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Today is the birthday of Charles Duryea, the automotive pioneer who helped found America's first gasoline-powered commercial car company. Charles Duryea was born on December 15, 1861 in Canton, Illinois. His younger brother, J. Frank Duryea, was born eight years later, on October 8, 1869. Like Orville and Wilbur Wright, another pair of self-taught Midwestern inventors, Charles and Frank Duryea got their start in the bicycle business. While working for Rouse, Hazard & Co., Charles designed the Sylph cycle, a conveyance which combined "phenomenal" speed with "remarkable" beauty, according to an 1897 advertisement in McClure's magazine. In 1898, the Duryea brothers moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, then a large manufacturing center, in order to learn more about methods of mass production. While Frank worked as a machinist at the Ames Manufacturing Company in nearby Chicopee, Charles studied ideas for an engine-powered carriage and began work on a horseless buggy. After enlisting the help of his younger brother, he returned to Peoria to oversee bicycle production.
Charles Duryea's decision to leave Springfield was a fateful one. In September of 1893, Frank Duryea invited a farmer, a business investor and a newspaper reporter to a test run of the first Duryea motor wagon, a four-wheeled carriage with a one-cylinder, gasoline-powered engine. With the inventor at the wheel, the observers pushed the wagon until the 3.5-hp, water-cooled engine was engaged. The first trip lasted just 200 ft. (and ended in pile of dirt), but encouraged Frank to improve the original design. Two years later, the Duryea brothers incorporated the Duryea Motor Wagon Co., the first business of its kind in the United States. When a Chicago newspaper sponsored America's first automobile race in November of 1895, Frank entered an improved Duryea motor wagon and defeated a Mueller-Benz and four other cars. Held a day after a blizzard, the frigid contest dispatched participants at timed intervals over a 54-mile course in frigid temperatures. Although Frank won the $2,000 prize, his brother Charles claimed the patent rights to the "Chicago car", straining a relationship that could be as cold as a Midwestern winter.
During the last years of the nineteenth century, Charles worked in a barn behind his home in Peoria while Frank stayed in Springfield. The elder Duryea's plans to build cars stalled, however, when the company that he and Frank had founded received orders for only 13 vehicles. While Frank entered road races across the United States, the elder Duryea aggravated neighbors by using Barker Ave. as a test track for additional prototypes. Charles' partnership with Frank reverted to rivalry on Memorial Day 1896 when the brothers competed in New York City's Cosmopolitan Race. Although Charles took second place, Frank finished first. A third Duryea driver came in third, but struck a bicyclist in the first recorded auto accident. Charles' subsequent attempt to start a business in New Jersey also came to an unfortunate end, resulting in his return to Peoria in September 1897. A year later, Charles and Frank Duryea sold their interest in the Duryea Motor Car Company and parted ways. An independent company which Charles started, the Duryea Manufacturing Company, was badly undercapitalized and produced only 15 vehicles by 1899.
The dawn of a new century brought additional disappointments for Charles Duryea – and more successes for his brother. In February 1900, Charles joined forces with Monroe Seiberling of Reading, Pennsylvania to form the Consolidated Motor Vehicle Co. While Charles' company produced only two automobiles, Frank's factories in Chicopee and East Springfield built over 14,000 cars from 1904 to 1915. After a two-year car-building sojourn to Saginaw, Michigan, Charles Duryea moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and developed a three-wheeled vehicle known as the Gem. Sadly, none of his inventions enjoyed commercial success, causing him to lament that "children growing up today will think that Henry Ford invented the automobile."
Charles Duryea died in Philadelphia on September 28, 1938.
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