This 20 HP engine (serial #714769) was made by Fairbanks, Morse & Company of Chicago, Illinois. Fairbanks, Morse, & Company was created by Charles H. Morse, a very successful agent for the E. & T. Fairbanks Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. In 1850, Morse became an apprentice with the Fairbanks company, a company specializing in weighing scales. In 1857, Morse moved to Chicago where Fairbanks had a sales office. After the 1871 Chicago fire destroyed a large portion of the city, the smart and energetic Morse took over the Chicago office and started Fairbanks, Morse, & Company.
By 1880, Morse also became the sole agent for the Eclipse Wind Energy Company of Beloit, Wisconsin, using his developing connections to turn the Fairbanks-Morse Company into a major supplier of windmills to the railroads and to farmers. Later in the 1880s, Morse also gained control of Williams Engine Works of Beloit, obtaining a piece of the steam engine market. In 1893, Morse persuaded James A. Carter, an innovator of gas engines, to head a new gas engine department for the Fairbanks-Morse Company. Morse licensed several patents acquired by James and his brother, John, in the 1890s.
With connections to the railroad and to farmers via its windmills, the company sold many engines to railroad companies and farmers throughout the country. The company also established ties with the mining industry, creating another market for their engines. By 1895, Fairbanks, Morse & Company was making vertical and horizontal gas engines for a very wide market. During the next several decades, the company’s most popular engine series was the Type Z series, started in 1915, and represented by three different engines here in Stuhr Museum’s exhibit.
Notes
A brief history of Fairbanks, Morse & Company can be found in C. H. Wendel's American Gasoline Engines Since 1872, edited by George H. Dammann (Sarasota, FL: Crestline Publishing Co., 1983).
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