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LORNA BENSON: It's All Things Considered on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Lorna Benson. In 1896, a new contraption appeared at the Minneapolis bicycle convention. The mysterious machine looked like a horse carriage but it was powered by electricity and could reach the dizzying speed of 15 miles an hour. Just over 100 years ago, skeptical citizens in Minneapolis and Saint Paul predicted this new automobile was just a passing fad.
But a sickly 15-year-old boy in Northfield, Minnesota, began drawing up plans for his own model. In this month's installment of our Minnesota Century series, the story of Lincoln Fey. Against the wishes of his father and above the taunts of neighbors, he produced one of the state's first automobiles in his family barn. Years later, he recalled the experience in a written memoir.
LINCOLN FEY: Since early boyhood I was troubled with asthma, which made it difficult to ride behind horses.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This gave me the idea that horse-drawn vehicles should not be the only way to travel. It seemed clear that the railroad trains had to have steel rails on which to travel. Why couldn't a vehicle be constructed to travel on the road? I became more and more interested in the idea and found myself spending most of my spare time in the doorway of the Fox and Ferry machine shop in Northfield, watching their machine and molding operations carefully. I decided it was possible to build a gasoline-driven vehicle.
LORNA BENSON: Lincoln Fey probably never even saw a picture of an automobile before he began drawing up plans for his first model. Americans lagged far behind the Europeans in developing the automobile. But by the late 1880s, bicycle improvements like pneumatic tires, wire wheels, and chain-drive systems convinced many people that horseless transportation had a future.
JIM FOREST: The bicycle, when it was developed, it gave people an opportunity to move around on their own independently. They like that.
LORNA BENSON: Jim Forrest edited Northern Lights, a newsletter published by the Antique Automobile Club of Minnesota.
JIM FOREST: The bicycle was hugely popular at the end of the 19th century. Everybody had to have one. Well they were ready then for something that would follow that-- a device that would go on its own power, and you didn't have to do it.
LORNA BENSON: At first, automobile production was concentrated in Michigan. In 1896, the same year Lincoln Fey got started in Northfield, Henry Ford finished his first automobile in Detroit, Michigan. R.E. Olds produced his first Oldsmobile in Lansing one year earlier. But in frontier states like Minnesota, the new machines were a tough sell.
JIM FOREST: At first, automobiles were relatively expensive. They were looked upon as kind of a rich man's toy. They didn't have a real practical use because of the fact that there weren't any decent roads to drive them on. It was pretty difficult to convince anybody that they could even use these things.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LORNA BENSON: In Northfield, Minnesota, 15-year-old Lincoln Fey was convinced. With $25 in his pocket and some encouragement from his older brother, he set to work.
LINCOLN FEY: I first built a backwards tricycle using tandem bicycle wheels with one driving wheel in the rear and two wheels in front for steering. The designing of my first gasoline engine required a lot of thought and study. There were such questions to decide as the size of the crankshaft and bearings, length of connecting rods, size of piston and pin, thickness of cylinder wall, compression space, and a great many others, which I had to take into consideration.
When it was finally complete I began building the tricycles frame. I was due to enter high school in the fall of 1896, but I hated the idea. I was so enthused over my work that it seemed almost impossible to waste the time in school. I was forced to work on the tricycle nights and Saturdays, assembling it in our barn. Toward the spring of 1896, when the machine was almost complete, my brother and I pushed it out in the street for a test run.
[ENGINE STARTING]
The engine started, and I got into the seat. My brother jammed in the clutch with a stick, and away I went down the street. When I made the first turn, I nearly tipped over because the steering gear was so sensitive. The tricycle gained speed in every block, and I was due for a smash up because the street was about to start going downhill. I decided to try to make a turn at the next crossing. Swinging gradually over to one side of the street, I attempted to make the turn. But to keep from tipping over headed the tricycle up over the sidewalk and into a snowbank.
My brother had been following and came up running all out of breath and aglow with excitement. This was one of the most thrilling moments of our lives. The vehicle was pulled out of the snow bank, and we spent a good deal of time trying to start the engine again but with no success. So we pushed the contrivance back to the barn. Many times, I ventured the prediction to my parents that we would see the time when horse-drawn vehicles would become a thing of the past. But Dad, being a lover of horses, couldn't see it that way and cautioned us continually to leave anything that used gasoline alone, or we would be blown up.
LORNA BENSON: Lincoln's father was not the only skeptic. All the earliest autos had problems. They rarely started. Most had horrible brakes, and only a few allowed the driver to back up. The tires blew out. The engines stalled constantly. Even the steering was apt to fail, forcing drivers to spend as much time under their vehicles as in them. The unreliable nature of these automobiles even inspired a song.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) Things went just dandy till he got down the road
Then something happened to the old machinery
That engine got his goat, off went his hat and coat
Everything needed repair
So he got and got under, get out and get under--
LORNA BENSON: The machines lurched along loudly, spewing smoke and steam. Horse-loving citizens called the frightening contraptions devil wagons and organized a strong resistance early on.
JIM FOREST: A community passed a law where if you were driving an automobile on the road, and you met a horse-drawn vehicle, you were required to drive your automobile off of the road into the trees or brush, and in some cases, they specified that you had to dismantle the automobile and hide the parts. Now how they ever enforced that? I don't know. But they actually did pass laws like that.
LORNA BENSON: Lincoln Fey's first car sold quickly. Within weeks of the first test run, a mill worker from a town 20 miles West of Northfield offered to buy the machine for $65. The engine's still broken. Lincoln packed it up in a large crate and sent the tricycle to its new owner by train.
LINCOLN FEY: With spring in the offing and $65 in the bank, a bright future appeared. We began work on drawings for a new motor with a two-speed transmission composed of bicycle chains and sprockets, split ring clutches on a jackshaft and final chain drive. The machine was ready for a test run in the winter of 1898, almost two years later. On account of frightening horses and receiving unjust comment from illiterate bystanders of the community, we didn't take the machine out until midnight.
We pushed the carriage over to the drinking fountain in the square and filled the water tank. The engine started, and away we went with a lantern tied to the front of the rig as a headlight. The machine continued on its run without a hitch for three hours, covering most of the streets in town. My brother and I were two very happy lads.
We were well pleased with the performance of the rig. It functioned perfectly except for a little undue vibration, and we got quite a kick out of the fact that people the next day were having considerable trouble getting information as to what that thing was going around town last night. I decided then and there that none of my vehicles would ever have a horse hitched to them even if I had to rebuild them in the street where they stopped, and this I lived up to.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LORNA BENSON: The Fey brothers sold their second automobile for $175 to another experimental car builder in town. Altogether, the phase built four automobiles, each one more sophisticated than the last. Their final car was an impressive five-seater with an air-cooled four-cylinder engine. It even had a modern steering wheel.
Lincoln Fey never built another car. He sold his small operation to a car manufacturing outfit in Minneapolis and lived out his life as an inventor in Northfield. In 1944, he patented a new type of boat anchor. In the meantime men like Henry Ford and RE Olds began mass producing their automobiles and changed the American landscape.
- (SINGING) --don't Why, everybody, everywhere is falling for her now
Say, do you mean the new Ford?
I do, and it's a wow
Lay off people. Lay off folks
None of your sarcastic jokes
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
And no more bruises, no more aches
She now got those four-wheel brakes
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
She's even got a rumble seat and lots of silent class
The horn just seems to holler out
Toot-toot they shall not pass
LORNA BENSON: Our story on Lincoln Fey was produced by Annie Feidt, researched by Kate Kuhn, and edited by Stephen Smith. Steve Epp played the part of Lincoln Fey. The Minnesota Century Project on MPR is supported by Sarah Kinney, professional real estate services, matching people with property for 21 years. Coldwell Banker Burnet, Crocus Hill office.
Our series looking at Minnesota 100 years ago continues next month with the story of a 13-year-old girl, who traveled with her family by horse-and-buggy to Bagley, Minnesota in search of their own piece of land.
(SINGING) Not a rattle, not a bit
Lizzie now has lots of it
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
There's everything inside her now, except the kitchen sink
A mirror and a powder puff
A shower bath, I think
I'll bet my socks that this Miss Ford
Will live as long as Fanny Ward
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
C-O-D and F-O-B, all you need is doh-re-mi
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
Since he lifted up her face
She's traveled at an awful pace
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie
She's not like Calvin Coolidge
She's a girl, who likes her fun
She says, imagine anyone, who doesn't choose to run
Good for sister, nice for Ma
Everybody rides but Papa
Henry's made a lady out of Lizzie