Beschreibung:

The Stanley twins, Francis E. and Freelan O., were exceptionally gifted, creative designers who also happened to be solid businessmen. Raised in rural Maine about halfway between Waterville and the Canadian border, the brothers’ ingenuity and industry twice created successful businesses by capitalizing on opportunities which they first spotted in their own lives. The famous steam automobile which bears their name is the second. The first Stanley business arose when Frank, a talented artist who was making his living painting portraits with an airbrush, purchased a camera to take pictures of his portrait clients. He soon discovered the clients appreciated the photos at least as much as they did the portraits but being something of a perfectionist he was dissatisfied with the quality of the dry photo plate gelatin emulsions. He set out to create his own superior dry plates, did so and he and his brother soon had a business making and selling dry plates, successfully competing with the likes of George Eastman After moving from Maine to the Boston suburb of Watertown they expanded their dry plate business and soon took over sales directly to their customers, improving their margins and competitiveness. Eventually the dry plate business added a second factory in Canada and was a commercial and artistic success. It also made the Stanley brothers wealthy and put them in the position to indulge their innate curiosity about the then-new automobile. It was late 1896 and the internal combustion engine was well on its way to practicality. Charles and J. Frank Duryea had demonstrated the concept three years before in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their accomplishments as well as those of Benz, Daimler, deDion-Bouton and others in Europe would have been well known to anyone as curious and well-read as the Stanleys. Exactly what moved the Stanleys to concentrate on steam power is a mystery, but the fabric of automobile history is much richer because they did. Their early automobiles were lightweight, simple affairs with piano wire wound boilers that operated at 150 psi and were capable of maximum pressure of 300 psi. They built three steam cars, two of which they drove. The third they sold for $600 but otherwise were content to experiment and enjoy the silent transportation which their little buckboard-like steamers provided. That changed in 1898 when an automobile show was held in Boston with trials in Cambridge. There were only four official entrants, a deDion-Bouton, a Haynes-Apperson, a Whitney steamer and a Riker electric. The Stanleys steamed over to watch, then joined the trial where their steamer proceeded to turn in the fastest three laps of the Cambridge velodrome and was the only one of the five that was able to climb the test hill’s 30% grade. That trial performance was well publicized and customers lined up to buy Stanley steam cars. The twins’ entrepreneurial spirits were buoyed and they bought an empty bicycle factory and started to fill orders. A few months later John B. Walker publisher of Cosmopolitan, showed up and offered to become a partner, something which the twins definitely did not need. Walker persisted, finally offering to buy the entire operation. The Stanleys tried to brush him off by asking the outlandish price of a quarter-million dollars and no doubt could have been blown over with a feather when Walker accepted. Walker’s business eventually would become Locomobile. The Stanleys bought their factory back two years later and resumed production of Stanley automobiles ... after disposing of one further impediment, a suit by George Whitney challenging their use of a chain tensioner which he claimed infringed on a patent he held. With typical direct Stanley ingenuity, they eliminated any possibility of infringement by eliminating the chain. A spur gear in the center of the crankshaft drove the rear axle’s differential directly. The head end of the engine was flexibly attached to the chassis in this ingenious mechani