Alexander Winton

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First car parade in Manhattan in 1899, with Winton and Henry Ford
A Winton Six

Alexander Winton (born June 20, 1860 in Grangemouth , Scotland , † June 21, 1932 in Cleveland ) was an American racing driver , entrepreneur and pioneer of car construction.

Career as an entrepreneur

Alexander Winton was one of 13 children of a blacksmith in Scotland, where he was trained in a shipyard. In 1878 he emigrated to the United States. He settled in Cleveland and founded the Winton Bicycle Company in 1891 to manufacture bicycles . The company had to close in 1893 when the bicycle boom also broke out in the USA.

In 1896, Winton built its first motorized vehicle and started the second. On March 1, 1897, he set up his Winton Motor Carriage Company . With the second prototype , a motorized buggy with a 10 hp two-cylinder engine , Winton achieved an astonishing 33.64 mph (54.139 km / h) at the Glenville Racecourse in Glenville, Ohio (now part of Cleveland). In 1897 six vehicles were completed

On March 24, 1898, two automobiles were sold. The first was in the morning when mining engineer Robert Allison from Pennsylvania bought a motor carriage with a single cylinder engine and bicycle wheels for $ 1,000 . This was long considered the first sale of a car in the States, five years before Henry Ford. In the same year, Winton built the first commercial vehicle designed as a delivery van in the United States. Whether and to what extent a subsequent appointment of Dr. Pierce Medical Company in Buffalo, New York, actually exported over 100 vehicles is unclear.

Alexander Winton involuntarily influenced the development of the Packard brand : The electrical engineer and entrepreneur James Ward Packard from Warren (Ohio) bought a motor carriage from him in 1898. The vehicle broke down several times and had to be pulled home in a horse-drawn cart when it was being transferred to Warren. Packard complained to Winton and made suggestions for improvement. "If you're so smart maybe you can build a better machine yourself," replied Winton, who was known as a hot-headed Scot, angrily. For Packard, this advice was probably the trigger to realize his own plans for an automobile, which in turn led to an automobile manufacturing company. Packard recruited Winton's plant manager William A. Hatcher and won George Lewis Weiss, a major Winton investor. The latter angered Alexander Winton so much that he had Weiss' name deleted from all company records, including the vehicle register. Weiss had been the fourth buyer of a Winton automobile in 1898, and Packard the twelfth.

Hatcher's successor was Leo Melanowski . On his recommendation, Henry Ford applied for a position at Winton, but was not taken from Winton because he considered Ford unsuitable.

With advertisements like this one in Life Magazine from January 1904, the ALAM warned of legal consequences when purchasing an unlicensed motor vehicle. Winton is among the signatories.

In 1900 Winton was faced with a patent lawsuit from the Electric Vehicle Company (EVC), which was later continued by the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM). EVC was the holder of the Selden patent , which laid claim to the invention of the automobile. It was not just about license fees, but also about controlling market access. For Winton Motor Carriage Co., this process was of existential importance. Alexander Winton, who had developed his vehicles himself and was not guilty of any patent infringement, was initially determined to take his case to court. The process, which attracted great public interest from the start, initially went well for Winton. It was only when he made a tactical procedural error and tried to address the patent directly with a legal objection that his chances fell. In addition, the process dragged on and Winton threatened to run out of funds. After more than two years, he was forced to enter into a settlement in early 1903 . The ALAM made it easy for him with preferential conditions, because even it was not necessarily interested in a judgment that would have deprived it of its business basis in the negative case. The long and bitter process had also revealed some shortcomings in their line of argument and one was no longer certain that they would be able to reach a favorable verdict. The publicity gained was priceless for the plaintiffs, as it allowed them to publicly report that Winton had given in.

Winton's break was a complete one. In March 1903 he joined the ALAM and paid his license fees. His company then became one of the pillars of ALAM

Winton's old rival Henry Ford was also sued in 1902; This litigated until 1911 and over two instances with the ALAM and finally achieved a significant partial success. The court confirmed the validity of the patent, but restricted it to vehicles with Brayton engines . Not a single one was made in the United States. The patent was thus partially valid but economically worthless due to the lack of licensees.

Alexander Winton at the Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland (1903)

Like many automotive pioneers, Winton took part in auto races and tours around the country to promote its products. He built a special vehicle for an 800-mile drive from Cleveland to New York City in ten days. In 1901 he lost a race against Ford in Grosse Pointe . Winton was such a big favorite that the organizers had asked him before the race about his wishes for the design of the cup. His Winton Bullett developed 70 hp, and yet Ford surprisingly won the race.

In total, Winton held over 100 patents and numerous records, for example, in 1913 he built the first American diesel engine and introduced the steering wheel instead of the bracket that had been common up until then. His most popular model was the Winton Six . In 1924, Winton built his last car, as the pressure of competition had become too great, and was only concerned with the development of engines. In 1930 his company Winton Engine Corporation was taken over by General Motors and produced railway engines until 1962 .

Private

Before the First World War, Alexander Winton was considered a millionaire with a fortune of around five million dollars. After the war and the ensuing economic recession, his fortune melted to around $ 750,000, most of which he had invested in his engine production. After marrying his third wife, Marion Campbell , an opera she composed was performed at great expense at Winton's Lakewood estate , and when she divorced to marry an Indian chief, she received a $ 200,000 settlement. As a result, Winton was likely forced to sell its engine business in 1930. When he died, he still had $ 50,000, so his children sold the parental estate.

Winton has been married four times. His first marriage was with a childhood friend from Scotland in Manhattan ; the couple had six children. In August 1903, Jeannette Winton fell from a cliff into Lake Erie , behind her home in Lakewood, and was found dead. In his second marriage, the widower married a cousin of his first wife in Glasgow and had two other children; his wife Labelle died in 1925. He had his fourth marriage to the singer Mary Ellen Avery ( Dolly ) at the age of 70, three days after his third with the 39-year-old composer and founder of the Women's National League for Justice to American Indians , Marion Campbell, had been divorced.

Honors

In 2005, Alexander Winton was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame and in 2006 into the Inventor Hall of Fame .

Remarks

  1. ↑ The data for Winton's emigration differ considerably depending on the source: 1880 in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1884 in Kimes / Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. (P. 1556)
  2. ↑ Information on the measurement method used is not available.

literature

  • Thomas F. Saal and Bernard J. Golias: Famous But Forgotten The Story of Alexander Winton. Automotive Pioneer and Industrialist . Golias Publishing. 1997. ISBN 978-0-9653785-1-2
  • Beverly Rae Kimes (ed.), Henry Austin Clark Jr.: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI, 1996; ISBN 978-0-87341-428-9 .
  • Beverly Rae Kimes (Ed.) Packard, a history of the motor car and the company ; General edition, Automobile Quarterly, Kutztown, 1978; ISBN 0-915038-11-0 .
  • Albert Mroz: Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Trucks and Commercial Vehicles. Krause Publications, Iola WI, 1996; ISBN 0-87341-368-7 .
  • John A. Gunnell (Ed.): Standard Catalog of American Light Duty Trucks, 1896-1986. MBI Motor Books International, Osceola WI, 2nd edition, 1993; ISBN 0-87341-238-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Winton on genealogy.northern-skies.net
  2. ↑ a b c Kimes, Cark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942 (1996), pp. 1556-1557 (Winton history).
  3. ^ Gunnell: Standard Catalog of American Light Duty Trucks, 1896-1986 , 1993; P. 422.
  4. ^ The Family of Winton. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 1, 2013 ; accessed on January 11, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Kimes: Packard , 1978, pp. 30-32
  6. ↑ Brown & Michaels, PC: George who? - Outline of the Selden patent history from a legal perspective. In: Weird and Wonderful Patents. Retrieved May 14, 2017 (English).
  7. ^ Dyer: Pioneering Technology and Innovation Since 1900 . Harvard Business School Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-87584-606-4 . P. 34.
  8. ↑ detnews.com ( Memento from July 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )

Web links

Commons : Alexander Winton  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Winton vehicles  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Winton, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American racing driver and automobile pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Grangemouth
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1932
Place of death Cleveland