Hall Gasoline Trap

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hall Gasoline Trap (1895).

The Hall Gasoline Trap is an American automobile prototype from 1895, which was named Decatur after a rebuild the following year .

description

The vehicle was built by John W. Hall & Sons in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1895 . The company actually made wagons and carriages, but planned a small series of gasoline traps . Trap originally referred to a light, multi-seat carriage . The vehicle weighed around 320 kg and was designed as a high wheeler with particularly large carriage wheels. It offered space for four people, whereby the rear passengers could either sit conventionally like in a tonneau , or with their backs facing the direction of travel ( dos-à-dos ). The weak point of the well executed construction was the purchased engine fromKane-Pennington , who with 4 HP (according to the calculation method at the time) was not powerful enough, weighed significantly more than the stated almost 23 kg and was anything but reliable; its designer Edward Joel Pennington has a reputation for being a charlatan and a deceiver.

Decatur Gasoline Trap

The following year the Gasoline Trap was sent to Decatur for renovation. CV Walls of Decatur Gasolene Engine Company found that the structure needed to be reinforced to allow for a more powerful engine. This work was carried out in the summer of 1896. The technically interesting solution now envisaged two Decatur engines with 4 HP each (based on the calculation method used at the time). Walls found that 15 mph (about 15 mph ) was possible on “good roads” . He managed gradients at 3 mph (about 4.8 km / h).

Ultimately, both Hall and Walls decided not to market the vehicle.

literature

  • GN Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present ; Dutton Press, New York, 2nd edition (hardcover) 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 .
  • 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 , pp. 506-509.
  • Beverly Rae Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Permissions, Warrendale PA, 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X .
  • James J. Flink: America Adopts the Automobile - 1895-1910 , MIT ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ), 1970. ISBN 0-262-06036-1 .
  • David Beecroft: History of the American Automobile Industry ; Reprint of a series of articles in The Automobile magazine , first published between October 1915 and August 1916. Publisher: lulu.com, 2009; ISBN 0-557-05575-X .
  • Richard P. Scharchburg: Carriages Without Horses: J. Frank Duryea and the Birth of the American Automobile Industry. Society of Automotive Engineers Inc. (SAE), Reference Series, 1993; ISBN 1-56091-380-0 .
  • L. Scott Bailey: Charles E. Duryea: Present at the creation. In: Automobile Quarterly ( ISSN  0005-1438 ), Volume XXIII, No. 4: 388 (1985).
  • Richard v. Frankenberg / Marco Matteucci: History of the Automobile. Sigloch Service Edition / STIG Torino, 1973; without ISBN
  • Hans-Otto Neubauer (ed.): Chronicle of the automobile. Chronik Verlag in Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich, 2004; ISBN 3-570-14338-4 .

Web links

Commons : Hall Gasoline Trap  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 669 (Hall).
  2. ↑ a b Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 425 (Decatur).
  3. ^ Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 1168 (Pennington).
  4. ↑ earlyamericanautomobiles.com: History of Early American Automobile Industry 1861-1929; Chapter -3A. Hall Gasoline Trap.