Figure 4.—Charles E. Duryea, about 1894,
as drawn by George Giguere from a photograph.
(Smithsonian photo 48335-A.)
Born in 1861 near Canton, Illinois, Charles E. Duryea had learned the trade of a mechanic following his graduation from high school, and subsequently turned his interests to bicycle repair. He and his brother James Frank, eight years younger, eventually left Illinois and moved to Washington D.C., where they were employed in the bicycle shop of H. S. Owen, one of that city's leading bicycle dealers and importers. While in Washington, Charles became a regular reader of the Patent Office Gazette,[3] an act which undoubtedly influenced his later work with automobiles. A short time later, probably in 1889, Charles contracted with a firm in Rockaway, New Jersey, to construct bicycles for him, but their failure to make delivery as promised caused him to go to Chicopee, Massachusetts, where he contracted with the Ames Manufacturing Company to do his work. Moving there in 1890, he obtained for his brother a position as toolmaker with the Ames Company. Thus, Frank Duryea, as he was later known, also became located in Chicopee, a northern suburb of Springfield.
During the summer, 1891, Charles found the bicycle business left him some spare time, and the gasoline-powered carriages he had read of earlier came constantly into his mind in these periods of idleness.[4] He and Frank studied several books on gasoline engines, among them one by an English writer (title and author now unknown);[5] this described the Otto 4-stroke cycle as now used. Some engineers, however, were concerned because this engine, on the completion of the exhaust stroke, had not entirely evacuated all of the products of combustion. The Atkinson engine, patented in 1887, was one of the attempts to solve this as well as several other problems, thus creating a more efficient cycle. This engine was designed so that the exhaust stroke carried the piston all the way to the head of the engine, while the compression stroke only moved the piston far enough to sufficiently compress the mixture. The unusual linkage necessary to create these unequal strokes in the Atkinson engine made it seem impractical for a carriage engine, where compactness was desired.
Figure 5.—Advertisement of Duryea bicycle company,
Scientific American, September 9, 1893.