The
Stanley Motor Carriage Company was a manufacturer of
steam-engineA steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
vehicles; it operated from 1902 to 1924. The cars made by the company were colloquially called
Stanley Steamers, although several 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 imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
. 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. In 1899, Freelan and his wife Flora drove one of their cars to the top of
Mount Washington-Mountains and summits:Canada* Mount Washington United States* Mount Washington , highest point in the northeastern United States* Mount Washington * Mount Washington * Mount Washington...
in
New HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, the third highest peak in the eastern
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The ascent took more than two hours and was notable as being the first time a car had climbed the 7.6 miles (12.2 km) long Mount Washington Carriage Road; the descent was accomplished by putting the engine in low gear and braking extensively. The twins 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...
. Steam was generated in a
vertical fire-tube boilerA vertical fire-tube boiler or vertical multitubular boiler is a vertical boiler where the heating surface is composed of multiple small fire-tubes, arranged vertically.These boilers were not common, owing to drawbacks with excessive wear in service...
, mounted beneath the seat, with a vaporizing
gasolineGasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
(later,
keroseneKerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
) burner underneath. The boiler was reinforced by several layers of
piano wirePiano wire, or "music wire", is a specialized type of wire made for use in piano strings, as well as many other purposes. It is made from tempered high-carbon steel, also known as spring steel.-Manufacture and use:...
wound 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 or movement joint is an assembly designed to safely absorb the heat-induced expansion and contraction of various construction materials, to absorb vibration, to hold certain parts together, 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 that resembled internal combustion cars of the time but retained the many steam car features for example no transmisson, clutch, or driveshaft. They also had a fully sprung 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,
condensersA 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...
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 (219 km/h). The record for steam-powered automobiles was not broken until 2009. Production rose to 500 cars in 1917.
The Stanley Steamer was sometimes nicknamed "The Flying Teapot". At least one Stanley Steamer found its way to
Castle Hill, New South WalesCastle Hill is a suburb in the north-west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Castle Hill is located 31 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the Hills District of the Greater Western Sydney region...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
where it was driven in the late 1920s.
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 high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...
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, frequently abbreviated as FUD, is a tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda....
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, after F.E. Stanley's accidental death, F.O. Stanley sold the 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 hp were produced after 1918. Far better cars were available at much lower cost – for example, a 1924 Stanley 740D sedan cost $3950 ($ today), 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 September 1908 to May 1927...
. 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 light car powered by a steam engine.Steam locomotives, steam engines capable of propelling themselves along either road or rails, developed around one hundred years earlier than internal combustion engine cars although their weight restricted them to agricultural and heavy haulage...
- Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
- Timeline of steam power
Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved steam engine designs in the late 18th century...
- 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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