c. 1940 Weber 80 HP Engine

 This very large stationary engine may have been made by the Weber Gas Engine Company in Kansas City, Missouri. Unfortunately, this engine has no clear identifying marks, so we are relying on the small amount of information provided to the museum during acquisition to identify it. It was reportedly used to power an irrigation pump near Harvard, Nebraska, a town in Clay County, about 40 miles southeast of Grand Island.
 The reported manufacturer of this engine, the Weber Gas Engine Company, was initially organized in 1884. The company's founder, George J. Weber, really got the company going when he acquired patent 444031 on January 6, 1891, and patent 449507 on March 31, 1891. As early as 1893, The Age of Steel had an article on the Weber horizontal engine. In 1908, Weber sold the company but continued to work on engines in his own laboratory. During a 1913 accident in his laboratory, Weber was seriously injured. He died the next year. After Weber sold the company, the company's name may have changed, first to the Sheffield Gas Engine Company, and then to the Weber Engine Company. If you would like to see a video of a large 40 HP Weber engine in action, click or touch here.

 If you look at the side of the engine closest to the nearby grain cradle and wheelbarrow sprayer, you will see a large box. This box is part of the engine's lubricating system, a Manzel Brothers force feed lubricator, made in Buffalo, New York. The Manzel Brothers Company was established in 1896 and incorporated in 1906, or, according to trade magazines of the time, in 1905, by Herman J., Adolph W., and Fredericka Manzel. Their brother, Charles W. Manzel, held several patents for lubricators and other items.

Notes

Some information on Weber engines can be found in C. H. Wendel, American Gasoline Engines Since 1872, ed. George H. Dammann (Sarasota, FL: Crestline Publishing Co., 1983), pp. 541-543.
Information on the Manzel Brothers is from International Motor Cyclopaedia, Sport, Industry and Trade: Automobiles, Motorcycles, Motorboats and Aeronautics. Year Book–March, 1908 to March, 1909 (New York: E. E. Schwartzkopf, 1908), p. 302.