Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1   Report Post  
Don White
 
Posts: n/a
Default 100th Anniversary of Outboard

Read a short article in the local paper. The guy said 2005 was the
100th anniversary of the outboard motor. They weren't common though
until Ole Evinrude developed his version a few years later.
  #2   Report Post  
Shortwave Sportfishing
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:12:40 GMT, Don White
wrote:

Read a short article in the local paper. The guy said 2005 was the
100th anniversary of the outboard motor. They weren't common though
until Ole Evinrude developed his version a few years later.


Evinrude - amazing idea he had I'll tell you what. :)

There is a guy over in Putnam who has one of the original Evinrudes
along with a, get this, Indian outboard.
  #3   Report Post  
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Harry, how disapointing! You grew up close enough to Springfield to
recognize this classic american manufacturer.

  #4   Report Post  
 
Posts: n/a
Default



Don White wrote:
Read a short article in the local paper. The guy said 2005 was the
100th anniversary of the outboard motor. They weren't common though
until Ole Evinrude developed his version a few years later.






The History of Outboards- The Idea of Portable Power Plant is As Old As
the Gasoline Engine Itself.
By Bob Whittier, from the January, 1957 issue of Yachting Magazine.

Today outboard motors are so common that few of us, on seeing one, are
ever prompted to wonder just where and when the idea originated. Some
inventions, such as the airplane, the telephone and the steamship, have
had their histories written in exhaustive detail - but have you ever
tried to find out who invented the steam-shovel, the welding torch or
the fluorescent light? Historians are a strange lot; they've eulogized
some things and ignored others which serve equally important needs in
our complex modern civilization. Outboard motor history is one of the
things which have, for the most part, been ignored. To be sure, an
article has appeared here, or a chapter in a book has appeared there .
.. . but the whole interesting tale does not seem to have been put in
front of the boating public. This series of articles will try to fill
the void.

You may be quite surprised at bow far back the outboard idea goes. The
idea of having a portable power plant which could readily be attached
to any small utility boat is certainly as old as the gasoline engine
itself and quite probably even older, for we have records of pedal
driven contrivances dating back to 1864 and of an outboard steam engine
which appeared in Europe before 1900.

Thus it is not really so startling to learn that a real gasoline
outboard motor was manufactured in this country as far back as 1896!
Called the "American," it was produced by the American Motor Co., of
Long Island, New York. It is shown in Fig. 1 and, as is clearly
evident, its basic layout bears a remarkable resemblance to modern
practice. It had "gear shift" in the form of a variable pitch propeller
and even boasted a remote fuel tank! Not only was the latter carried
inside the boat but the carburetor appears to have been attached to it
and the engine's intake suction drew vaporized fuel to the cylinder
through a flexible tube. By this stroke of genius the need for a
special miniature pump to transfer liquid fuel from tank to pump was
done away with.

The American was a four-cycle, air-cooled motor rated at one and two
horsepower, apparently being built to burn either kerosene or gasoline
at the buyer's option. It turned up from 400 to 600 revolutions a
minute and was claimed to be able to propel a 12- to 16-foot rowboat at
six to eight miles an hour. The problem of vibration, which has always
plagued single-cylinder outboards, was very neatly taken care of by
clamping the crankcase directly to the boat and arranging the
underwater unit to turn port and starboard via a sector gear and
steering handle. As you can see by studying Fig. 1, power impulses
would be transferred to the boat's transom instead of directly to the
operator's hand and quite evidently the operator felt little or no
reaction in the handle. About 25 of these motors were built, which for
those very early days should be enough to qualify it as a "production
motor."
There also exists evidence that a large, clumsy outboard was built in
Germany around 1900, and between 1902 and 1904 in France there was a
"Motogodille" outboard.

What was destined to become the first outboard motor accepted by the
American public was originated in 1905 by Cameron B. Waterman. The
story of the Waterman outboards might be obscure today if it were not
for the coincidence that the author of this series happened to be
looking for outboard historical data for his "The Outboard Motor and
Boat Book" in 1948. He had encountered the "Waterman" name a few times
in his research work but had been unable to locate any information on
the firm or its motor. While leafing through a current copy of "Time"
magazine his attention was attracted by an advertisement of the
International Correspondence School. It carried the success story of a
graduate, Oliver E. Barthel, a consulting engineer of Detroit.
According to the advertisement, Mr. Barthel had engaged in a number of
interesting technical pursuits including work with Henry Ford . . . and
work in developing an early outboard motor.

A query addressed to Mr. Barthel brought a reply which indicated that
the early outboard motor referred to in "Time" was indeed the Waterman,
and Mr. Barthel most kindly made available information and photographs
of the machine. The very first Waterman was assembled in 1905 from a
Curtis motorcycle engine. As can be seen in Fig. 2, it was fitted with
a chain drive and one can imagine the shower of water it must have
thrown up!

Waterman applied for a patent on this outboard on Dec. 6, 1905 and it
was granted April 23, 1907. The patent number was 851,389.

Early in 1906 Waterman engaged Oliver E. Barthel to refine the motor
and develop it to the production stage. This resulted in the
water-cooled model shown in Fig. 3. The propeller was driven by exposed
bevel gears which were lubricated by the water. This was
a perfectly logical arrangement for water is a good lubricant and we
use it even today for the stern bearings of our inboard motorboats. Of
course sand and debris would be a problem, but at this early stage
there were far more important mechanical points to be concerned with.
By the spring of 1906 an air-cooled cylinder had been substituted at
Mr. Waterman's preference. Twenty-five of these engines were made, the
firm being located in Detroit.

In 1907 Waterman went hack to water cooling and in addition twin
enclosed flywheels were used in place of the earlier exposed one. Quite
probably this change was in the interest of vibration control . . .
still a major concern of the outboard designer! The weight of the
single exposed flywheel is several inches removed from the cylinder's
centerline and it is easy to imagine the gyroscopic forces of the heavy
flywheel fighting against the reciprocating vibration of the piston and
connecting rod. The 1907 motor (Fig. 4) had two internal flywheels, one
on each side of the cylinder centerline and the pair of them formed the
crankshaft via the connecting crankpin. Their combined weight was thus
symmetrically disposed to both sides of the cylinder and the tendency
to build up a rocking vibration must have been reduced. This
twin-flywheel layout is widely used even today in many single cylinder
European motor-cycle engines. Three thousand Watermans were built in
1907.

Production continued and a 1909 advertisement which appeared in
"National Sportsman" is shown in Fig. 5. Even at that early date the
chief customer was assumed to he the fisher-man! By 1915 the Waterman
had been developed to the point where it was fitted with a reversible
propeller and a removable power bead which could he used for stationary
power around the camp or farm. By the end of that year over 30,000 of
the outboards had been sold. In 1917 manufacturing rights were sold to
the Arrow Motor and Marine Co., of New York, and production of
"Waterman Porto" outboards was continued until 1921. The Arrow people
went out of business in 1924.

Meanwhile, a young man named Ole Evinrude, the son of Norwegian
immigrants, had been growing up on a farm in Dane County, Wis. He did
his farm chores as a good son should, but it was hard for him to
repress a very strong inclination toward mechanical things. At the age
of 16 he decided to go to the big city-meaning Madison-and take a job
in a machine shop. He went to work in the farm implement shop of Fuller
& Johnson at 50 cents a day. Quickly learning all he could from the
machinists, he moved along to other places, ever in search of new
knowledge. He worked in the Pittsburgh steel mills and Chicago machine
shops, learning all he could from his daily work and evenings spent
studying mathematics.

A very competent machinist and patternmaker, he eventually settled in
Milwaukee and became a consultant to the E. P. Allis Co. Spare time
experimenting with the then-new gasoline engine led to his building
himself a four-cylinder, air-cooled car which he used for his own
transportation. This in turn led to the establishment of the firm of
Clemick & Evinrude, the goal of which was to pioneer in the manufacture
of a standardized engine for the many small, inexperienced automobile
builders springing up all over the country.

The venture prospered, although some of its work was not connected with
auto engines. To pursue his interest in a standardized engine, Evinrude
terminated his partnership in Clemick & Evinrude and established the
Motor Car Power Equipment Co. He had little success in spite of much
hard work and when the business failed he went back to patternmaking in
a small shop near Milwaukee's Kinnickinnick River.

There had been a girl at Clemick & Evinrude who came in after school to
take care of the firm's bookkeeping. She was Bess Cary, a very small
girl with bright blue eyes and a mind of her own. An orphan, she was
struggling to support six brothers and sisters and knew what it was
like to have an uphill fight. It was obvious to everybody before long
that she and Ole had fallen in love, although big Ole was terribly shy
about it. When he was struggling along with Motor Car, it took him
weeks to get up enough courage to ask her to handle the books for him.
When Motor Car failed, Ole buried himself in pattern-making and waited
patiently until such time as he had saved some money, before popping
the big question. They were married privately because Ole just couldn't
bear the thought of an elaborate wedding in front of a lot of people.

One hot August weekend in 1908, shortly before Ole proposed to Bess,
they went on a picnic with some friends on an island in one of the many
lakes near Milwaukee. As it turned out, this has become the most famous
incident in outboard history. It started Ole thinking about a
detachable motor which could be clamped to any small boat. They had
rowed out to the island and there Bess remarked that she wished she
could have some ice cream. Quite probably this was just a woman's
indirect way of commenting upon the heat-but the shy and sincere Ole
took it literally and forthwith rowed some two miles to shore to buy
it. The row
back was against the wind and as he strained over the oars Ole began to
get mad. It wasn't that he minded rowing much, but Bess' ice cream was
melting! The following Monday morning Ole went back to his pattern shop
and took out his drafting equipment.

Here's how Bess Cary's brother Russ described the result:
"I was Ole's apprentice boy in the shop. Ole did pattern work in
exchange for material for his motor. When it was done, Bess said it
looked like a coffee grinder. Ole and I took the motor down to the
Kinnickinnick River at the foot of National Avenue. Never will forget
it. We rented an old tub for 50 cents. That was real money. We clamped
on the motor and started 'er up. It was in April, 1909. The big coal
boats were outfitting for the season. We passed a half dozen of them
tied up at the docks. The crews came running down to look at us. They
waved and yelled, but we couldn't hear them. They'd look over the side
at us going by as though they couldn't believe what they saw. They'd
wave, and when Ole'd open 'er up, they'd wave harder. Couldn't hear a
word they said. Those deck hands were all for us.

Ole was elated. His engine worked, and pushed a rowboat along at all of
five miles an hour! The mechanical genius had done his part and now the
business wizard, in the form of Bess, took over. "Now that you've got
it, what are you going to do with it?" she asked. Ole really didn't
know.

Bess suggested he make a better one, which he did. It looked better and
started easier. A friend borrowed it for a fishing trip and to
everybody's surprise brought back orders for 10 motors! Ole built them
himself. They were single cylinder, two-port, two-cycle engines having
battery ignition and developing 1 1/2 hp. at about 1000 r.p.m. Their
weight was 65 pounds and they sold for $62. More orders came in and
before the first 25 motors had been built and sold Bess Evinrude wrote
her now famous advertisement in a Milwaukee paper which boldly states,
"Don't row! Throw the oars away! Use an Evinrude Motor." Fig. 6 shows
the first production Evinrude. Fig. 7 shows a typical Evinrude
advertisement which appeared in the July, 1910, issue of the old
"National Sportsman" magazine.

Mrs. Evinrude was the guiding light behind the marketing of Evinrude
and the later Elto outboards until she retired from business in 1928.
The team of Ole and Bess has often and justifiably been described as
the perfect business team, he the mechanical genius, she the marketing
expert. To Ole Evinrude, although not the originator of the outboard
motor, must go credit for producing the first commercially and
mechanically successful outboard motor, and to his creative genius a
large proportion of major outboard improvements owe their origin. And
to Bess Evinrude, as she became known in the trade, must go credit for
recognizing the economic importance of this new type of transportation.

The volume of replies resulting from initial advertisements soon
indicated that the pattern shop would not be able to cope with the
amount of business this new motor was bringing in. While Ole ran the
shop, Mrs. Evinrude managed selling and the office. There was need for
capital and, after several unsuccessful attempts, she obtained the
financial assistance of a friend, C. J. Meyer, who invested $5000 and
became a partner in "The Evinrude Detachable Rowboat Motor Co."


Evinrude prospered from 1911 to 1914. After Mrs. Evinrude launched an
extensive advertising campaign in 1911, new and larger plant facilities
had to be secured. These were obtained on Walker Street in Milwaukee.
Here Ole designed and built the machinery needed to produce the motors.
When Bess' health began to fail - she had never been too well-the
Evinrudes sold their interest in the company to Mr. Meyer in 1914 with
the understanding that Ole would not re-enter the outboard business for
at least five years. Between that time and 1921, when thev brought out
the Elto motor, they spent much of their time in traveling and boating.


The Waterman and Evinrude motors were the only outboards produced until
about 1913, when there appeared the Caille, the Ferro, the Motorow and
a few others. The idea of a portable motor for small boats was catching
on and others were entering the field. By this time reasonable
mechanical dependability had been achieved, for the advertising began
to show women and children operating the motors, even as it does in
these modern times. Their heavy bronze and iron construction made them
intrinsically durable but, to be truthful, starting required some skill
at manipulating the controls, and vibration was severe what with single
cylinders, unbalanced crankshafts and heavy moving parts. Mufflers were
rudimentary and the "bang-bang-bang" of an old-time outboard is a
familiar memory to many an older boatman. Yet, these motors filled a
real need and sold well because they met the public demand for
economical, convenient small-boat power.

Mechanical features of these motors are interesting. With but few
exceptions they were similar in appearance, which must be regarded as
evidence that the Evinrude was being taken as the model. Of course, in
this early developmental stage there were some novelties. The typical
power head was made of cast iron and much resembled the numerous small
inboard engines of that time . . . bulky and heavy. Some had battery
ignition systems, which provided a hot spark for starting, while others
had an ordinary magneto bolted on in some convenient location. The
flywheel was merely a spinning weight at first and the idea of building
a magneto into it did not come until later.

Steering was accomplished in three general ways, two of which reflect
the necessity of insulating the steering handle from the strong torque
vibration:

The whole motor pivoted as per modern practice.
The power head was held rigid and the drive shaft and underwater unit
were arranged to pivot.
The whole motor was rigid and a steering rudder was fitted.
Starting was usually accomplished bv means of a hand knob on the
flywheel -origin of the old nickname "knuckle-buster." Naturally it was
harder to spin a motor fast with a knob mounted at the rim of a large
flywheel than with a rope wrapped around a pulley of less diameter
mounted on the hub, which meant a weaker spark from the slow-turning
magneto. Even today the secret of getting quick, rehable starts out of
one 5 motor is to put enough zip into the starting cord to give the
flywheel enough speed to develop a really hot spark.

  #5   Report Post  
Don White
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:12:40 GMT, Don White
wrote:


Read a short article in the local paper. The guy said 2005 was the
100th anniversary of the outboard motor. They weren't common though
until Ole Evinrude developed his version a few years later.



Evinrude - amazing idea he had I'll tell you what. :)

There is a guy over in Putnam who has one of the original Evinrudes
along with a, get this, Indian outboard.


Indian outboard??? Made by the motorcycle people?


  #6   Report Post  
Shortwave Sportfishing
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:34:00 GMT, Don White
wrote:

Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:12:40 GMT, Don White
wrote:


Read a short article in the local paper. The guy said 2005 was the
100th anniversary of the outboard motor. They weren't common though
until Ole Evinrude developed his version a few years later.



Evinrude - amazing idea he had I'll tell you what. :)

There is a guy over in Putnam who has one of the original Evinrudes
along with a, get this, Indian outboard.


Indian outboard??? Made by the motorcycle people?


The very same - has two of them.

One of the neat things about those old outboards is that you could
flip them into reverse by changing the timing advance.

Pretty cool.
  #7   Report Post  
billgran
 
Posts: n/a
Default

That's interesting. I have a lithograph of an American Machine outboard

motor from 1896. I believe it was mentioned in Webb's Pictorial History
of
the Outboard Motor or Hunn's Old Outboard Book. The pic is from a 1948
book
on the outboard motor industry by Edwin Hodge.

Bill Grannis
service manager

Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules

Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
100th anniversary for Ocean Race Don White General 1 July 11th 05 11:34 PM
100th anniversary for Ocean Race Don White Cruising 1 July 11th 05 11:34 PM
The Outboard Motor Drive System winder General 0 December 28th 04 12:05 PM
Tiller and outboard - which one controls ? Sven General 6 December 6th 03 03:15 AM
Converting I/O to Outboard with Jack Plate Mile Sullivan General 5 September 19th 03 02:59 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 10:20 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 BoatBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.
 

About Us

"It's about Boats"

 

Copyright © 2017