A while back I wrote a post about a woman named Kathryn Otis, an endearing character who was setting records in her 1908 Stearns in the early years of the last century. You can read that story here: A Gutsy Broad and a 1908 Stearns.
As I was researching Mrs. Otis, I discovered that her husband, Kenneth R. Otis, was one of the millions of brave servicemen felled during World War I. Kenneth Otis was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1881, and he tragically died in 1918 while serving as a combat engineer for the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps. He has a Canadian Virtual War Memorial page and is buried in Auberchicourt British Cemetery at Nord, France:
My last post mentioned the Pittsburgh Six, an automobile that was first manufactured by Fort Pitt Motor Manufacturing Co. in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1908. It was designed by an engineer with German ancestry that went by the name Baron von Rottweiler. If you think that sounds like a phony name, that’s because it was a phony name. His real name was Paul Buchspeis, and he was not actually a baron. He was, however, a German spy.
In 1918, while World War I was raging on, von Rottweiler was working as the vice president and manager of Paramount, a plant that manufactured airplane and motorcycle motors. His exceptional ability as a mechanical mathematician had just won him a commission as a captain in the ordnance department of the United States Army. He represented himself as a US citizen and, not only was this apparently not the case, but he had already been under surveillance by Department of Justice agents for two years. It was reported that he had come to the attention of federal agents when a female friend had remarked casually to her employer that “Rotty” was a paid agent of the German government and had boasted that he had mapped the St. Lawrence river for Germany and had hidden explosives along the banks of that river for use by Germany upon their projected arrival in the United States or Canada.
Von Rottweiler appears in this 1908 advertisement for an auto show, (second from left, bottom row).
Newspapers at the time reported that Von Rottweiler was part of a system of spies built up by Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff (ambassador) and Franz von Papen (military attaché) and that he had conveyed documents to von Bernstorff that he had obtained through his membership in the Society of American Automobile Engineers. He had also gained admission to one of the largest munition plants in the country through his role as general manager of Paramount. Federal agents closed in and both von Rottweiler and one of his employees, mechanic Frank Newbert, were arrested and jailed, charged with failure to register as an alien enemy.
April 1918 headline, before his escape and recapture.
In June, von Rottweiler was being transferred to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, when he escaped from federal marshals in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Von Rottweiler had an American wife from Dansville, New York, and the feds put her under surveillance, scrutinizing every scrap of mail she received. Their efforts paid off when they learned the missus planned to meet her fugitive spouse at a Chicago hotel. Federal agents crashed the party and surprised the pair during their little tryst.
For his part, von Rottweiler proclaimed his innocence and insisted he was born in America, but investigators dug up his marriage license which listed Charlottenburg, Germany as his place of birth. He arrived at Fort Oglethorpe for internment in September of 1918, and that is the last mention I could find of him in the newspapers. Newspapers did report at the time that von Rottweiler had the distinction of perfecting the first six-cylinder engine in America. I have not been able to verify that, but there is no doubt that the Pittsburgh Six was one of the earlier six-cylinders. I found a 1955 interview with a man who had actually worked on the Pittsburgh Sixes, and this is what he said about them:
“There were six separate cylinder blocks, and double ignition, by a battery and coil for starting, and a high-tension magneto for running.
Gasoline tank was of 20-gallon capacity, kept automatically at three pounds pressure when the motor was running. Spark and gasoline were controlled by hand levers on the steering wheel. The gasoline consumption must have been tremendous, for the cylinders were 4 3/4-inch bore and 5 1/4-inch stroke. That’s about the total piston displacement that a modern 300 horsepower engine would have, using high compression and high grade gasoline.
The rear axle gear ratio was 2 5/8 to 1, which must have put a heavy load on the motor. Modern cars vary from 3.9 to around 4.27 to 1.
But there were many things on the old Pittsburgh that we think distinctly modern.
All models were two-tone in decoration, roadsters in French gray and maroon, touring cars in ultramarine blue and yellow. It had a seven bearing crankshaft with bronze bearings and sealed universal joints.”
Recent
events related to the coronavirus pandemic have put me in mind of the Dodge
Brothers, two of the most talented, and historically under-appreciated, car
manufacturers of America’s early automobile industry.
John Dodge
Horace Dodge
2020 marks
the 100th anniversary of the death of the Dodge Brothers, Horace and
John, from complications related to another pandemic, the Spanish Flu that caused
at least 50 million deaths worldwide. In
January of 1920, the brothers attended an auto show in New York. While there, they both contracted influenza,
and it developed into pneumonia. John died
in his hotel room at only 55 years of age.
Horace, only 52, struggled with health complications until dying in
December with cirrhosis of the liver listed as the official cause.
After the death of his brother, Horace wrote a
letter to dealers in which he said, “The passing of my dear brother, Mr. John
F. Dodge, is to me personally a great loss, so great that I hesitate to look
forward to the years without his companionship, our lives having been, as you
all know, practically inseparable since our childhood.” The brothers were very
close and supportive of each other and, unlike many family members that go into
business together, they stayed that way until the end.
Short articles
sprinkled throughout the early newspapers give additional insight into what type
of people the Dodge Brothers were. One
story from 1916 relates how John Dodge, now a very wealthy and successful
automobile manufacturer, was visiting the Port Huron Engine & Thresher Co.
plant when he recognized a man, Otto Thrun, that he had worked with years previously. Dodge greeted the man and shook his hand,
whereupon the man addressed him as “Mr. Dodge”.
Dodge replied, “You can’t call me Mr. Dodge any more than you did when
we worked side by side.”
1917 Dodge Brothers Closed Car
The brothers were civic-minded and, unlike many of their peers, were active in the community. John served as water commissioner and as a member of Detroit’s Board of Street Railway Commissioners. Horace Dodge served as under-sheriff. At Christmas time, 1917, he was touring the jail with the mayor and sheriff. A man named Dubbs, who was a former patrolman, was being held on manslaughter charges. When Dodge found out that Dubbs was a former employee at the Dodge Brothers plant, he immediately bonded him out so that he could go home for Christmas. A story from the next year, 1918, describes how Dodge personally shook every prisoner’s hand (there were about 200 of them) and wished them each a Merry Christmas. The handshake was particularly welcome as Dodge had a dollar bill concealed in his palm which was pressed into the hand of each man as Dodge left for the next cell.
1918 tourists climbing Sonora Pass in a Dodge Brothers car.
Both John
and Horace were very philanthropic, making large donations to a variety of
causes such as the Salvation Army, The Detroit Federation of Women’s Clubs, the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the engineering college at the University of
Michigan and the Protestant Orphan Asylum.
They also donated to many churches.
According to Charles K. Hyde in his book titled The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars and the Legacy, the
brothers also donated to the churches that their employees attended such as the
African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Hamtramck Polish Catholic Church.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Dodges very astutely maintained complete ownership of their business so that they never had a board or stockholders to answer to, and they also never borrowed money from banks. They weren’t just smart businessmen however, they were also just plain smart, and the genius of the Dodge Brothers is effectively illustrated by their contribution to the war effort during World War I.
Weapons
using spring recoils were used during the first part of the war but were
constantly out of commission due to broken springs, so the US Government adopted
French heavy artillery including the 155 mm howitzer (the Schneider) and the 155
mm gun (the French Filloux). These
weapons utilized a fine, intricate hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism that was more
reliable but very difficult to produce.
It was
reported at the time that the Germans had captured many of the French guns but
had been unable to replicate the recoil mechanism. The French factories had only been able to
produce five per day. It was also
reported that two large American manufacturers had tried and failed to produce
the intricate parts. It was suggested that,
if anyone could succeed, it would be the Dodge Brothers.
The War
Department contacted the brothers in the fall of 1917, and John and Horace
accepted the challenge. According to author Charles K. Hyde, John met with
Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and a group of French manufacturers. When they offered to send French machinists
to Detroit to teach the Dodge brothers how to manufacture the mechanisms, John
responded that he and his brother needed only the blueprints (which consisted
of 42 and 71 pages, respectively, for the howitzer and gun mechanisms). Within 24 hours of reaching an agreement, the
Dodges began working on the new plant. It was designed to house 11 acres under
its roof and the first section was ready for use by January. The plant was valued at $10,000,000 and employed
8,000 people.
The Dodge Brothers also designed and built much of the machinery including 62 new machines for drilling and reaming the borings. The industry practice had been to revolve the gun barrel while the cutting tool was held stationary. The Dodges’ design revolved the tools and used six drills at one time. Before long the Dodges were completing 35 recoil mechanisms per day, seven times what the French had been able to produce. Just think how quickly the brothers would be cranking out ventilators, if only they were here today!
This great article appeared in the December 9, 1917, edition of the Los Angeles Times:
The King Motor Company was founded by, and named after, Charles Brady King. He was a pioneer of the automotive industry and was the first to drive an automobile on the streets of Detroit (with Henry Ford following on a bicycle)! More on King next time . . . . . .
According to a 1918 story in the New York Herald, Locomobile developed this model for the use of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, and his staff, in Europe where Pershing was serving as the commander of the American forces during World War I.
According to the story, after observing British commanders using Rolls Royces and French commanders using Renaults, General Pershing requested a vehicle from Locomobile which would be representative of America and be able to meet the physical challenges of being driven 200-300 miles per day over war-torn roads at high speeds. Locomobile first shipped two of these automobiles and they were used simultaneously, one following the other, so that the General could change cars without losing any time in the event of a blown tire.
The Locomobiles successfully met the challenges, and then more units were supplied for the use of the General Staff. The automobile company wasted no time including this information in their advertising:
You can’t blame Locomobile for being proud of its association with General Pershing, a great general as well as a good and decent man. He still holds the distinction of being the only active-duty six-star general in American history. For more information on this man, I highly recommend a documentary created by University of Nebraska professor Barney McCoy called “Black Jack Pershing: Love and War,” which is available on Amazon Prime. If it doesn’t make you shed a tear, you better check your pulse.
