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AUTOMOBILE
BIOGRAPHIES
AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIVES AND THE
WORK OF THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN
IDENTIFIED WITH THE INVENTION AND
DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-PROPELLED
VEHICLES ON THE COMMON ROADS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
THE MONOGRAPH PRESS
Copyright, 1904
By the Monograph Press
All Rights Reserved
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
n a large sense the history of the rise of the automobile has been ahistory of some of the foremost inventors, mechanical engineers,manufacturers and active business men of more than a full century. Thesubject of self-propelled vehicles on the common roads has enlisted thefaculties of many men whose minds have been engrossed with the study andthe solution of mechanical and engineering problems, purely from anabsorbing love of science; it has had the financial support of those whoseenergies are constantly and forcefully exerted in the industrial andcommercial activities of the age; it has received the meritedconsideration of those who regard as of paramount importance any additionto the sum of successful human endeavor and any influence that contributesto the further advance of modern civilization.
Along these lines of thought this book of Automobile Biographies has beenprepared. On its pages are sketches of the lives and the work of those whohave been most active in planning, inventing and perfecting the modernhorseless highway vehicle, in adapting it to the public needs for pleasureor business and in promoting its usefulness and broadening the field ofits utility.
Included herein are accounts of the pioneer inventors, the notedinvestigators and the contemporaneous workers who have helped to make theautomobile in its many forms the most remarkable mechanical success of[Pg 6]to-day and the most valuable and epoch-making addition to theconveniences of modern social, industrial and commercial life. Thesesketches have been carefully prepared from the best sources ofinformation, works of reference, personal papers and so on, and arebelieved to be thoroughly accurate and reliable. Much of the informationcontained in them has been derived from exceedingly rare old volumes andpapers that are not generally accessible, and it comes with a full flavorof newness. Much also has been acquired from original sources and hasnever before been given