Charles and frank duryea biography
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In 1896, the Duryea Brothers produced 13 cars by hand – in their garage at 47 Taylor Street – and thus Duryea became the first-ever commercially produced vehicle, and also the largest automobile factory in the United States. His 1913 Duryea is Vanderbilt's only original car kept at his Biltmore Estate. On September 20 1893, their first automobile was constructed and successfully tested on the public streets of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Charles Duryea was a visionary, predicting “the advent of the automobile” in his 1882 college thesis. Two months later, New York City motorist Henry Wells hits a bicyclist with his new Duryea. [8] Due to low production and extraordinarily pricey cars, e.g. The brothers were bicycle makers who became interested in gasoline engines and automobiles.
The Duryea's "motor wagon" was a used horse drawn buggy that the brothers had purchased for $70 and into which they had installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine. His younger brother Frank was a talented mechanic. In 1896, the Duryea brothers developed and produced 13 gasoline-powered vehicles that were identical in design and construction…an accomplishment regarded as the beginning of the American automobile industry.
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Generally speaking, Charles engineered the automobiles, while Frank built tested and raced them.Tests of the first, gasoline-powered automobile: September 20 and November 10, 1893
On September 20, 1893, the Duryea Brothers road-tested the first-ever, working American gasoline-powered automobile in a portion of Springfield, Massachusetts that is now located in the City of Chicopee, Massachusetts.
After brief careers in the bicycle business, the brothers collaborated on the development and production of a gasoline-powered vehicle. Charles became interested in developing a horseless buggy, and invited his brother, Frank, a toolmaker at Chicopee's Ames Manufacturing Company, to join the project in 1892.
The Duryea Brothers
A first person narrative of Charles Duryea written as if it was spoken by the inventor himself
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Their 1895 Motor Wagon won the now legendary Chicago Times-Herald Race, completing the 54-mile round trip from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois with a winning time of 10 hours and 23 minutes. The rider suffered a broken leg, Wells spent a night in jail and the nation's first traffic accident was recorded. [3]
The Duryea Motor Wagon Company
After Frank Duryea won the America's first car race on November 28, 1895 in Chicago, demand grew for the Duryea Motor Wagon.
in 1913, George Vanderbilt purchased and drove a Stevens-Duryea, but was one of few people in the United States who could afford one. Charles Duryea founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1896, the first company to manufacture and sell gasoline powered vehicles. The winner earned $2,000, the enthusiast who named the horseless vehicles "motorcycles" won $500, and the Chicago Times-Herald, sponsor of the race, declared, "Persons who are inclined to decry the development of the horseless carriage will be forced to recognize it as an admitted mechanical achievement, highly adapted to some of the most urgent needs of our civilization."
America's First Recorded Automobile Accident
In March 1896, Charles and Frank Duryea of Springfield, Mass., offer the first commercial automobile: the Duryea motor wagon.
[2] Frank Duryea test drove it again on November 10 -- this time in a prominent location: past their garage at 47 Taylor Street in Springfield. By 1896, the company had sold thirteen cars of the model Duryea, an expensive limousine, which remained in production into the 1920s.
America's First Automobile Race
At 8:55 a.m.
on November 28, 1895, six motor cars left Chicago's Jackson Park for a 54 mile race to Evanston, Illinois and back through the snow.