First Commercial Outboard Motor - Electric

Submitted by cac on Mon, 2007-04-09 15:18
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During my recent travels we stopped at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Tulsa, OK... not where you would expect a large and nice aquarium, but its there :-) Displays are nice, signage very good and informative, with quite an array of sea life to examine. But, that's not what this is about...

One "side display" of the aquarium is the Karl and Beverly White National Fishing Tackle Museum. Now, I'll admit, I nearly didn't even go in... that's not really my thing. Anyhow, we wound up wondering through. I never imagined there were that many types of reels, rods, lures, whatnots to collect. In the back of the room were a couple of small boats and several outboard motors from the early 20th century. One was of particular interest to me.


The sign read:

 

Submergible Electric Motor Co.

Submergible Outboard
1902

The Submergible Electric Motor was the 1st commercial outboard motor.
To reach a top speed of 4.5 miles per hour, the motor required a bank of
batteries which weighed about 500 pounds.

 

And we think we've come so far :-)

 

Looks a lot like the modern pod type electrics, or trolling motors, doesn't it?


Not really the first - More info...

Submitted by cac on Mon, 2007-04-09 21:13.

Thanks to the Duckworks Magazine mailing list guys for some additional info on early outboard motors:

Evinrude started about 1909 and was going fully by 1911 see: http://www.boatmotors.com/outboard/evinrude/

A link covering the development of the first outboards can be found at:

http://www.huntsmarine.com.au/templates/newsDetail.jsp?id=6

This is further augmented by the material in the book, The Nature of Boats, by Dave Gerr where he documents the earliest known outboard as having been built in Sweden in 1891 by the Swedish Vulcan Company. These were followed by an English model in 1895 by the name of, get this... Watamota. Soon there was a French design called the Motogodille (motor oar)

Gerr references the earliest outboard in the US as having been produced by Cameron Waterman in Spruce Harbor, Michigan in 1906. This was paralleled by the Evinrude design from virtually the same neighborhood. Hmmm? Swedish guy in same general area of town as Waterman. Could be a real stew for experience from Sweden, as well as new ideas?

By 1917 some 30,000 engines from Waterman's company had been produced under the name, Waterman Porto.

For those interested, here's the Evinrude patent: http://tinyurl.com/2left3

Chris

Then there's this site:

http://web.telia.com/~u53305493/utomborde.htm

For some serious understanding of the French guy, Gustave Trouve, who did a real electric outboard back in 1880 read this page: http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-come-ive-never-heard-of-gustav.html

More on Gustave Trouve:
http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm

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