Duryea, Charles E.

Duryea, Charles E. (Edgar) (1861–1938) manufacturer; born near Canton, Ill. He built bicycles in Peoria until his attention was caught by a gasoline-powered engine at the 1886 Ohio State Fair. By 1891 he had drawn plans for a carriage and engine and moved to Springfield, Mass., where his bicycles were manufactured, and where, with his younger brother J. Frank Duryea, he built a car. Disagreement later arose between the two brothers about who did what, but in 1893 the Springfield Evening Union reported the Duryea car had been driven on city streets—the first American gasoline-powered automobile. The brothers successfully raced an improved version against European models and formed the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in Springfield, which in 1896 sold the first American automobiles. The brothers left that company in 1898. Charles organized the Duryea Power Company of Reading, Pa., manufacturing three-cylinder cars until 1914. (J. Frank Duryea made the Stevens-Duryea model, 1903–14). He was president of the American Motor League and author of The Handbook of the Automobile, a 1906 correspondence-school textbook.