1918 Fairbanks-Morse Type Z 6 HP Engine

 This 6 HP engine (serial #357084) was made by Fairbanks, Morse & Company of Chicago, Illinois. Rated at 400 RPM, this 6 HP engine cost $119 in 1918. A very proficient builder of engines, 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.

 This engine has a Sumter Plugoscillator for its ignition system, patented in 1916 and made by the Sumter Electrical Company. The Sumter company can be traced back to the late 1890s when it was named the Sumter Telephone & Manufacturing Company, established in Sumter, South Carolina. Sometime around 1908, the company was reorganized as the Sumter Electrical Company. In January 1915, the company's sales office was moved to Chicago, Illinois. In November 1915, the company and its Dixie patents were acquired by the Splitdorf Electrical Company of Newark, New Jersey. Sumter remained a subsidiary of Splitdorf and was organized as a corporation of Illinois, keeping its Sumter Electrical Company name.  You can view a video of a Fairbanks Morse engine with a Sumter Plugoscillator by clicking or touching here.

From Gas Power, vol. 15, no. 4
(October, 1917).

If you look at the top of this engine, you will also notice an oil cup. It was made by the Michigan Lubricator Company of Detroit.

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).
Information on Sumter is from The Gas Engine, vol. XX, no. 2 (February, 1918).
A great early 20th century resource on ignition systems, including the Sumter Plugoscillator, is Earle B. Norris, Robert K. Winning, and William C. Weaver, Gas Engine Ignition, Prepared in the Extension Division of the University of Wisconsin, Engineering Education Series (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1916).