William Morrison

William Morrison (23 August 1855 – 29 August 1927) was a Scottish chemist. His background in chemistry piqued his interest in improving storage batteries. He concentrated on how to produce the most available energy for a unit of weight. He aimed for efficiency in the working of the individual battery cell. Eventually, he developed storage batteries far more powerful than what had then been available. To demonstrate the worthiness of his batteries, Morrison installed 24 of them on a common horse-drawn carriage and attached an electric motor to the rear axle to be powered by them. Through various innovations he developed the controls for the power used and the vehicle's steering so that the driver had complete control. Morrison invented the first practical self-powered four-wheeled electric carriage in the United States to show the value of his batteries. The intent of propelling a carriage with passengers without horses was not his main goal. Rather, he wanted to show how powerful and efficient his batteries were, so they had commercial appeal. His electric vehicle was the first to be driven in Chicago and his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. This electric horseless buggy of the late nineteenth century later became known as the electric car of the twentieth century and the hybrid electric automobile of the twenty-first century.

Morrison was born in Scotland in 1855. He attended local schools for his initial education; his interests as a young boy were chemistry, electricity and making storage batteries.

He attended a Scottish university where he studied chemistry. Morrison emigrated from Scotland to America in 1880 and settled in Des Moines, Iowa. He worked for jeweler Schmidt and Company as a watchmaker and worked under jewelers Marguart and Lumbard. He lived at an upscale residence—the Victoria Hotel.

Morrison had a secret basement laboratory in downtown Des Moines where he worked on storage batteries and a self-propelled electric carriage. This was referred to as the Cave. He constructed a prototype of the first electric carriage in 1887. Morrison had a mechanical engineer, Dr. Lew Arntz, working with him who assembled what he designed. Between 1888 and 1890 Morrison designed a second version of his electric carriage which had improvements in its electric motor, gear train, batteries and steering mechanism. The modifications made his carriage practical and useful and is the one that became famous—the first practical electric automobile built in the United States. To demonstrate the usefulness of Morrison's invention, the vehicle was entered into the 1890 Seni Om Sed parade in Des Moines where there were 85,000 to 100,000 spectators. The battery-powered vehicle was carrying seven passengers. The chemist drove his electric automobile all over the city for weeks after the parade. It was in several notable races. The spectacle of the first practical automobile being on the streets of Des Moines was written up in multiple newspapers and journals. Word spread worldwide of the carriage that required no horses and was mobile under its own power. Before the end of the year Morrison had received over 16,000 letters requesting information on his self-powered electric carriage (auto-mobile).

Morrison claimed that his horseless carriage was the first successful practical passenger automobile of any kind in the world and offered $5,000 (in 1890 dollars ) to anyone that could show photographs otherwise. Trade publications Western Electrician of Chicago and Scientific American of New York backed up his claims. The enticing award was never collected.

Description

Morrison's electric carriage could carry up to twelve passengers on its the three bench seats. The vehicle could move at a walking pace or cruise at 14 miles per hour (23 km/h) on a flat and even road. It had a maximum speed of 20 miles per hour (32 km/h). It was steered by a small horizontal wheel controlled by the driver's hands. The steering wheel had a vertical rod apparatus attached to a rack and pinion gear structure that responded to the smallest turn and altered the angle of the front wheels to change the vehicle's course. The carriage body was built by the Shaver Carriage Company in Des Moines as a normal surrey, but without the features necessary to attach horses. The four wooden wheels were steel-rimmed for extra protection against rough roads. The self-propelled mobile carriage had a friction clutch that transferred the electric motor power to the rear wheels by way of gears.

Morrison produced twelve electric horseless carriages, including the original 1897 prototype.The eleven carriages Morrison designed and built after the prototype he sold for $3,600 each. His concept of electric automobiles became popular, and before the end of the nineteenth century about a third of all cars were electric. The peak of their popularity in the twentieth century was in 1912 when over 30,000 cars in the United States were registered as being run only by electric batteries. They were known as an electric car (short for electric carriage). The first hybrid vehicle using a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor, was released in 1997; that concept became popular in the twenty-first century.

Batteries

The twenty-four storage battery cells that produced an output of 112 amps at 58 volts were stored under the first row of seats where the driver sat. They weighed 768 pounds (348 kg) and ran a four horsepower modified trolley electric motor attached to the rear wheels to propel the carriage. The electromagnetic coil was rewound by Morrison to be practical for his batteries that ran at about 15% of a trolley car's voltage. The vehicle's speed was dependent on how many cells were in use at any one time.It had three speeds which were produced by the battery cells in a series of 8, 12 and 24. The driver controlled the speed and steering. The batteries had to be recharged after every 50 miles (80 km) of driving: That was as far as a vehicle could travel in a day as it required overnight to recharge the batteries completely.

American Battery Company

John B. MacDonald and Harold Sturgis of the American Battery Company in Chicago each bought one of Morrison's Electric vehicles; Both cost $3,600. They were the third and fourth vehicles Morrison made and were constructed at the Shaver Carriage Company's facilities in east Des Moines. Sturgis had Morrison construct his electrical carriage 1890 and 1891. It was finished on 9 November 1891. The new vehicle was shipped by rail to him in Chicago on 5 December 1891. It took a few days to arrive. The sale of this electric carriage to Sturgis is the first documented sale of an electric car in America.

MacDonald's vehicle was under construction by Morrison in mid-1891. Finished in mid-1892 and shipped to him from Des Moines in late July, it arrived in Chicago on Monday, 8 August 1892. It came with a three-horse power electric motor that propelled it and a 24-cell set of storage batteries. MacDonald installed new Morrison batteries on the following day in preparation for a trial run on 10 August. That day marked the historic event when an electric vehicle was driven in Chicago for the first time. With four other people in the electrically propelled carriage, it went from MacDonald's barn on Monroe Street where it was stored to the company's office in downtown Chicago at Monroe Boulevard and LaSalle Street. The travel time for the two-and-a-half mile trip was 22 minutes. It was stopped several times for crowds of people that had gathered to see the strange wagon with no horses.

The Morrison-MacDonald carriage was backed up to the front door and wires connected to the batteries on board for recharging. After receiving a fresh charge, MacDonald invited three other men to ride back with him to his residence. They were George T. Burroughs, vice president of the American Battery Company, Lucius Otis Jenkins, and a Western Electrician journalist. at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon MacDonald drove the carriage from the company office building east on West Quincy Street to Clinton Street then to Jackson Street and then west to Jackson Boulevard to his residence on the corner of Monroe Street and Winchester Avenue.

MacDonald used his Morrison Electric vehicle to promote his company's batteries by driving his friends and reporters around the city in it beginning in September 1892. When it was driven in downtown Chicago the crowds that gathered to see it were so great that the police had to direct them away to clear a path for it to even move. MacDonald's vehicle was the first practical automobile of any kind to be driven on the streets of Chicago.

Sturgis exhibited his Morrison Electric vehicle at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It won all the awards in the electric carriage category for American models, since it was the only American vehicle of the six electric vehicles entered. Displayed at the fair's Electricity Building, thousands of people rode the Morrison Electric car, driven by Edgar Rice Burroughs, around in an enclosed area at the fairgrounds. When the fair came to an end, the vehicle was taken around the country to promote the sale of Morrison Electric vehicles and the American Battery Company's products.

In early 1895, Sturgis attempted to construct his own electric vehicle for the forthcoming Chicago Times-Herald automobile race. After failing, he simply modified the Morrison Electric car he already had. He removed the overhead canopy and the steel rims on the wooden wheels, which he replaced with hard rubber. He then removed the old electric motor and replaced it with a stronger one. The most significant modification was the removal of the third bench seat. This allowed Sturgis to add more batteries to extend the vehicle's range before they needed recharging. Sturgis and Morrison entered the vehicle in the race. There was six inches (150 mm)of snow on race day and Sturgis' vehicle only managed to travel 13 miles (21 km) of the course's 53 miles (85 km) because the batteries ran out of power. His team was awarded a $500 prize for their attempt.

Mechanical innovations

Morrison was assembling additional electric carriages and demonstrating them on the streets of Des Moines in 1892 to show how practical and useful his mechanism was. The twelve-passenger vehicle was being advertised as capable of being used on city streets as well as country roads. News reports talked of the innovative new electric motor he had designed that was controlled by the foot on a pedal used by the driver. Reports also described the unique steering apparatus controlled by a small hand wheel that the driver controlled, and that it took only one person to operate the electric self-propelled carriage since all of the controls were at the driver's disposal.

Sturgis entered his Morrison Electric car in the Minneapolis Cycle Show on 6 April 1896. The vehicle had solid rubber tires at that time instead of steel-rimmed wooden wheels. These tires were made by the Hartford Rubber Works Company. Sturgis gave rides to attendees who queued up in long lines at the show. He drove his Morrison Electric around the streets of Minneapolis for days after the show so others could see the electric automobile.

Undercarriage mechanisms

• Figure 1 - Pictures of a power conversion apparatus that worked in conjunction with the electric motor to regulate power going to the rear wheels.
• Figure 2 - Close up of the rear axle showing the gear train on the right side that operated the wheels.
• Figure 3 - Close up of the electric motor with the mounting framework on the rear axle.
• Figure 4 - Front wheels and axle showing a type of rack and pinion steering.
• Figure 5 - Front view under the seats showing the batteries used.

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  Figure 2

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  Figure 3

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  Figure 4

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  Figure 5

William Morrison's principle interest was the development of efficient storage batteries. He patented his innovations and became wealthy when he sold the rights to his battery invention to various battery companies and collected royalties. Morrison had over 88 patents related to batteries. He developed the electrically propelled horseless carriage, later known as the electric automobile, only to prove the importance and value of his batteries–not to invent a self-propelled electric vehicle. He wanted to show how powerful his batteries were and propelling a horseless carriage of 3,000 pounds was an impressive way to do so. The American Battery Company bought several of Morrison's battery patent rights in 1891. After the owners of the company had signed a contract to produce his batteries, Morrison received royalties for any produced by the company used to power his horseless electrified carriages.The American Battery Company made a few copies of Morrison's vehicle since they had the rights to his batteries for manufacturing with authorization from him to duplicate his electric carriage design. The American Battery Company moved their branch of the Morrison Electric Company in 1910 to Kansas City, Missouri. There they made the Morrison's electric carriages for years. None of the Morrison electric vehicles exist today.

In 1890, Morrison devised a new type of storage battery with glass-wool insulation on the electrode plates. The Morrison Storage Battery allowed the normal internal operation of the battery to function correctly while at the same time preventing the shedding of material from the positive plates that would cause the short-circuiting that was happening on the old-style batteries. Morrison's batteries were much more efficient because his ideas reduced the weight of the battery and increased its power output.

Morrison obtained a patent in 1891 for his invention of improved storage batteries that led to the first practical electric car in America. That increased battery efficiency made it possible for 24 of his batteries to produce enough power to run a horseless carriage with a group of people aboard the vehicle. Morrison received patent No. 464,676 for his battery. The patent says in part:

Secondary Batteries. Wm Morrison of Des Moines is Assignor to the Hess Electric Company. Application filed Oct 27, 1890. An electrode for secondary batteries consisting of a stratum body portion of active material or material to become active a layer coating or covering of fibrous glass wool disposed of the face or side of the body portion of active material and confining non conducting plates.

The Universal Electric Storage Battery Company of Chicago came into existence in 1905. It made the Morrison battery for industrial applications in lighting, electric cars, railroads and power plants. One use of these batteries was for a hybrid vehicle being manufactured by Chicago & Alton company. Another was as an ignition battery to start cars.

Morrison was a tall, husky, well-groomed man with dark hair. A vegetarian who kept to himself, he often found himself out of place with the locals and was known as a bizarre electrical wizard—a self-centered eccentric who did peculiar experiments.

In his thirties, Morrison married a 20-year-old Mary Reily on 16 July 1892. They had one child, William Earl, who died as a toddler. Mary died at approximately the same time. While living in Chicago, Morrison was shown a photograph by Mrs. A. H. O'Neill of her 20-year-old sister, Elsie Myer of Grand Forks, North Dakota. After meeting her, Morrison married her two months later. They had a son who died at 16 months and later a daughter who outlived Morrison. His second wife died on 5 September 1950.

Morrison was involved in the gold-mining business in California during his later years. He died in Northern California in 1927, and his body was returned to Des Moines for burial at Woodland Cemetery.