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 Who
Really Invented The Outboard Motor?
by
Cap'n Jack Perdue
The question
'who invented the outboard motor?' will get you a variety of answers.
And they will most likely all be wrong.
One obvious reply will be Ole Evinrude, the inventive
Swede who, in 1909, built ten outboards by hand. They each weighed
62 pounds, developed 11/2 horsepower and he sold them for $62 each.
Ole wasn't the first to build an outboard motor
but his name certainly sold a lot of them over the next hundred
years.
Some will tell you that it was the enterprising
Johnson brothers of Indiana who built their first outboard in 1908.
But although they may have made the first monoplane flight in North
America in 1911, they didn't invent the outboard motor.
And then there was Cameron B. Waterman, a student
at Yale's Law School who, in 1903, adapted the engine from his motorcycle
to drive a propeller and patented the name outboard motor. It turned
out someone had already patented a 'detachable boat-propelling device'
but had never built one. Waterman built quite a few but they werenÕt
the first outboards either. (Top)
Meanwhile in France, 1904, Gabriel Trouche perfected
his Motogodille. It belonged to what was later named the 'eggbeater
class.' The shaft angled back and down to the prop, well astern
of the transom, and the long exhaust tube attached to the prop-shaft
casing, represented the first underwater exhaust. Incidentally,
you can still see this design used on the rivers of Malaysia and
other Southeastern countries.
The Motogodille Com-pany prospered for many years
in France but, alas, could not claim to be the builders of the world's
first outboard.
In 1900 the Submerged Electric Company in Wisconsin
announced that it had designed and built what it called its 'Electric
Portable Propeller.' It advertised its device as 'auxiliary power
for sailboats and houseboats' and boasted that 'the machinery being
all in the propeller and rudder, this saves room in the boat.' And
they were probably right.
The unit was driven by two 100-amp six-volt batteries
and could propel a small boat with two men aboard at three miles
per hour for four hours. The motor, which was submerged in a sealed
housing, weighed 30 pounds and swung a nine-inch two-bladed prop.
(Top)
The company was quite successful. It also built
a gasoline-powered model a decade later, which, according to its
advertising, could be raised and lowered to run in shallow water.
Unfortunately, World War I put a stop to production and the company
never started up again.
But this wasn't the first outboard motor anyway.
In 1898 a two-cycle, gasoline-powered outboard motor was designed
by Edward S. Savage of Rochester, New York. Its lower unit was enclosed
in a skeg-like frame and the rudder could be raised to avoid flotsam.
However, Savage abandoned the marine motor field without ever building
one and turned to designing toys.
The American Motors Company of Long Island City,
NY began manufacturing its 'portable boat motor with reversible
propeller' in 1896. The motor was a modified version of a stationary
engine that the company already produced. The design, still used
by most outboard motor companies today, had a vertical crankshaft
and drive shaft, bevel gears and a horizontal propeller shaft ...
(Read full article in the magazine.) (Top)
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