Justus Bulkley Entz (June 16, 1867,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
– June 8, 1947,
New Rochelle, New York) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He invented the electromagnetic
transmission, introduced in the
Owen Magnetic of 1915, and was a pioneer in the early
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarde ...
industry.
Life
In 1887, Justus Entz began working for
Thomas A. Edison as an electrician at the
Edison Machine Works
The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built in the 1880s by Thomas A. Edison in New York City.
History
The need fo ...
. He stayed with Edison until 1890 and left as a chief electrician. Entz entered into several patent agreements with Edison and was granted royalty payments for any future use of certain patents.
During the 1890s, Entz became fascinated with the development of the automobile, and by 1897 he was working as a chief engineer at the Electric Storage Battery Company in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
. In 1897 this company introduced an electric-powered cab to the streets of New York and Philadelphia. It was while working for the Electric Storage Battery Company that Entz designed a gasoline-powered automobile with an electric drive transmission, and this was built as the prototype Columbia Mark IX by the
Pope Manufacturing Company
Pope Manufacturing Company was founded by Albert Augustus Pope around 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, US and incorporated in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877. Manufacturing of bicycles began in 1878 in Hartford at the Weed Sewing Machine Company fact ...
. On the vehicle's test run, driven by
Hiram Percy Maxim
Hiram Percy Maxim (September 2, 1869 – February 17, 1936) was an American radio pioneer and inventor, and co-founder (with Clarence D. Tuska) of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Hiram Percy Maxim is credited with inventing and sellin ...
, an electric spark ignited fuel in the gasoline tank and destroyed the car. Still, the basic design was good, and Entz took out a patent on it.
By 1902, Entz was working on ways to perfect his electromagnetic transmission. The device he ultimately came up with used a magnetic field to drive a propeller or driveshaft. By varying the intensity of the field, a vehicle could go faster or slower without using a clutch. In 1912,
Walter C. Baker purchased the patent rights to the Entz Transmission and then licensed the technology to Raymond Owen of R. M. Owen & Company. Owen used the technology to produce a gasoline-powered automobile that utilized the Entz electromagnetic transmission, called the
Owen Magnetic.
Justus Entz was altogether granted 75 patents in automotive engineering. He died in 1947, a few days short of his 80th birthday.
Patents
* Dynamo electric machine.
CA Patent 204067Transmission and control for motor vehicles.
US 1207732 Magnetic drive
Bibliography
*Kirsch, David A. ''The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History''. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
External links
Rutgers University Entz-Edison patentshybrid history New York Times obituary, June 9, 1947 (subscription required)
1867 births
1947 deaths
People from New Rochelle, New York
American inventors
American automotive pioneers
American automotive engineers
Automotive transmission technologies
Engineers from New York (state)
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