The
Stanley Motor Carriage Company was a
steam engineA steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2000 years...
vehicle manufacturer that operated between 1902 and 1924. During the company's peak years, their vehicles outsold every gasoline-fuelled car, with sales second only to Columbia Electric. The cars made by the company were colloquially referred to as
Stanley Steamers, although a number of different models were produced.
Twins
Francis E. StanleyFrancis Edgar Stanley was an American businessman and was the co-founder, along with his twin brother Freelan Oscar Stanley, of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company which built the Stanley Steamer.-Biography:...
(1849-1918) and Freelan O.
The
Stanley Motor Carriage Company was a
steam engineA steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2000 years...
vehicle manufacturer that operated between 1902 and 1924. During the company's peak years, their vehicles outsold every gasoline-fuelled car, with sales second only to Columbia Electric. The cars made by the company were colloquially referred to as
Stanley Steamers, although a number of different models were produced.
Early history
Twins
Francis E. StanleyFrancis Edgar Stanley was an American businessman and was the co-founder, along with his twin brother Freelan Oscar Stanley, of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company which built the Stanley Steamer.-Biography:...
(1849-1918) and Freelan O. Stanley (1849-1940) founded the company after selling their photographic dry plate business to
Eastman KodakEastman Kodak Company is a multinational US corporation which produces imaging and photographic materials and equipment. Long known for its wide range of photographic film products, Kodak is re-focusing on two major markets: digital photography and digital printing.- Origins :Kodak's origins rest...
. They produced their first car in 1897. During 1898 and 1899, they produced and sold over 200 cars, more than any other U.S. maker. They later sold the rights to this early design to Locomobile, and in 1902 they formed the Stanley Motor Carriage Company.
Specifications and design
Early Stanley cars had light wooden bodies mounted on tubular steel frames by means of
full-elliptic springsOriginally called laminated or carriage spring, a leaf spring is a simple form of spring, commonly used for the suspension in wheeled vehicles. It is also one of the oldest forms of springing, dating back to medieval times....
. Steam was generated in a vertical
fire-tube boilerA fire-tube boiler is a type of boiler in which hot gases from a fire pass through one or more tubes running through a sealed container of water...
, mounted beneath the seat, with a vaporizing
gasolineGasoline or petrol is a petroleum-derived liquid mixture, primarily used as fuel in internal combustion engines...
(later,
keroseneKerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
) burner underneath. The boiler was reinforced by winding several layers of
piano wirePiano wire is a specialized type of wire made for use in piano and other musical instrument strings, as well as many other purposes. It is made from tempered high-carbon steel, also known as spring steel. Music wire is another name for piano wire: it is used for the cores of strings, which may be...
around it, which gave it a strong, yet relatively light-weight, shell. In early models, the vertical fire-tubes were made of copper, and were expanded into holes in the upper and lower crown sheets. In later models, the installation of a condenser caused oil-fouling of the
expansion jointAn expansion joint is an assembly designed to safely absorb the heat-induced expansion and contraction of various construction materials, to absorb vibration, or to allow movement due to ground settlement or earthquakes...
s, and welded steel fire-tubes were used instead. The boilers were safer than one might expect – they were fitted with safety valves, and even if these failed, a dangerous overpressure would rupture one of the many joints long before the boiler shell was in danger of bursting, and the resulting leak would relieve the boiler pressure and douse the burner with little risk to the occupants of the car. There has never been a documented case of a Stanley boiler exploding in use.
The engine had two double-acting cylinders side-by-side, equipped with slide-valves, and was of the simple-expansion type. Drive was transmitted directly from the engine crankshaft to a rear-mounted differential by means of a chain. Locomobiles were often modified by their owners, who added third-party accessories,
e.g., improved lubricators, condensers, and devices which mitigated the laborious starting procedure, and so forth.
Later, the Stanley brothers, to overcome patent difficulties with the design they had sold to Locomobile, developed a new automobile model with twin cylinder engines geared directly to the back axle. Later models had aluminium coachwork, but retained many antiquated features, for example the unsprung tubular steel frame.
When they later shifted the steam boiler to the front of the vehicle, the resulting feature was called by owners the "coffin nose." In order to improve range,
condenserA steam locomotive condensing apparatus differs in purpose from the usual closed cycle steam engine condenser, in that its function is primarily either to recover water, or to avoid excessive emissions to the atmosphere, rather than maintaining a vacuum to improve both efficiency and power...
s were used, beginning in 1915. A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record was not broken by any automobile until 1911, although Glen Curtiss beat the record in 1907 with a V-8 powered motorcycle at 136 mph (218 km/h). The record for steam-powered automobiles was not broken until 2009. Production rose to 500 cars in 1917.
Obsolescence
During the mid to late 1910s, the fuel efficiency and power delivery of
internal combustion engineThe internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine the expansion of the high temperature and pressure gases, which are produced by the combustion, directly applies force to a movable...
s improved dramatically and the usage of an electric starter rather than a
crankA crank is an arm attached at right angles to a rotating shaft by which reciprocating motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. It is used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion. The arm may be a bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm...
, which was notorious for injury to its operators, led to the rise of the gasoline-powered automobile (which eventually was much cheaper). The Stanley company produced a series of advertising campaigns trying to woo the car-buying public away from the "internal explosion engine," to little effect. An advertising slogan for these campaigns was, "Power - Correctly Generated, Correctly Controlled, Correctly Applied to the Rear Axle." These campaigns are early examples of a
fear, uncertainty and doubtFear, Uncertainty, and Doubt is a tactic of rhetoric and fallacy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs...
type advertising campaign, as their purpose was not so much to convince the audience of the benefits of the Stanley Steamer car as to plant the notion an internal combustion automobile could explode.
Sale and closure
In 1917, the brothers sold their interests to Prescott Warren. The company then endured a period of decline and technological stagnation. As the production specifications show, no models with a power output higher than 20
hpHorsepower is the name of several non-SI units of power. It was originally defined to allow the output of steam engines to be measured and compared with the power output of draft horses. The horsepower was widely adopted to measure the output of piston engines, turbines, electric motors and other...
were produced after 1918. Far better cars were available at much lower cost – for example, a 1924 Stanley 740D sedan cost $3950, compared to under $500 for a
Ford Model TThe Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from 1908 through 1927. The Model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile came into popular usage...
. Widespread use of electric starters in internal combustion cars eroded the greatest remaining technological advantages of the steam car.
Efficiencies of scale, a lack of effective advertising and general public desire for higher speeds and less fussy starting than were possible with the Stanley technology were the primary causes of the company's demise and the factory closed for good in 1924.
See also
- Steam car
A steam car is a car powered by a steam engine.- Technology :A steam engine is an external combustion engine , as opposed to an internal combustion engine...
- Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2000 years...
- Timeline of steam power
See Steam engine, Steam power during the Industrial Revolution.Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 1600s, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved designs in the late 1700s...
- History of steam road vehicles
The history of steam road vehicles describes the development of vehicles powered by a steam engine for use on land and independent of rails; whether for conventional road use, such as the steam car and steam waggon, or for agricultural or heavy haulage work, such as the traction engine.The first...
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