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‘Father of the automobile’
By Frank A. Dickson
C
ol. John Verner He passed much of
Stribling took an his time in his machine
uncle into his ma- shop, where the equipment
chine shop near the town of received its power from a
Westminster in 1881 and small creek near West-
proudly showed him his minster.
revolutionary invention. Stribling gained an
The relative inspected the enviable reputation. He
new-fangled vehicle in erected on his farm in
amazement. Oconee County the first
Turning to the 34- silo in South Carolina and
year-old kinsman, the uncle the third in the entire
offered his appraisal. nation.
“Johnny, the world is not On one occasion a
ready for the ‘horseless relative, a physician, was
carriage.’ You are 50 years summoned for an emer-
ahead of your time.” It was gency operation and needed
1881. a certain kind of instru-
In his rural shop, ment. He described it to
Stribling had designed and Stribling, who within sev-
built the first successful eral minutes emerged from
“horseless carriage” in the United States. This his shop with the apparatus, which spelled success
versatile inventor remains the “unsung hero” in the for the surgery.
birth and the evolution of the automobile industry – As Americans talked more and more about
which manufactured only 4,192 cars in 1900 – 19 the feasibility of self-propelled vehicles, Stribling
years after he had startled his neighbors and friends met the challenge with ingenuity. In his shop he
with a strange contraption with wheels. worked on a design of a conveyance that would
The modest South Carolinian grew up in the derive its power from steam, in the absence of
Richland Community of Oconee County, where he gasoline engines at the time, and he stationed the
was born on Jan. 30, 1847. He fought in the Civil small boiler so that it would remain upright
War, and after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender, regardless of the vehicle’s position.
returned to the hills of his youth. In 1898, Stribling, Stribling employed many of the ideas used
who turned to civil engineering as a profession, in the construction of modern automobiles,
chose the city of Anderson as his home. He spent including the differential gear.
the remainder of his life there.
The differential, a series of gears permitting in the county of Oconee and the state of South
one of the driving wheels of a motor vehicle to turn Carolina, have invented certain improvements in
faster than the other, became a very vital part in car machinery for transmitting power, propelling
manufacture. Without it, cars would skid more or traction-engine, etc., of which the following is a
less around corners. specification:
The patent rights on the differential, taken “This invention relates, first, to certain im-
out by the inventor on Jan. 13, 1882, carried the provements in mechanical movements, whereby the
number 259,600. The patent expired in 17 years power of any motor may be communicated for
and passed into public property. driving by machinery in any direction. It also re-
Three years before the expiration of lates to the application of these improvements to be
Stribling’s patent, George B. Selden, an attorney in driven by steam. The same may be applied for the
Rochester, N.Y., applied for a patent on a road propulsion of vessels. It also relates to certain
vehicle. While Selden did not construct an auto- devices connected with the driving-pulley of the
mobile at this time, he filed revisions on his patent motor, or with a driving-shaft connected with it,
at intervals, and it was not until 1895 that he whereby a road engine or a vessel which may have
actually received the patent. the improvement can be automatically directed or
The first cars were moved by means of steered.”
chains, but at the expiration of Stribling’s patent, all After describing the device and the steam
makers switched to his differential. The inventor engine with drawings, Stribling presented his claim
also introduced the idea of enclosing the driving rod in technical language:
and the differential within a hollow shell. “In machines for operating traction engines,
To Stribling’s credit, truck manufacturers the combination of the vertical wheel and pinion
obtained from his automobile the idea of applying with the horizontal wheel supported in the gimbal,
power to all four wheels. His patent might be whose center of motion is in line with the center of
termed the “birth certificate” of the modern auto- the wheel, whereby at any transverse tilting of the
mobile and truck. wheels remain in gear.” Also “the combination of
Year by year Stribling, “the father of the the sprocket-chain, the sprocket wheel, spear gears,
automobile,” felt a special pride in the growth of the friction cones and worm gears, whereby the rear
car industry after progressive manufacturers began wheels are steered.”
to use his differential. Such was the boom in Stribling never realized any money from his
registered motor vehicles in the United States that device. “I hold no rancor toward anyone because
by 1913 the number exceeded 1 million. the differential, for me, was not mercenary,” he
Stribling invented the differential as a result confided four months before his death in Anderson.
of three things: He wanted a machine to truck seed “I like to consider it more of a compliment to my
from a railroad to his yarn mill three miles away; he mind than I dismally regard the absence of money.”
became intrigued with another man’s machine Ransom E. Olds, a native of Geneva, Ohio,
which failed to work because it did not embody the made history in 1887 when he built a three-wheeled
differential; he wanted to answer to a question by a steam carriage, and as early as 1893, he exhibited a
professor in England. four-wheeled steam car. Three years later, he intro-
Stribling had read the question in a scientific duced a gasoline automobile, known as the Olds-
publication: “How many times will a wheel revolve mobile, and in 1901, he blossomed into the first
on its axis traveling around the rim of a wheel of the mass-producer of automobiles.
same diameter?” He computed the answer with two In 1896, Henry Ford operated his first suc-
coins – once on its own rim and once on the rim of cessful motor vehicle, and then in 1908, he trans-
the other. formed the city of Detroit into the automobile
Stribling’s patent papers, which at the time manufacturing capital with the appearance of the
of the inventor’s death were in the possession of a first Model T Ford. Fame came to “the tin lizzie.”
son, William G. Stribling of Columbia, stated: “Be Meanwhile, Stribling eagerly watched the
it known that I, John V. Stribling, of Westminster, creation of the automobile business in Anderson,
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where in 1889, Claude Townsend stirred up Maxwell struck some sand in the road and skidded
excitement when he sported the first car ever into a ditch.
purchased by an Anderson resident. A large segment of the Anderson population
It was a curious-looking contraption that remained skeptical about the new mode of trans-
repeatedly stalled in the road, much to the owner’s portation. When J. C. Stribling decided to open an
embarrassment, while drivers of carriages and automobile business in Anderson in 1905, friends
buggies drove by, poking fun at his plight. cautioned him about the risk, but he nevertheless
Andersonians sat up and took notice when established a small shop and ordered a shipment of
Mrs. Henry Orr became the first woman to drive an Reos. He followed that with a load of Fords, the
automobile in Anderson, giving other ladies the next sensation, and a far-sighted physician, a Dr.
confidence to get behind the steering wheel. Mary Ashmore, snapped up one.
Wilhite set an example among the female Albert Farmer acquired a flashy Red Ram-
population with her easy-to-operate electric car, bler in 1907, which caused non-motorists to give
powered by a battery. him a wide berth. The vehicle met a sad fate when
Sales of cars in Anderson suffered a slump it caught on fire.
for some time after the first automobile wreck in the Today, historians credit the Duryea brothers
city, when a “turtle back” style Ford driven by Fred as the makers of the first American car with a
gasoline engine. The year was 1893 when Charles
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and J. Franklin Duryea constructed a small one-
seater in Springfield, Mass., with the engine under-
neath and a bicycle chain connecting it to the rear
wheels.
When the new century arrived, the nation’s
first automobile show was held in Madison Square
Garden in New York City, a far cry from the hill
country of Oconee County where Colonel Stribling
came up with a transportation marvel 50 years
ahead of his time.
When he died on Jan. 28, 1930, at the age of
82, he never had owned a so-called “gasoline
buggy.” His grave is in the Old Silver Brook
Cemetery on White Street in Anderson.
Frank A. Dickson
Dickson of Anderson is a retired journalist who is a
regular contributor to The State Magazine. His last
article was about the contributions to aviation by South
Carolinians, Charles Manly and S.P. Langley.
Transcribed from The State Magazine,
July 12, 1987, pages 12-13.
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