Stanley Steamer Company
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The Stanley Steamer Company was an American manufacturer of steam engine automobiles. Twins Francis Edgar Stanley (1849 - 1918) and Freelan O. Stanley (1849 - 1940) founded the company after selling their photographic dry plate business to Eastman Kodak. They produced their first car in 1897. They sold the rights to this design to Locomobile. They then developed a new automobile model with twin cylinder engines geared directly to the back axle.
The company they formed to produce this car was called the Stanley Motor Carriage Company and operated between 1902 and 1917. The cars made by the company were referred to as "Stanley Steamers." When they shifted the steam boiler to the front of the vehicle, the resulting feature was called by owners the "coffin bonnet." In order to cut down on noise, condensers were used, beginning in 1915. A Stanley Steamer broke the world record for the fastest mile in a steam car (28.2 seconds). At first, production was limited, but it rose to 500 cars in 1917.
During the mid to late teens, as the fuel efficiency and power delivery of internal combustion engines improved dramatically, the Stanley Steamer company produced a series of advertising campaigns trying to woo the car-buying public away from the "internal explosion engine," to little effect. An advertising slogan for these campaigns was, "Power - Correctly Generated, Correctly Controlled, Correctly Applied to the Rear Axle." These campaigns are early examples of a Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt type advertising campaign (for a more modern example, see Johnny Turbo), as their purpose was not so much to convince the audience of the benefits of the Stanley Steamer car as to plant the notion in the reader's head that an internal combustion automobile could explode.
In 1917, the brothers sold their interests to Prescott Warren. The last Stanley Steamer was produced before 1927. Efficiencies of scale, a lack of effective advertising and general public desire for higher speeds than were possible with a steam automobile engine were the primary causes of the company's demise.
There is also a carpet cleaning service in the US operating under the trademark Stanley Steemer (http:www.stanleysteemer.com); presumably the peculiar spelling was adopted so they could register the name as a trademark.
External link
- Museum web page (http://www.stanleymuseum.org/Museum-ME.html) on the Stanley Steamers in Kingfield, Maine.