Remembering The Stanley Steamer

Filed in archive on December 9, 2007

By Gunnar Heinrich

With all the brouhaha that surrounds oil, our glutinous consumption of it, and our need to rip ourselves from it, it bears remembering a time when we did not have to rely on Mobil and BP to get us from A to B. The nearest means to add juice to your car was the nearest stream and a vacuum suctioned tube.

In the early 1900s, the Stanley brothers left Eastman Kodak to start up their own horseless carriage company. Not long after they introduced their first steam powered cars - Stanley Steamers - they set a world land speed record of 127.7 mph at Daytona Beach Road Course, as it was then called.

The car that broke the record was appropriately called "The Rocket."

From 1902 to 1917 Stanley's boiler powered cars (which used a bit of Kerosene to put fire to the water) sold well; better than most gas engined cars. The company fell into decline when the Stanley brothers sold the business in 1917 and when in subsequent years gas powered motors made technical leaps in efficiency.

Stanley went bust in 1927. And for the oil companies and gas driven car manufacturers, the rest is history.


Read on to find out more...

[Source:Wikipedia]