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 GOODMAN 
 
 Early in the forties a small road locomotive was 
 made by Goodman, of Southwark, London. It was 
 worked by a pair of direct-acting engines, coupled to 
 the crank shaft. A chain pinion on the crank shaft 
 transmitted motion to the main axle through an end- 
 less pitch chain working over a chain wheel of larger 
 diameter on the driving shaft. The smoke from the 
 boiler was conducted by a flue placed beneath the car- 
 riage. The vehicle had a speed of from ten to twelve 
 miles an hour. 
 
 NORRGBER 
 
 A correspondent of The Mechanic's Magazine, of 
 London, wrote in 1843 : "Norrgber, of Sweden, a 
 locksmith and an ingenious mechanic, made a steam 
 carriage which ran between Copenhagen and Corsoer, 
 carrying thirty passengers, the engine being of eight 
 horse-power." 
 
 J. K. FISHER 
 
 A small steam carriage, that in general character 
 was like a railroad locomotive, was designed by J. 
 K. Fisher, of New York, in 1840. It was not until 
 1853, however, that he went beyond this. Then he 
 built another carriage, with driving wheels five feet 
 in diameter, and two steam cylinders four inches in. 
 diameter, with ten-inch stroke. This carriage at- 
 tained a speed of fifteen miles an hour on good pave- 
 ments. During the next two years, Fisher made 
 t many trips, sometimes running twelve miles an hour 
 without excessive wear. In his later engines he in- 
 troduced several novelties, among them being 
 153 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 parallel connections between the crank shaft and the 
 driving axle. In the steering gear a screw was 
 placed across the front part of the carriage carrying 
 a nut, to which the end oi an elongated reverted pole 
 was jointed. The screw was turned by bevel gear- 
 ing, one wheel being keyed to the end o>f the screw, 
 and the other to the steerage rod, the opposite end of 
 this rod having a lever placed within easy access of 
 the footplate. Fisher's carriages were driven by 
 direct-acting engines, one cylinder on each side of the 
 smoke-box. 
 
 R. W. THOMPSON 
 
 Born in Stonehaven, England, in 1822. Died, 
 March 8, 1873. 
 
 R. W. Thompson came to the United States in 
 early life, but returned to England and engaged in 
 scientific experimenting and studying, and in engi- 
 neering at Aberdeen and Dundee. He invented a ro- 
 tary engine during this period of his life. In 1846, 
 being then in business for himself, he conceived the 
 idea of india-rubber tires and perfected this in 1876. 
 In December of that year he made a small road loco- 
 motive to draw an omnibus and this was sent to the 
 Island of Ceylon. Other road steamers of Thomp- 
 son's design were manufactured and sent to- India 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 ANTHONY BERNHARD 
 
 In 1848, a compressed-air carriage invented by 
 
 Anthony Bernhard, Baron von Rathen, was built in 
 
 England. It weighed three tons, and on its first trip 
 
 was driven at a speed of eight miles an hour. Upon 
 
 154 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 one occasion it made twelve miles an hour on a trip 
 from Putney to Wandsworth, carrying twenty pas- 
 sengers. Until near 1870, Baron von Rathen was 
 engaged in inventing compressed-air engines. 
 
 BATTIN 
 
 In 1856, Joseph Battin, of Newark, N. J., con- 
 structed a steam carriage with a vertical boiler and 
 oscillating engines. 
 
 RICHARD DUDGEON 
 
 A small locomotive for the common roads was 
 built in 1857, by Richard Dudgeon, an engineer, of 
 New York. It had two steam cylinders, each three 
 inches in diameter and with sixteen-inch stroke, and 
 drew a light carriage at ten miles an hour on gravel 
 roads. The carriage was destroyed by fire at the 
 New York Crystal Palace in 1858. Dudgeon is said 
 to have afterward built another carriage, which was 
 larger and more clumsy than the other. A few years 
 ago this was discovered in an old barn in Locust Val- 
 ley, L. I. It was fixed up and started out and demon- 
 strated that, old as it was, it could go at a speed of 
 more than ten miles an hour. 
 
 LOUGH AND MESSENGER 
 
 In 1858, Messrs. Lough and Messenger, of S win- 
 don, England, designed and erected a steam-road 
 locomotive which for two years ran at fifteen miles 
 an hour on level roads, and six miles an hour up 
 grades of one in twenty. The engine had two* cylin- 
 ders, each three and one-half inches in diameter and 
 with five-inch stroke, working direct on to the crank 
 155 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 axle. The driving wheels were three and one-half 
 feet in diameter, and the leading wheels two feet in 
 diameter. The vertical boiler fixed on the frame was 
 worked at one-himdred-and-twenty-pound pressure. 
 The tanks held forty gallons of feed water. The 
 total weight of the locomotive was eight hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 THOMAS RICKETT 
 
 When the revival of interest in the common-road 
 steam locomotive began in England, about 1857, 
 Thomas Rickett, of Castle Foundry, Buckingham, 
 was one of the first to give attention to the subject. 
 He built a road locomotive in 1858 for the Marquis 
 of Stafford. This engine had two driving wheels 
 and a steering wheel. The boiler was at the back 
 with the steam cylinders horizontally on each side 
 of it. Three passengers were carried. 
 
 The carriage was steered by means of a lever con- 
 nected with the fork of the front wheel. The cylinders 
 were three inches in diameter, with nine-inch stroke; 
 the working steam pressure was one hundred pounds 
 per square inch. The driving wheels were three feet 
 in diameter. The weight of the carriage when fully 
 loaded was only three thousand pounds. On level 
 roads the speed was about twelve miles an hour. 
 
 An account of one of the trips in 1859 was as fol- 
 lows in the columns of The Engineer : "Lord Staf- 
 ford and party made another trip with the steam car- 
 riage from Buckingham to Wolverton. His lord- 
 ship drove and steered, and although the roads were 
 very heavy, they were not more than an hour in run- 
 ning the nine miles to Old Wolverton. His lordship 
 
 156 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 has repeatedly said that it is guided with the great- 
 est ease and precision. It was designed by Mr. 
 Rickett to run ten miles an hour. One mile in five 
 minutes has been attained, at which it was perfectly 
 steady, the centre of gravity being not more than two 
 feet from the ground. A few days afterwards this 
 little engine started from Messrs. Hayes' Works, 
 Stoney Stratford, with a party consisting of the 
 Marquis of Stafford, Lord Alfred Paget, and two 
 Hungarian noblemen. They proceeded through the 
 town of Stoney Stratford at a rapid pace, and after 
 a short trip returned to the Wolverton railway sta- 
 tion. The trip was in all respects successful, and 
 shows beyond a doubt that steam locomotion for 
 common roads is practicable." 
 
 Two other engines were built by Rickett, one of 
 them for the Earl of Caithness. Some improve- 
 ments were installed in this carriage, which was in- 
 tended to carry three passengers. The weight of the 
 carriage, fully loaded, was five thousand pounds. 
 
 In this carriage, the Earl of Caithness traveled 
 from Inverness to his seat, Borrogill Castle, within 
 a few miles of John o' Groat's House. He describes 
 his trip as follows : "I may state that such a feat as 
 going over the Ord of Caithness has never before 
 been accomplished by steam, as I believe we rose one 
 thousand feet in about five miles. The Ord is one of 
 the largest and steepest hills in Scotland. The turns 
 in the road are very sharp. All this I got over with- 
 out trouble. There is, I am confident, no difficulty 
 in driving a steam carriage on a common road. It is 
 cheap, and on a level I got as much as nineteen miles 
 an hour." The Earl of Caithness brought the trial 
 157 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 to a successful result, and some expert authorities 
 jumped to the conclusion that at once steam traveling 
 upon the high roads of England would be availed of 
 to a large extent ; but that did not happen. 
 
 In 1864, Mr. Rickett furnished an engine for 
 working a passenger and light goods service in 
 Spain, intended to carry thirty passengers up an in- 
 cline of one in twelve, at ten miles an hour. The 
 steam cylinders were eight inches in diameter, and 
 the driving wheels four feet in diameter. The boiler 
 would sustain a pressure of two hundred pounds. 
 Rickett's later engines had spur wheels; but his last 
 engines were direct-acting. In November, 1864, he 
 says : "The direct-acting engines mount inclines of 
 one in ten easily ; whether at eight, four, two, or one 
 mile an hour, on inclines with five tons behind them, 
 they stick to their work better than geared engines." 
 DANIEL ADAMSON 
 
 In 1858 the firm of Daniel Adamson & Co., of 
 Dukinfield, near Manchester, England, built a com- 
 mon-road locomotive for a Mr. Schmidt. A multi- 
 tubular boiler was used, two and one-half feet in 
 diameter and five and one-half feet long, with a 
 working pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds 
 per square inch. The engine, which weighed five 
 thousand six hundred pounds and was borne on three 
 wheels, was calculated to run at eight miles an hour. 
 A steam cylinder of six-inch diameter was attached 
 to each side of the locomotive, and these cylinders 
 actuated a pair of driving wheels three feet six inches 
 in diameter. 
 
 Mr. Schmidt gave this vehicle a thorough trying 
 out and especially raced it with several competitors. 
 
 158 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 On one of these races, in 1867, with a Boulton steam 
 carriage, the start was made from Ashton-under- 
 Lyne, for the show ground at Old Trafford, a dis- 
 tance of over eight miles. Although the Adamson 
 engine was the larger, the smaller one easily passed 
 it during the first mile, and kept a good lead all the 
 way, arriving at Old Trafford under the hour. 
 
 Mr. Schmidt sent his road locomotive to the 
 Havre Exhibition, in 1868, and a trial of its powers 
 was made by French engineers, and M. Nicole, 
 director of the exhibition. Mr. Schmidt conducted 
 the engine himself, and to it was attached an omnibus 
 containing the commissioners. The engine and car- 
 riage traversed several streets of Havre and mounted 
 a sharp incline. Other trips were made to several 
 villages in the neighborhood of the exhibition, and 
 the engine behaved very satisfactorily. 
 
 STIRLING 
 
 In a road steamer designed by Stirling, of Kil- 
 marnock, in 1859, the five traveling wheels were 
 mounted upon springs. A single wheel was used as 
 a driver, and more or less weight was thrown upon 
 this wheel. The leading and trailing wheels swiveled 
 in concert, in opposite directions, by means of right 
 and left hand worms and worm wheels. The car- 
 riage was thus made to move in a curve of compara- 
 tively short radius. 
 
 W. O. CARRETT 
 
 In 1860, George Salt, of Saltshire, England, em- 
 ployed W. O. Carrett, of the firm of Carrett, Mar- 
 shall & Co., proprietors of the Gun Foundry at Leeds, 
 159 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 to design and build a steam pleasure carriage for him. 
 The carriage was first shown and exhibited at the 
 Royal Show held in Leeds, 1861, and likewise at the 
 London Exhibition, 1862. It had two steam cyl- 
 inders, six inches in diameter and w^ith eight-inch 
 stroke. The boiler was of the locomotive multi- 
 tubular type, two feet six inches in diameter, and 
 five feet three inches long. It had a working pressure 
 of one hundred and fifty pounds per square inch, the 
 test pressure being three hundred pounds. The loco- 
 motive was mounted upon two driving wheels, each 
 four feet in diameter, made of steel, and a lead- 
 ing wheel was three feet in diameter. Seats were 
 provided for nine persons, including the steerer and 
 the fireman. The traveling speed was fifteen miles 
 an hour ; and the weight of the carriage, fully loaded, 
 was five tons. Motion was communicated from the 
 crank shaft to the driving axle through spur gearing. 
 The English magazine, Engineering, in an article 
 in June, 1866, said: "This steam carriage, made by 
 Carrett, Marshall & Co., was probably the most re- 
 markable locomotive ever made. True, it did little 
 good for itself as a steam carriage, and its owner at 
 last made a present of it much as an Eastern prince 
 might send a friend a white elephant to that en- 
 thusiastic amateur, Mr. Frederick Hodges, who 
 christened it the Fly-by-Night, and who did fly, and 
 no mistake, through the Kentish villages when most 
 honest people were in their beds. Its enterprising 
 owner was repeatedly pulled up and fined, and to this 
 day his exploits are remembered against him." 
 Hodges ran the engine eight hundred miles ; he had 
 six summonses in six weeks, and one was for run- 
 160 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 ning the engine thirty miles an hour. It was after- 
 wards altered to resemble a fire engine and the pas- 
 sengers were equipped like firemen, wearing brass 
 helmets. The device did not deceive the police, and 
 finally the carriage was made over into a real self- 
 moving fire engine. 
 
 RICHARD TANGYE 
 
 The steam carriage built by the Tangye Brothers, 
 of England, about 1852, was a simple affair. It had 
 seating capacity in the body for six or eight persons, 
 while three or four more could be accommodated in 
 front. The driver who sat in front had full control 
 of the stop valve and reversing lever, so that the 
 engine could be stopped or reversed by him as occa- 
 sion required. The speed of twenty miles an hour 
 could be attained, and the engine with its load easily 
 ascended the steepest gradients. 
 
 Richard Tangye, in his autobiography, speaks of 
 his experience with this carriage in the following 
 terms : "Great interest was manifested in our experi- 
 ment, and it soon became evident that there was an 
 'opening for a considerable business in these engines, 
 and we made our preparations accordingly, but the 
 'wisdom' of Parliament made it impossible. The 
 squires became alarmed lest their horses should take 
 fright; and although a judge ruled that a horse that 
 would not stand the sight or sound of a locomotive, 
 in these clays of steam, constituted a public danger, 
 and that its owner should be punished and not the 
 owner of the locomotive, an act was passed providing 
 that no engine should travel more than four miles an 
 hour on the public roads. Thus was the trade in 
 161 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 "quick-speed locomotives strangled in its cradle; and 
 
 - the inhabitants of country districts left unprovided 
 
 ' with im'pfoved facilities for traveling." The Tahgye 
 
 carriage thus driven out of England was sent to 
 
 India, where it continued to give good service. 
 
 T. W. COWAN 
 
 At the London Exhibition of 1862, the Messrs. 
 Yarrow and Hilditch, of Barnsbufy, near London, 
 exhibited a steam carriage, designed and made by T. 
 W. Cowan, of Greenwich. Eleven passengers, be- 
 sides the driver and the fireman, were carried and the 
 vehicle with full load weighed two tons and a half. 
 The toiler, of steel, was a vertical multitubular two 
 feet in diameter and three feet nine inches high. The 
 frame of the carriage was of ash, lined with wrought- 
 iron plates, and to the outside of the bottom sill were 
 two iron foundation plates, to which the cylinders 
 and other parts were attached. The cylinders were 
 five inches in diameter and had nine-inch stroke. 
 
 CHARLES T. HAYBALL 
 
 A quick-speed road locomotive was made by 
 Charles T. Hayball, of Lymington, Hants, England, 
 in 1864. The machinery was mounted upon a 
 wrought-iron frame, that was carried upon three 
 wheels. The two driving wheels had an inner and 
 an outer tire, and the space between was filled with 
 wood to reduce noise and lessen the concussion. The 
 two steam cylinders were each four and one-half 
 inches in diameter and with six-inch stroke. Hay- 
 ball used a vertical boiler, two feet two inches in 
 diameter, and four feet Jiigh, working at a pressure 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 of one hundred and fifty pounds. The carriage ran 
 up an incline of one in twelve at sixteen miles an 
 hour, and traveled four miles an hour in fourteen 
 minutes, up hill and down, with ten passengers on 
 board. 
 
 ISAAC W. BOULTON 
 
 In August, 1867, Thomas Boulton says: "I ran 
 a small road locomotive constructed by Isaac W. 
 Boulton, of Ashton-under-Lyne, from here through 
 Manchester, Eccles, Warrington, Preston Brook, to 
 Chester, paraded the principal streets of Chester, and 
 returned home, the distance being over ninety miles 
 in one day without a stoppage except for water." 
 Boulton's engine had one cylinder four and one-half 
 inches in diameter, and with nine-inch stroke. The 
 boiler worked at one hundred and thirty pounds pres- 
 sure per square inch. The driving wheels were five 
 feet in diameter. Two speeds were obtained by 
 means of spur gearing between the crank shaft and 
 the counter shaft. On the Chester trip six persons, 
 and sometimes eight and ten passengers, were car- 
 ried. 
 
 ' i 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
 The virtues of the horseless vehicle early pene- 
 trated to India. Many English manufacturers sent 
 carriages there. Some time in 1868, a steam car- 
 riage, with two steam cylinders, each three inches in 
 diameter, and with six-inch stroke, was made by 
 Armstrong, of Rawilpindee, Punjab. A separate 
 stop valve was fitted to each cylinder. The boiler 
 was fifteen inches in diameter and three feet high, 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 and worked steam pressure of one hundred pounds 
 per square inch. Twelve miles an hour on the level, 
 and six miles an hour up grade of one in twenty, 
 were made. The driving wheels w r ere three feet in 
 diameter. 
 
 PIERRE RAVEL 
 
 Ravel, of France, planned in 1868 a steam vehicle, 
 and about 1870 completed the construction of one at 
 the barracks at Saint-Owen. Then came the declara- 
 tion of war with Prussia, and the barracks, being 
 within the zone of fortification, the vehicle was lost 
 or destroyed. There is no certainty that it was ever 
 unearthed after peace was declared. 
 
 L. T. PYOTT 
 
 Before 1876, a motor vehicle was invented by L. 
 T. Pyott, who was then a foreman with the Bald- 
 win Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. The car- 
 riage, which could carry seven persons at the rate of 
 twenty miles an hour, cost about two thousand two 
 hundred dollars, and weighed nearly two tons. It 
 Avas shown at the Centennial Exposition in Phila- 
 delphia in 1876, but was not allowed to run on the 
 streets. 
 
 A. RlCHTER 
 
 An engineer and mechanician of Neider-Bielan, 
 Oberlaneitz, Germany, Richter secured in 1877 a 
 patent for a vehicle that was propelled by a motor 
 consisting of a stack or battery of elliptic springs 
 horizontally disposed, which were compressed by a 
 charge of powerful powder exploded in what was 
 164 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 practically a cannon. The subsequent expansion 
 transmitted the driving effort to the wheels by a rack 
 of gears. The success of this vehicle is not generally 
 known. 
 
 RAFFARD 
 
 In 1 88 1, Raffard, a French engineer, made a tri- 
 cycle and a tram-car that is said to have been the 
 first electric automobile which ran satisfactorily. 
 
 CHARLES JEANTEAUD 
 
 It is claimed for Jeanteaud that he built a four- 
 wheeled electric vehicle about 1881, which was 
 changed in 1887 by the addition of an Immisch 
 motor. In 1890 he constructed a three-wheeled 
 steam vehicle for five persons, having the advice and 
 interest of Archdeacon. In June, 1895, at the Paris- 
 Bordeaux race, he entered an electric automobile 
 and established battery relays every twenty-five kilo- 
 meters, but without success so far as speed was in- 
 volved in comparison with the gasoline cars. In 
 1897 he constructed a gasoline phaeton, but his sub- 
 sequent work has been primarily confined to the 
 electric. 
 
 SYLVESTER HAYWOOD ROPER 
 
 As early as 1850, Sylvester Hay wood Roper, of 
 Roxbury, Mass., began experimenting with steam for 
 street- vehicle propulsion. In 1882, when he was 
 seventy-three years of age, he fitted a Columbia bi- 
 cycle with a miniature engine, and with this he could 
 run seventy miles on one charge of fue4. His bicycle 
 weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds. He en- 
 
 165 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 gaged in many track events and his record for three 
 runs of one-third of a mile each, was forty-two, 
 thirty-nine and thirty-seven seconds. 
 
 COPELAND 
 
 A tandem tricycle with a vertical boiler and a two- 
 cylinder vertical engine was built by Copeland, of 
 Philadelphia, in 1882. Kerosene was used to fire the 
 boiler. It is said that over two hundred of these 
 machines were built. 
 
 G. BOUTON 
 
 An ingenious and practical engineer, Bouton made 
 various mechanical devices, but it is claimed that 
 from a clever toy came the associations which have 
 resulted in the now famous firm, DeDion-Bouton, 
 with which he is connected. It is said Compte De- 
 Dion saw this toy and on asking for the maker, met 
 Bouton. Thus came the partnership, in 1882, with 
 Bouton and Trepardoux. Bouton made a steam tri- 
 cycle in 1884, containing the remarkable light and 
 efficient boiler of his invention, which for years re- 
 mained the most important contribution of the firm 
 to this art. In 1885 a quadricycle was made, and the 
 success attending the runs made with this, in which 
 Merrelle co-operated, was such as to bring forth the 
 personal ideas of DeDion in so strong a manner that 
 Trepardoux and Merrelle severed their connections 
 with the firm. 
 
 The real beginning of the work of this firm was 
 
 in 1884, and the several years following saw the 
 
 production of numerous steam machines, including 
 
 phaetons, dog carts, and a variety of other types. 
 
 1 66 
 
L _NpTED INVESTIGATORS _ 
 
 Even as late as 1897 heavy steam chars-banes were 
 made by them, and that year also saw their well- 
 known thirty-five-passenger, six- wheeled coach, 
 Pauline, on the streets of Paris a vehicle which cost 
 over twenty-six thousand francs, and had a thirty- 
 five horse-power steam tractor. This vehicle had 
 been preceded by a somewhat similar one con- 
 structed in 1893 on the old idea of a mechanical 
 horse attached to an ordinary 'bus body from which 
 the front wheels had been removed. 
 
 In 1895, DeDion-Bouton produced their first liquid 
 hydro-carbon engine vehicle a tricycle with air- 
 cooled motor and dry-battery ignition, which is so 
 well known to everyone in the industry to-day. 
 These were manufactured in large numbers, and 
 were followed by larger gasoline vehicles into which 
 they introduced their engine, namely, a vertical posi- 
 tion. In 1899, their three-passenger, four-wheeled 
 vehicle, and in 1900 a six-passenger vehicle, made 
 good reputations. Since then their large factory at 
 Putaux, France, well known under the name of 
 DeDion-Bouton et Cie, has been continually crowded 
 with work on vehicles, and with the manufacture of 
 their motors which are still sold independently to 
 other makers in France, as well as in other countries. 
 In fact the manufacture of engines and parts might 
 be said to be now their main work. 
 
 COUNT A. DEDION 
 
 'Count DeDion's interest in an ingenious mechan- 
 ical device constructed by Bouton, led to his back- 
 ing the enterprise now so well known under his name. 
 His activity in the Automobile Club of France, and 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 in all the sporting events in the past ten years, has 
 in fact brought him into far more prominence than 
 his associate, Bouton. His interest and energy in 
 connection with his company are well known, and 
 though the credit for the mechanical work must un- 
 doubtedly be given to Bouton, DeDion is largely re- 
 sponsible for the great success and general promi- 
 nence of the company. 
 
 ARMAND PEUGEOT 
 
 In 1885, an d again in 1889, Armand Peugeot, a 
 French inventor and manufacturer, brought up the 
 subject of automobiles, and in 1889 he began to man- 
 ufacture, using the Daimler motor. His first atten- 
 tion having been given to the motor, he brought 
 out very soon his famous two-parallel cylinder 
 mounted horizontally on the body frame. Originally 
 of the firm of Fils de Peugeot, he severed his con- 
 nection with that firm, and in 1876 formed the So- 
 ciety of Artisans. In 1898, additional factories were 
 erected at Fives-Lille, and now the concern has 
 works also at Audincourt. The latter w r orks is 
 claimed to be the most extensive automobile manu- 
 facturing establishment in the world. Peugeot is a 
 member of many learned societies, was elected an 
 officer of the Academic in 1881, and a Chevalier of 
 the Legion of Honor in 1889. 
 
 RADCLIFFE WARD 
 
 Ward commenced his experiments in England 
 about 1886, and built a cab in 1887, which he ran in 
 Brighton with more or less success. A second vehi- 
 cle, an omnibus, was built by him and run on the 
 1 68 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 streets in London in 1888, and actually covered, all 
 told, five thousand miles. 
 
 MORS 
 
 A manufacturer of electrical apparatus, the Mors 
 establishment made a steam vehicle in 1886, and 
 some ten years later began to manufacture gasoline 
 vehicles. 
 
 MAGNUS VOLK 
 
 In 1887, Volk built an electrical dog cart which, 
 like that of Ward, was seen on the streets of Brigh- 
 ton. The next year he associated himself with Im- 
 misch & Co., and built for the Sultan of Turkey an 
 electrical dog cart. This was claimed to have a 
 radius of fifty miles at ten miles an hour, with seven 
 hundred pounds of battery in twenty-four cells, driv- 
 ing the vehicle by means of a one horse-power motor. 
 
 BUTLER 
 
 About the same time that Daimler and Benz were 
 at work, Butler, an Englishman, was studying to 
 make a hydro-carbon engine. He had drawings in 
 1884 and got out a patent in 1887. He built a tri- 
 cycle soon after that date. This had two front 
 w r heels as steering wheels and a rear wheel driven 
 by a two-cylinder engine. But Butler did not carry 
 his plans further, for, as he wrote in 1890, "the 
 authorities do not countenance its use on roads, and 
 I have abandoned in consequence any further devel- 
 opment of it." 
 
 LE BLANT 
 
 The steam carriage that Le Blant, of France, built 
 carried nine passengers, and its weight, fuel and 
 169 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 water included, was three and one-half tons. The 
 engine was three-cylinder horizontal, and the boiler, 
 a Serpollet instantaneous generator, was placed be- 
 hind the carriage, the fireman beside it and the 
 driver in front. 
 
 EMILE DELAHAYE 
 
 Delahaye, of Tours, associated himself with the 
 firm of Cail in 1870, spending some years in Bel- 
 gium, but in 1890 the automobile so attracted him as 
 to lead him to the construction of his first vehicle. 
 For ten years he practically adhered to the horizontal 
 engine under the seat, which construction we find 
 him using in 1900. It is worthy of note that to 
 Delahaye is given credit for the practical adaptation 
 of the radiator in the arrangement now generally 
 used in the cooling system. 
 
 ROGER 
 
 Roger, of Paris, was the French licensee for Benz, 
 taking up that motor much in the same manner as 
 Panhard & Levassor took up the Daimler. In fact 
 he had such close relations with Benz as to guide 
 the further development of both. To this extent he 
 was doubtless largely responsible for converting 
 Benz to the four-cycle instead of the two>-cycle con- 
 struction, and he is also credited with having 
 brought about the change from the vertical crank 
 shaft to the horizontal in the Benz cars. Making 
 good headway in 1894, he had produced fifty or 
 more machines by 1895, and ran one in the Paris- 
 Bordeaux race of that year. He brought a car -to 
 New York in 1896, and took part in the Cosmopol- 
 itan race, from New York to Ardsley and return. 
 170 
 
: NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 .GEORGES RICHARD 
 
 In 1893, Georges Richard began cycle manufactur- 
 ing in a small shop and two years later turned his 
 business into a limited corporation. In 1897, he be- 
 gan the manufacture of automobiles. His motor is 
 a development of the Benz, with ignition improve- 
 ment. 
 
 POCHAIN 
 
 Pochain, in France, built in 1893 a six-seated 
 phaeton with fifty-four cells of battery, which would 
 seem to have been practically the first satisfactory 
 vehicle of its kind. 
 
 Louis KRIEGER 
 
 Early in the nineties of the last century Krieger 
 made an electric vehicle. About 1894, he introduced 
 his four-passenger hack, converted by substituting 
 an electric fore carriage for the front axle of an ordi- 
 nary vehicle. He has since developed his electric 
 vehicles in the class of city carriages. A touring car, 
 built for England, called the Powerful, made in 1901 
 notable records in that country in a long tour through 
 the Isles. The principal work of Krieger, however, 
 has been in the development of front drive and steer 
 construction. 
 
 DEDETRICH 
 
 Baron DeDetrich is of the well-known house that 
 claims to have been founded more than one hundred 
 years ago in Luneville, Alsace, and has grown to be 
 one of the greatest works for the manufacture of 
 locomotives and other machinery. In 1880 the con- 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 cern is said to have employed four thousand men. 
 Its connection with the automobile industry began 
 practically in 1895, when the construction of auto- 
 mobiles on the system of Amedee Bollee & Sons was 
 undertaken. With large resources and ability de- 
 velopment was naturally rapid, resulting in the pro- 
 duction to-day of one of the first-class French makes. 
 
 DAVID SALOMONS 
 
 Sir David Salomons, Bart., was born in England, 
 in 1851. He was educated for a short period at 
 University College, London, and afterwards at Caius 
 College, Cambridge, where he was graduated with 
 natural science honors. He is a member of the In- 
 stitution of Electrical Engineers, where he took lead- 
 ing part for many years on the Council, and served 
 in the positions of honorary treasurer and vice-presi- 
 dent. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical So- 
 ciety, of the Physical Society of London, and of the 
 Royal Microscopical Society, and an associate of the 
 Institution of Civil Engineers. 
 
 Sir David was one of the first in England to adopt 
 the electric light. This was about the year 1874, 
 when he found it necessary to make the lamps, 
 switches and other apparatus himself, as those were 
 unobtainable at the time; much of the apparatus in 
 general use to-day has been copied from his models. 
 About 1874-5, he constructed a small electrical road 
 carriage, which was in use a short time only, owing 
 to the trouble of re-charging batteries, as no ac- 
 cumulators existed at that period. Devoting him- 
 self largely to scientific investigation he is the author 
 of various works on scientific subjects, such as pho- 
 172 
 
SIR DAVID SALOMONS 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 tographic optical formula^ photography and elec- 
 trical subjects, his chief work being his three- volume 
 Electric Light Installations, now entering its ninth 
 edition. Of this work, the first volume on Accumu- 
 lators was for a great many years the only practical 
 work on the subject. He is also the author of many 
 papers read before scientific societies, including the 
 Royal Society and Royal Institution. He is an orig- 
 inal member of the Automobile Club of France and 
 of the Automobile Club of Great Britain, being a 
 member of the committee of the former and member 
 of committee and a vice-president of the latter, and is 
 also an ordinary or honorary member of most of the 
 Continental automobile clubs. He was Mayor of 
 Tunbridge Wells, 1894-5, and High Sheriff of Kent 
 in 1 88 1, and is a Magistrate for Kent, Sussex, Mid- 
 dlesex, Westminster and London. 
 
 The connection of Sir David Salomons with the 
 encouragement and development of self-propelled 
 traffic in the United Kingdom, constitutes one of the 
 most important chapters in the contemporaneous his- 
 tory of the automobile. His first step to secure a 
 favorable public opinion for the legislative measures 
 that he proposed was to have an exhibition of vehi- 
 cles, which took place at Tunbridge Wells, in Octo- 
 ber, 1895. As a result of this exhibition and a 
 voluminous correspondence thereafter, the news- 
 papers of Great Britain and many of the members of 
 the Houses of Lords and Commons were brought to 
 see the justice of the measures asked for. Next, the 
 Self-Propelled Traffic Association was organized. 
 Sir David Salomons was elected president and the 
 campaign for Parliamentary action was inaugurated 
 173 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 and brilliantly and energetically prosecuted. When 
 the bill came before the Commons and the Lords it 
 was substantially supported, but its provisions re- 
 ceived a great deal of discussion. Some amend- 
 ments, particularly relating to the questions of smoke 
 and petroleum use, were attached to it. In the end, 
 however, the act that was passed was generally satis- 
 factory to all interested in the promotion and pro- 
 tection of self-propelled traffic. It has been said that 
 "there has hardly been an act passed containing more 
 liberal clauses and with more unity of action." Its 
 provisions allow of reasonable travel of all kinds of 
 self-propelled vehicles throughout the Kingdom and 
 the act as a whole is regarded as one of the most 
 notable advances made in this matter during the 
 present generation. 
 
 LEON BOLLEE 
 
 A brother of Amedee Bollee, Leon Bollee has 
 been long interested in the business that bears the 
 family name. In 1896, he brought out a motor 
 cycle that was a type between a cycle and a vehicle. 
 It had two front steering wheels and one front 
 driver. The same type of vehicle has been adopted 
 for light work, such as parcel delivery. 
 
 JOSEPH GUEDON 
 
 Guedon made his appearance at Bordeaux, in 
 October, 1897, with a four-wheeled wagonette, which 
 he made under the name of the Decauville. His spe- 
 cial construction was claimed to very largely elim- 
 inate the vibration of the vehicle, and his success can 
 be fairly judged from the results in the past few 
 174 
 
A. DARRACQ 
 
NOTED INVESTIGATORS 
 
 years. The Decauville cars have been developed and 
 refined to such a point as to be among the best of the 
 French makes, and now have an international repu- 
 tation. 
 
 RENE DE KNYFF 
 
 De Knyff became an enthusiastic automobilist, and 
 with other gentlemen, sportsmen of the nobility, be- 
 came a great amateur. He was and is still known as 
 the King of Chauffeurs, having won several of the 
 most important races, driving the Panhard cars to 
 victory. 
 
 ADOLF CLEMENT 
 
 Born in 1855. 
 
 Entirely a self-made man, Clement had experience 
 as a locksmith and served an apprenticeship as a tin- 
 smith. He started and built up a bicycle manufactur- 
 ing establishment which, in 1894, was considered 
 one of the finest in France. In time this developed 
 into the finest cycle manufactory in that country. It 
 is situated in Levallois, near Paris. In 1899, Clem- 
 ent contracted with Panhard & Levassor to' manu- 
 facture under their patents, and in 1900 he made a 
 most successful light vehicle of four horse-power. 
 Since then he has developed his automobile factory, 
 and in the past few years has produced competitors 
 for honors in the first class, which are known at home 
 and abroad as the Bayard or Clement-Bayard cars. 
 
 A. DARRACQ 
 
 About fifty years of age, Darracq has had an ener- 
 getic and successful career. He is now president o<f 
 the Society of Engineers, Paris, and a member of 
 
AUTOMOBILE BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 the Legion of Honor. He is best known as an in- 
 ventor in connection with the automobile industry. 
 Among his inventions are a shaft drive and a beveled 
 gear drive which are now universally used. He orig- 
 inated the idea o>f placing the operating lever on the 
 steering post and made the first moderate priced 
 automobile in France. He is now the engineer and 
 manager of one of the biggest factories in the world. 
 
 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 So interesting was the sporting side of the auto- 
 mobile movement that it early attracted the attention 
 of James Gordon Bennett. The great runs, or tours, 
 or races commenced in 1891, and continued annually 
 from 1894 on, resulted in the offering of the Bennett 
 trophy for international competition under condi- 
 tions which may have been suggested by the Amer- 
 ica yacht cup races. In January, 1900, this was an- 
 nounced in Paris, and the custody of the trophy ini- 
 tially given to the Automobile Club of France as the 
 first and foremost champions of automobiling. Elab- 
 orate and excellent rules govern the annual competi- 
 tion for the trophy, and the races are held in the 
 country whose representative has won in the previous 
 year. In this way the first race was in France, as 
 well as the second, and the 1903 race in Ireland, 
 while that of 1904 was held in Germany, but was 
 won by a Frenchman, so that the 1905 race will 
 again be held in the land of the original custodians 
 of the trophy. 
 
 176 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Adamson, Daniel 158 
 
 Anderson, James Caleb 145 
 
 Andrews, F 137 
 
 Armstrong 163 
 
 Automobile, Origin and De- 
 velopment of the 11 
 
 Battin 155 
 
 Baynes, John 129 
 
 Bennett, James Gordon 176 
 
 Benz, Carl 94 
 
 Bernhard, Anthony 154 
 
 Blanchard 121 
 
 Blanchard, Thomas 68 
 
 Bollee, Amedee 90 
 
 Bollee, Leon 174 
 
 Sordino, Chevalier 139 
 
 Boulton, Isaac W 163 
 
 Bouton, G 166 
 
 Brown, Samuel 133 
 
 Brunton, William 127 
 
 Burtsall, T 132 
 
 Butler 169 
 
 Carrett, W. 159 
 
 Cartwright, Edmund 131 
 
 Church, W. H 87 
 
 Clement, Adolf 175 
 
 Clive 139 
 
 Copeland 166 
 
 Cowan, T. W 162 
 
 Cugnot, Nicholas Joseph 31 
 
 Daimler, Gottlieb 95 
 
 Dallery, Thomas Charles Au- 
 
 guste 122 
 
 Dance, Charles 142 
 
 Darracq, A 175 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus 118 
 
 Davidson, Robert .148 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Decauville 174 
 
 De Detrich 171 
 
 De Dion, Count A 167 
 
 De Knyff, Rene 175 
 
 Delahaye, Emile 170 
 
 Dietz 144 
 
 Dudgeon, Richard 155 
 
 Dumbell, John 126 
 
 Du Quet 126 
 
 Edgeworth, Richard Lovell... 120 
 
 Evans, Oliver 38- 
 
 Parfleur, Stephen 112: 
 
 Field, Joshua 143- 
 
 Fisher, J. K 153 
 
 Foreword 5 
 
 Fourness, Robert 123 
 
 Genevois, J. H 126 
 
 Gibbs 141 
 
 Goodman 153 
 
 Gordon, David 5ft 
 
 Griffiths, Julius 130 
 
 Guedon, Joseph 174 
 
 Gurney, Goldsworthy 64 
 
 Hancock, Walter 71 
 
 Harland 137 
 
 Hautsch, Johann Ill 
 
 Hayball, Charles T 162 
 
 Heaton, W. G 148: 
 
 Hill, F 150 
 
 Holland, T. S 135 
 
 Huygens, Christiaan Ill 
 
 Inventors, Pioneer 29 
 
 Investigators, Noted 105 
 
 James, William Henry 59 
 
 James, William T 71 
 
 179 
 
INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jeanteaud, Charles 165 
 
 Johnson 70 
 
 Kestler, J. S 121 
 
 Krieger, Louis 171 
 
 Knyff, Rene de 175 
 
 Le Blant 169 
 
 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm 
 
 von 115 
 
 Lenoir, Jean Joseph Etienne.. 89 
 
 Levassor 99 
 
 Lough and Messenger 155 
 
 Maceroni, Francis 78 
 
 Mackworth, Humphrey 115 
 
 Marcus, Siegfried 93 
 
 Masurier 121 
 
 Medhurst, George 124 
 
 Messenger 155 
 
 Millichap, G 144 
 
 Moore, Francis 120 
 
 Mors 169 
 
 Murdock, William 34 
 
 Nasmyth, James 135 
 
 Neville, James 134 
 
 Newton, Isaac 113 
 
 Norrgber 153 
 
 Noted Investigators 105 
 
 Ogle, Summers and 140 
 
 Origin and Development of the 
 Automobile 11 
 
 Papin, Denis 116 
 
 Parker, T. W 133 
 
 Pecqueur 138 
 
 Peugeot, Armand 168 
 
 Pioneer Inventors 29 
 
 Planta 121 
 
 Pochain 171 
 
 Pocock, George 133 
 
 Pyott, L. T 164 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Raffard 165 
 
 Ramsey, David HO 
 
 Ravel, Pierre 164 
 
 Read, Nathan 48 
 
 Renault, Louis 101 
 
 Renault, Marcel 101 
 
 Richard, Elie 114 
 
 Richard, Georges 171 
 
 Richter, A 164 
 
 Rickett, Thomas 156 
 
 Roberts, Richard 82 
 
 Robinson 118 
 
 Roger 170 
 
 Roper, Sylvester Haywood 165 
 
 Russell, John Scott 83 
 
 Salomons, Sir David 172 
 
 Selden, George B 91 
 
 Serpollet, Leon 100 
 
 Stirling 159 
 
 Stevin, Simon 109 
 
 Summers and Ogle 140 
 
 Symington, William 45 
 
 Tangye, Richard 161 
 
 Tindall, Thomas 129 
 
 Thompson, R. W 154 
 
 Trevithick, Richard 50 
 
 Vaucauson 117 
 
 Vegelius 114 
 
 Verbiest, Fernando 112 
 
 Viney, James 138 
 
 Vivian, Andrew 125 
 
 Volk, Magnus 169 
 
 Von Leibnitz, Gottfried Wil- 
 helm 115 
 
 Ward, Radcliffe 168 
 
 Watt, James 122 
 
 Wildgosse, Thomas 110 
 
 Yates . . 144 
 
 l80 
 
V 
 
 Mll>9809 
 
 TU5 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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