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The Stanley Steamer: America's Legendary Steam Car by Kit Foster
Description : 17 Aug, 2023
The Stanley Steamer: America's Legendary Steam Car: Commemorative Edition by Kit Foster and H. James Merrick , and Beverly R. Kimes (Foreword) Winner of the Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award This massive 548-page, 5½-pound layflat hardcover book is a top-quality production. Privately financed by Christopher Hutchins through the Stanley Museum, the book’s dust jacket features a beautiful photo-realistic color painting by Laurids Lauridsen of a 1908 Model K Stanley Steamer semi-racer. This street-legal hot rod set a five-mile track record of 75 mph, which, while it might sound high for the time period, is pared to the 127-mph land speed record set in January of 1906 by what was basically an upside-down canoe running on 3″-wide tires 34″ in diameter. The one-mile burst of speed was achieved by 900 pounds of steam pressure geared directly to the rear axle. A lightweight 206-cubic-inch two-cylinder double-acting steam engine easily accelerated the 1,600-pound car to 130 mph at 700 rpm, with a theoretical top speed of 200 mph. “Hang on and good luck” seemed to be the basic plan for driver Fred Marriott.
If this sounds interesting, then the story of the inventive and artistic identical Stanley twins—F.E. and F.O. as they were known—will be as well. They personally designed the cars and ran the factory that produced them. They sold pany twice for a tidy profit each time (in 1899 and 1917), and never went broke as so many other early auto pioneers did. One brother died in a car crash in 1918 while driving his steamer too fast on a public road, and the other brother made handcrafted violins and owned a luxury hotel in the Rocky Mountains until his death in 1940. Interesting people.
The cars themselves are also interesting. No transmission or clutch. The two-cylinder steam engine was geared directly to the differential. To back up the car, the engine simply reversed rotation. For each engine revolution the rear wheels turned around once or twice depending on the gear ratio of the specific model. You can readily see the massive top speed potential. At 60 mph the engine in the production car was only turning over at 900 rpm. Prodigious torque, and in terms of parable to a gasoline engine, perhaps 115 to 390 depending on engine size and steam pressure. All this in a weird frame featuring wooden perch rods connected between the front and rear axles to hold them positioned accurately. This suspension design is very rudimentary, like 19th-century horse drawn carriages. In 1899 the car only weighed 700 pounds, making for brisk acceleration.
The highly respected and award-winning Beverly Rae Kimes wrote the book’s Foreword, while Stanley Museum Archivist H. James Merrick provided research assistance and several Stanley Steamer aficionados added data for various appendices. All in all, this is prehensive book well worth owning, describing an automotive dead end that didn’t die easily. While steam power is inherently less efficient than bustion, the lack of a transmission and associated drive train kept the mechanical construction simple (only 32 moving parts). This allowed the Stanleys to profitably produce low runs of basically custom-built vehicles in a very small Massachusetts factory, and still remain petitive with large mass panies in Michigan which produced the similarly-priced Buick. By 1927 pany was gone forever. All told, perhaps 10–11,000 cars were hand-built during the 28-year lifespan of pany. The book opens with a Dedication, Foreword, Preface, Introduction and Acknowledgements, followed by 19 Chapters, a Bibliography, Glossary, Appendices A through I covering production figures, specifications, patent information and an interesting nine-page reminiscence from Harold Young about delivering Stanley cars to various people including the DuPonts (the Stanleys did not use a traditional dealership network—much like Tesla Motors today as far as sales, delivery, and maintenance issues are concerned). A Stanley Family Genealogy and List of Illustrations lead up to a thorough Index, ending the book. The Stanley Steamer is at last the first definitive work on Stanley twins Francis Edgar and Freelan Oscar and their remarkable steam automobile. Elegantly written, rich in detail and lavishly illustrated, this book is a must for historian and collector alike.
Publisher : Stanley Museum Inc; 1st edition (2004) Language : English Hardcover with dust jacket : 548 pages ISBN-10 : 1886727074 ISBN-13 : 978-1886727076 Item weight : 3 kg Dimensions : 31.12 x 3.81 x 23.5 cm
Out of print As new condition Etransfer? will ship!
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