John William Lambert: Difference between revisions

John William Lambert
Born	29 January 1860 Ohio
Died	20 May 1952
Resting place	East Maplewood Cemetery
Nationality	American
Occupation	engineer
Known for	invented America's first gasoline automobile in 1891
Political party	Democrat
Spouse(s)	Mary F. Kelly married 1885
Children	E. Moe and Roy
Parent(s)	George Lambert Anna Lambert parents from Pennsylvania

John William Lambert (January 29, 1860 - May 20, 1952) was an American automotive pioneer, inventor, and automobile manufacturer.^[1]

Lambert was born on January 29th, 1860, in Champaign County, Ohio^[2] on a farm near Union City, Ohio. He lived there until he was fifteen. His early boyhood education was in the local public schools of the county. When Lambert was sixteen he moved with his parents to Van Wert County, Ohio for a year. At this time he was interested in gasoline engines.^[3]

One day his father had promised to take him to a tannery the next day to see an engine that could run without a steam boiler. This tannery was located in Greenville, Ohio that his father had previously seen. When they arrived at the tannery the next morning, Lambert was dissapointed to find that the building had burned to the ground the night before. He searched amongst the ashes and found the burned Otto gas engine. This was the only one he had ever heard of or seen. He took it apart to see how it was constructed. It was a slide valve coal gas engine.^[4]

After Lambert was married he moved to Ohio City, Ohio, previously known as Enterprise, in Van Wert County, Ohio. There he formed J. W. Lambert and Company with his father as his partner.^[2] There he had an agricultural implement store, a grain elevator, and a lumber yard. They manufactured fork handles and spokes for wagons. Lambert also owned the town's opera house, town hall, jail and other town properties.^[5] Lambert always kept in the back of his mind the gas engine he saw in 1876. One day in the 1880s he heard of Karl Benz building an automobile in Germany and it rekindled his imagine to build a gasoline engine that would operate a "horseless carriage." ^[6]

Stationary gasoline engines were extremely heavy in those days and too much for a "horseless carriage." He studied Benz's engine to the best of ability. It so happened that a John B. Hicks had made a patent application in 1890 on a stationary gasoline engine. Lambert contacted Hicks and through Hicks was introduced to a Mr. Wacholtz, a German engineer who had worked with Hicks. On December 20th 1890 Wacholtz made a contract with Lambert to make a light weight automobile engine. The license granted to Lambert a shop right or license to manufacture gas engines enbodying the improvements invented by the said Hicks as above stated for the use only on land vehicles other than railway or tramway cars.^[6]

Benz's automobile was belt driven from an engine. Lambert felt if he could make a light weight gasoline engine that did not operate with belts to propel it he would have a valuable transportation vehicle that could be utilized in the United States. Lambert hired Wacholtz to work with him on building a balanced motor containing three cylinders. He agreed to pay for all the expenses of the developement of such an engine. The machine was done by Lowell Machine Works of Cleveland, Ohio. One of the reasons the engine was fabricated in Cleveland was because they had gasoline available there. He also had the design and the body of "horseless carriage" done there. Also the running gears for the automobile were fabricated there. Lambert went to extremes to have the engine made light-weight. This was the first experience Lambert had with building an automobile engine. He originally agreed to spend $200 for the machine work to produce the automobile engine, however after spending $3,300 Wacholtz was not able to produce a working engine in Cleveland.^[6]

Lambert stopped the work at this stage of fabrication and shipped the non-working engine and incomplete automobile to a small machine shop that he owned in Ohio City. This way he could then devote his personal attention to the engine and automobile when he could from his businesses he was running there. The automobile consisted of two clutches and two chains, which were connected to a jack shaft. The two clutches gave two speeds forward and there was no reverse speed used. The single front wheel of the tricycle designed automobile was steered by a foot lever and a hand lever. This direct steering method provided that the arms could be rested and the steering done by the feet, and visa versa. One item that needed to be solved for completion and a working engine was a means of carburetion. Lambert heard of a means of vaporizing gasoline by Gottlieb Daimler of Germany. He went to New York to see the engine that was operating a boat. After seeing this complicated carburetor Lambert developed what he called the "vaporizer." This was a simplier carburetor than Daimler's, which he was then able to get the engine working the way he intended it to. The automobile was completed soon after he had it Ohio City.^[6]

There was a great deal of secrecy surrounding the developments of Lambert's automobile. Operational tests were conducted with the window blinds pulled at the farm implement showroom where he ran it. Outside road tests were conducted at night on roads that were not used. That was a good thing since many times there were long intervals between being able to get the automobile started again after it stopped. It turned out that the villagers didn't even know what Lambert was working on since it was such a new concept. They didn't realize the significance of Lambert's horseless carriage.^[6]

He made up sales brochures for his "horseless carriage" in January of 1891, however not a single person bought one. He decided after extensive work on this automobile that the idea of a "horseless carriage" was way off into the future and was discourged to continue. His father and brother encourged him to sell his businesses in Ohio City and move to Union City, Ohio where they were and made stationary gasoline engines - which had an established market already.^[6] There in 1892 he started the Buckeye Manufacturing Company and the Lambert Gas and Gasoline Engine Company to made stationary engines and farm machinery implements.^[6] Later in 1893 Lambert started the Union Automobile Company in that city. Lambert moved to Anderson, Indiana from Union City in 1893. He then moved some of his machinery from his Union City plant at that time. Lambert incorporated the Buckeye Manufacturing Company and Lambert Gas and Gasoline Engine Company that year.^[2]

The United States census shows Lambert was living in Jackson Township, Darke County, Ohio in 1880. It shows he was twenty years old and the first born in the family. His siblings were Emma M. Lambert (17), Harry C. Lambert (14), Mary I. Lambert (12), Frank W. Lambert (10), Samuel W. Lambert (8), and Levi C. Lambert (6).^[7] Many of his brothers as well as his parents would later form various companies with Lambert, with the original company usually named a Lambert Company and later changed to another company name.

• Held about 600 patents in his career.^[8]

• Patented a friction transmission which was a gearless transmission.^[9]

• Patented his first gasoline engine in 1887, the first in the United States.^[10][11]

• Registered his first patent in 1876 when he was sixteen. This was on a mechanical corn picker. ^[8]

• Lambert built America's first successful automobile in 1891 according to Antique Automobile and the Encyclopedia Britannica.^[12]

• Union automobile
• Lambert automobile
• Buckeye gasoline buggy
• Union Automobile Company
• Lambert Automobile Company
• Duryea Motor Wagon Company
• Buckeye Manufacturing Company

• John W. Lambert biography, written by his son January 25th 1935 - obtained from the Detroit Public Library, National Automotive History Collection

• Brandon, Rodney H., Who is Who in Anderson, published privately in 1906

• Dolnar, Hugh, Automobile Trade Journal, Chilton Company, v.10 January 1906

• Forkner, John L., History of Madison County, Indiana, New York and Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1914

• The Horseless Age: The Automobile Trade Magazine, The Horseless Age Company, 1902

• Bailey, L. Scott, Historic Discovery: 1891 Lambert, New Claim for America's First Car, Antique Automobile magazine, Vol. 24, No. 5, Oct-Nov 1960

• David Burgess Wise, The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Automobiles ISBN 0-7858-1106-0

• Dittlinger, Esther et al, Anderson: A Pictorial History, G. Bradley Publishing, 1990, ISBN 0943963168

• Dolnar, Hugh, Automobile Trade Journal, article: The Lambert, 1906 Line of Automobiles, Chilton Company, v.10 January 1906

• Forkner, John L., History of Madison County, Indiana, New York and Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1914

• Georgano, G. N., The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile, Taylor & Francis, 2000, ISBN 1-5795829-3-1

• Huffman, Wallace Spencer, Indiana's Place in Automobile History in Indiana History Bulletin, vol 44, no. 2, Feb. 1967; Indianapolis, Indiana Historical Bureau

• Huhti, Thomas, The Great Indiana Touring Book: 20 Spectacular Auto Tours, Big Earth Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-9315990-9-2

• James, Wanda, Driving from Japan, McFarland, 2005, ISBN 0-786417-3-4X

• Kimes, Beverly Rae, Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1805-1942, Krause Publications, 1996, ISBN 0-8734142-8-4

• Madden, W. C., Haynes-Apperson and America's First Practical Automobile: A History, McFarland, 2003, ISBN 0-7864139-7-2

• Scharchburg, Richard P., Carriages Without Horses: J. Frank Duryea and the Birth of the American Automobile Industry, SAE, 1993, ISBN 1-5609138-0-0

• Lambert, John W
• Anderson Autombile History