Sunday, November 4, 2007

1894 Balzer

Stephen Marius Balzer was an inventor and early automobile manufacturer migrated to the United States in the 1870s.

This early automobile is less than six-feet long and three-feet wide. The four-wheeled vehicle’s front wheels are ten inches smaller than the rear ones.
The front wheels are mounted on bicycle type forks that are connected by a tie-rod and steered by a tiller.
The automobile has a three-cylinder, air-cooled, rotary-type engine, when the engine was running, the cylinders and crank case revolved in a vertical plane around the stationary crankshaft.
A stub shaft, turning with the crank case, carried the driving gears of a three-step, constant-mesh transmission that had three forward speeds and no reverse. The driver selected the desired gear ratio by operating a lever on the right that keyed the appropriate driven gear to its shaft. The same lever also controlled the clutch.