Abner Doble
Abner Doble (March 26, 1890 – July 17, 1961), was an American mechanical engineer who built and sold steam-powered automobiles.[1] His father was William Ashton Doble, inventor of the Doble water wheel.
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[edit] Family history
Doble was born on 26 March 1890 in San Francisco, and was one of four brothers. Doble's forebears had migrated from England to the United States in the mid 1700s. Doble's grandfather, also named Abner, was born in Indiana. He had been a sailor, a smith, and a lumberman, who became a journeyman blacksmith and who subsequently became partner in Nelson and Doble. Nelson and Doble company became one of the biggest manufacturers of miner's and blacksmith's tools on the Pacific coast during the California Gold Rush. The company went on to become famous for manufacture William Doble's water wheel turbines for mining applications. The company expanded to make drays and street cars for San Francisco, as well as being involved in operating a local railroad company. In about 1892 Doble's grandfather formed The Abner Doble Company assigning his interests to his sons Robert and William, Abner's father.
[edit] Early years
Doble began apprenticing at his family's factory at the age of eight. During the years between 1906 and 1909, while still attending high school, Doble and his brothers John, Warren, and Bill built their first steam car in their parents' basement. It was composed of parts taken from a wrecked White steamer, but reconfigured to drive an engine of their own design. Though it did not run well, the Doble brothers went on to build a second and third prototype in the following years.
In 1909 Doble graduated from high school in California and went to college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He dropped out after less than a year of studies, and, with his brother, began to design his own steam car. By 1912 they had built their first car in Waltham, Massachusetts. The car was based on an American Underslung chassis, their own engine and a Stanley Steamer boiler.
Waltham was near to the Stanley works and its factory at Watertown practically across the river. Doble attempted to interest the Stanley twins in his condensing boiler. However, Francis would not hire Doble because he didn't trust him. Although recognized as a steam genius, Doble was considered by some as extremely arrogant and conceited.[2]
[edit] Abner Doble Motor Vehicle Company, General Engineering, and Doble Steam Motors
Abner and his brother John decided to form their own company, the Abner Doble Motor Vehicle Company, in 1914. Their father provided financial. The fist car made was the Model A. Up to five cars were thought to be made. Four were sold and one was kept for development. The cars were of good quality and appeared to have a potentially good market.
In 1915 Doble drove his Model B, a revamped version of the Model A from Massachusetts to Detroit in order to seek investors. He managed to obtain $200,000, which he used to open the General Engineering Company with C L Lewis. In January 1917, Doble's new car the Doble Detroit, caused a sensation at the National Automobile Show in New York. Over 5,000 deposits were received for the car, with deliveries scheduled to begin in early 1918. However, the Dobles' had not entirely worked out various design and manufacturing issues, and although the car received good notices and over ten thousand orders, only thirty were actually built. Doble blamed his company's production failure on the steel shortages caused by World War I, but the fact was that the Doble Detroit was mechanically unsatisfactory.
The Doble brothers were divided by Doble's insistence on taking credit for the company's technical achievements, and John Doble ended up suing Doble for patent infringement, whereupon Doble left Detroit for California and the General Engineering Company folded. When John Doble died of lymphatic cancer in 1921 the surviving brothers reunited in Emeryville, California. They set up a company under the name of Doble Steam Motors.
In 1924 the State of California learned that Doble had helped to sell stock illegally in a desperate bid to raise money for the company, and though Doble was eventually acquitted on a technicality, the company folded during the ensuing legal struggle. Fewer than fifty of the Model E steam cars were produced before the company went out of business in April 1931, the total being reported variously as 24, 42, and 43. Doble himself owned one from 1925 to 1936 as his own experimental car. He took it with him when on consulting work in New Zealand and England. Finally selling it in England just before he left to go back to the United States to a Mortimer Harmon Lewis of Hyde Park, London.[3]
[edit] Consultancy and later life
With the demise of his company Doble went on to work as a consultant for other engineering companies all over the world. He went to New Zealand in March 1930 where he worked for A & G Price Limited on the development of steam buses, one for the Auckland Transport Board.[4][5] In 1932 he came to England where he was engaged as a consultant by the Sentinel Wagon Company of Shrewsbury, working on steam lorries and locomotives. Several shunting locomotives (switchers) and an undetermined number of railcars were fitted with Doble/Sentinel machinery for sale to customers in Britain, France, Peru, and Paraguay. He left England in 1936.
Doble was hired as the chief engineer for a new bus powerplant for the revived Stanley Steam Motors in Chicago. In the middle of the project after the powerplant was actually built Doble left to Stanley's annoyance. Doble then did engine designs for Clever-Brooks, Nordberg, and Greyhound.
After this he retired to Santa Rosa, California where he sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners to pay his living expenses.
Doble's last consultancy was in the development of the Paxton Phoenix car, for the Paxton Engineering Division of McCulloch Motors Corporation, Los Angeles. The project was for a low-weight car built around a unique "torque box" chassis based on an aeronautical wing section. The project was eventually dropped in 1954. He did design a steam car for Alex Moulton of England, but it was never built.
For the remainder of his life, he maintained that steam-powered automobiles were at least equal to gasoline cars, if not superior. He died on 17 July 1961 of a heart attack, in Santa Rosa, California.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Fox Stephen (1998). The Strange Triumph of Abner Doble In - Invention & Technology Magazine, Volume 14; Issue 1.
- ^ http://www.svvs.org/doble.shtml Surrey Vintage Vehicle Society
- ^ http://www.svvs.org/doble.shtml Surrey Vintage Vehicle Society
- ^ Shipping News, Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 58, 10 March 1930, Page 12
- ^ First Steam Bus - News of the day, Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 42, 19 February 1931, Page 10
