Francis Edgar Stanley, creator of the Stanley Steamer, died after crashing his car a century ago
WHEN Francis Stanley crashed his steam-powered car near the town of Topsfield in Massachusetts it brought to an end a great and inventive career
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A CENTURY ago today, on July 31, 1918, a man was motoring along in his steam-powered car heading south on a road from a town near Topsfield, Massachusetts. The driver, Francis Stanley, must have been travelling at a cracking pace because when he tried to avoid an obstacle — according to one story, two farm wagons side-by-side — his car left the road, hit a woodpile and flipped. Stanley was badly injured and later died from his wounds while he was being taken to a nearby hospital.
It was a sad way to die for the inventor who had given the world one of the fastest and most reliable makes of car, the Stanley Steamer .
Stanley and his twin brother Freelan had developed steam engines as a viable alternative to the internal combustion motor — which Francis called the “internal explosion engine”. For a time the Stanley Motor Carriage Company was the most successful American automotive manufacturer.
But even before Stanley’s death, crashing one of the cars he helped invent, the steam car was being figuratively and literally overtaken by Ford’s Model T and other cheaper cars with internal combustion engines. Yet his legacy lives on with hundreds of the cars still owned and lovingly maintained by vintage car enthusiasts worldwide, including Australia, most of whom still swear by their reliability. Today their vehicles regularly sell for $100,000 up to $500,000.
Francis Edgar and Freelan Oscar Stanley, were born in Kingfield, Maine, on June 1, 1849, the sons of farmer Solomon Stanley. Both boys were natural tinkerers from birth, a trait that is said to have run in the family, making and selling their own toys to other students at school. Their grandfather invented a cotton carding machine and taught the twins to make violins.
Rather than engineering, Francis and Freelan’s natural curiosity led them into a career, initially, as teachers, but they were always looking for something else. Francis developed an interest in photography and in 1874 gave up teaching to open a photographic studio. That same year he patented his invention of an air brush used for colourising photographs.
Freelan also left the classroom in 1876 because of health problems and began making drawing equipment for school students, later opening a factory to mass produce them.
The brothers worked together developing their own method of mass-producing dry plates used in photography. Photographic corporation Eastman Kodak later bought the patent and the dry plate manufacturing plant from the brothers, allowing them more time to tinker about with their new hobby — cars.
They decided that internal combustion engines were unreliable and the future lay in steam technology, partly inspired by Eli Whitney’s cotton gin machine, building their first car in 1897. The car burned petrol to fire up a water-filled boiler, which drove power directly to the rear axle, allowing for more power and efficiency than other cars at the time.
In 1898 the brothers entered their car in races and reliability trials. People were impressed by its performance and how much quieter it was than other cars. They were inundated with orders so they set up the Stanley Steam Car Company, selling their first car in 1899 and later selling the company.
In 1902 the brothers set up a new business, the Stanley Motor Carriage Company. Their slogan was “Power correctly generated, correctly controlled, and correctly applied to the rear axle”. It was no idle boast. Their cars rarely broke down, had more power than internal combustion cars and in 1906 clocked a world record speed of 205km/h, a record that stood for nearly 18 years. The cars even sold well in Australia.
Kerosene became the preferred fuel for the Stanley Steamers, making them cheaper to run than cars that ran on petrol. But in 1908 Henry Ford’s Model T delivered much cheaper cars. The Stanleys refused to compromise on quality; their car continued to cost about eight times more than the Ford.
The brothers continued to innovate, introducing a condenser that reused the steam, making it less necessary to refill the boiler with water. But the brothers were growing less interested in competing with other cars and sold the company in 1917.
On July 31, 1918, Francis died in the car accident. The fact that he was driving a Steamer didn’t have a huge impact on the company. Under the new managers, the cars underwent a brief resurgence, partly thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign. One motoring writer in Australia in 1921 enthused “an engineer of very considerable experience in Sydney holds the highest opinion of steam-driven cars, and is of the opinion, that they will eventually supersede petrol driven cars.”
It proved not to be the case. Without the innovations of the Stanley twins the cars soon failed to keep up with motoring trends and the last Stanley car was produced in 1924.
After a distinguished career in business Freelan died in 1940.