Patent Pending Blog - Patents and the History of Technology

H. B. Smith Steam Tricycle

New Jersey manufacturer Hezekiah Bradley Smith patented a steam powered tricycle in 1889.  He also built the American Star Bicycle, which sold for $150 in a time when an average income for a man was $500.  Smith did very well with his manufacturing business, and was elected to Congress in 1879.  He purchased the town of Shreveville New Jersey and invested vast sums of money to make it an industrial center.  He renamed the town Smithville,  and the town still hosts the  company Smith founded, the Smith Machine  Co.

Copeland Steam Motorcycle

In 1884, Arizona engineer Lucius Day Copeland combined a highwheeled bicycle driven by levers, with a small steam engine, with the result being a steam powered motorcycle.  The steam engine developed about 1/4 hp, and had the boiler and gasoline heater buillt around the steering column. A flat leather belt drove the large rear wheel.  The machine would attain about 15 mph, and carried enough fuel and water for an hour of operation.  The "bicycle" Copeland started with appears to be like the one patented by Lorenz, shown below.

Lucius D. Copeland and his steam bicycle, 1884.

Copeland didn't get any financial backing on the steam bicycle so he built in tricycle form, which is shown in his 1887 patent.

Screw Vehicle

One of the earliest screw vehicles I've found is the Ice Locomotive, which looks like it would be so heavy that it would sink into the snow.  I wonder if any were ever built?

Sylvester Ropers Steam Automobile, 1860s

Sylvester Roper was an early automobile designer in America.  His cars were steam powered, and he made a steam motorcycle which had to be the first motorcycle ever made, and a steam powered buggy, or automobile as they were called later.  The photo shown below is from the Staten Island Region Antique Automobile Club of America, where a number of photos of other vintage cars are located.   Copied by permission.



Roper was a prolific inventor, and patented many versions of his vehicles, as well as the first repeating cartridge shotgun.

Richard Dudgeon's Steam Carriage, 1853

Richard Dudgeon immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland, and became a skilled machinist while working at an iron works.  He started his own shop, and was very successful in selling a hydraulic jack that he patented for use in the shipbuilding and railroad industries.   

Dudgeon then turned his skills to building a steam powered carriage, and sometime between 1853 and 1857 built an eight passenger carriage.  It was exhibited in the Crystal Palace industrial exposition in New York City, and was destroyed when the Crystal Palace burned down.  He built a second steam carriage shown below, which was finished in 1866. 


The 1866 Dudgeon steam carriage seated a driver and eight passengers.  Water tanks were placed under the passenger seats, and riders put their feet on the boiler.  It could travel at 25-30 mph, and was driven around New York City and the inventor's home on Long Island.  The 1866 Dudgeon vehicle is in the Smithsonian Museum.  

Steam Man, Victorian Steam Powered Robot

Any discussion of the history of technology is incomplete without a mention of the steam powered robots of Victorian times.  In the days of steam power, everything you can think of was built in a steam powered form.  That includes motorcycles, bicycles, coaches, and tricycles.   The Victorian steam powered robot Boilerplate has already been discussed in this blog, (with more information at Boilerplate by Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan), but Boilerplate was really an improvement of an earlier steam powered robot, called Steam Man, built by a teenage prodigy and dwarf named Johnny Brainerd prior to 1865, according to writer Edward S. Ellis. 

According to Brainerd,

"It was about ten feet in height, measuring to the top of the 'stove-pipe hat,' which was fashioned after the common order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler, were where the chest in a human being is generally supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms, like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the monarch of baseball players. The legs were quite long, and the step was natural, except when running, at which time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed differed from a human being.

More information about Steam Man is at the page titled Steam Man.

George A. Long Automobile, 1880

The first automobile in the U.S. was Oliver Evans' steam powered Amphibolos. But what about the first gasoline powered automobile?  That was an automobile built by George A. Long.  The surprise is that this automobile had a steam engine, and used gasoline as the fuel type. 

Long had first built a 5 wheeled vehicle powered by steam in 1875, which burned charcoal and could travel at 30 mph. 

Long built the steam engine for a second version, a tricycle, in 1879.  Shortly he built the body to go with the engine, with the use of Colonel Albert Pope's bicycle manufacturing facility.  Long's patent on the device issued in 1883 and as far as I know is the second U.S. patent on an automobile, Oliver Evans' being the first in 1803.

The steam engine of the tricycle was a V2 (two cylinders in V configuration), and delivered power to the rear wheel by a pulley that contacted the driving wheel.  Two different pulleys were available, for two different speeds: slow and really slow. 

The tricycle used wheels similar to those on the velocipedes of the day, with wooden rims and metal spokes.  The two side by side wheels preceded the automobile, and the third wheel was the driving wheel. The controls require two operators to steer, brake,  and control the power.

The vehicle weights 350 pounds, and operates at about 100 psi steam pressure. This vehicle was built before the Benz and Daimler vehicles, but they were internal combustion and this was steam. This vehicle was well ahead of the Serpollet steam vehicle of 1888, and after the 5 ton Bollee steam vehicle of 1873. The rebuilt vehicle is in the Smithsonian Museum.

 

Steam Car Sets Land Speed Record! (1906)

In the early part of the twentieth century steam cars were considered far superior in many ways to gasoline powered cars.  Their operation was simple, quiet, and reliable compared to the internal combustion cars' mess of oil, stink of gas, clashing gears, and especially hand cranking to start.  In 1906 Fred Marriott set the Land Speed Record of 127.66 mph in a steam powered automobile built by Stanley.  He also drove a different steam car at about 140-150 mph the following year, but the vehicle crashed before the official speed was recorded.  Ford's cheap prices for autos, and the invention of the electric starter in 1912 were the final doom of steam cars.   

More information about Stanley automobiles and Fred Marriott are thebirthplaceofspeed2006.com. More Stanley information at the Stanley Museum, where James Merrick is the archivist.
 

The Serpollet Steam Tricycle

Leon Serpollet of France designed an improved steam engine in 1887 and in 1888 built a tricycle type vehicle powered by the steam engine.  Serpollet's steam engine addressed the problem of steam engines taking a long time to build up steam.  In Serpollet's engine metal tubes were heated, and when contacted with water a head of steam was instantly brought up.  American financier F.L. Gardner put up the money to bring the project into production. 

Serpollet obtained the first drivers license in Paris, and in 1890 with Ernest Archdeacon took a trip (the first road trip?) of 286 miles in 15 days in the steam tricycle.  In 1902 Serpollet broke the world land speed record with a speed of 75.06 mph.  Gardner and Serpollet built six and eight cylinder automobiles until 1907.  Serpollet died about then, and the gasoline engine automobiles were outperforming the steamers in sales by then. 

Steam Plowing

In the early days of steam, the farm  tractors were huge machines, and were often too heavy to work the fields when they were wet.  One method of using steam tractors was tried in which two steam powered tractors were set up at either end of a field, and a plow was pulled between them.  When the plow reached one tractor, the plow was built to lift one set of plows into the air, so another set of plows would be used on the return trip.  This method was used in England and tried in the U.S. but was soon abandoned as being slow and ineffective.