Approximately 435 items: 183 photographs, mainly 4 x 6 inches and smaller; thirty-three handwritten pages and eighty-three typed
1939 · Denver, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; and Long Beach, California
by [Electric Cars – Sustainable Energy – Radio – American Inventors] Fritchle, Oliver P.
Denver, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; and Long Beach, California, 1939. Approximately 435 items: 183 photographs, mainly 4 x 6 inches and smaller; thirty-three handwritten pages and eighty-three typed pages of mainly 8 x 11 inches and smaller; twenty-seven pages of patent materials (descriptions, printed diagrams, copies of applications); five large hand-drawn technical diagrams; twelve pages of notes, mainly 3 x 5 inches and smaller; sixty-six newspaper clippings; fourteen pieces of blank letterhead; and twelve pieces of ephemera, including Fritchle’s driver’s license and a work assignment from the LA County Relief Administration. Generally very good.. Oliver Parker Fritchle (1874–1951) is best known for his invention of the Fritchle electric car and subsequent endurance test, wherein he drove the car from Nebraska to New York, traveling nearly 100 miles on a single charge and earning for the car and himself the moniker “100 Mile Fritchle.” Born in Mount Hope, Ohio, Fritchle would receive a Bachelor of Science from Ohio Wesleyan University and complete several years of postgraduate work at the Ohio State University in preparation for work as a Patent Office examiner. Though he would pass the civil service exam for the position, he would not perform well enough to be offered the job, and instead would go on to work as a chemist, eventually landing in Colorado. There, he would perform chemical research for mining companies, and develop a novel process for extracting tungsten. On leaving the mining industry, he would do mechanic work on electric cars, and in 1904 he would open his own electric car and battery manufacturing business, the Fritchle Automobile & Battery Co.
The Fritchle electric car was far from his only invention, though. After the closure of his auto company in about 1917—the electric car could no longer compete with its gas-powered counterpart—he would develop a wind-electric system, using the same battery, to bring power to rural farmhouses. He also designed a radio and patented a design for a special cabinet for it; suggested ideas to various transportation agencies for tackling problems of barnacles and fog; and, later in life, worked on several inventions for cooking. He continued to tinker with automobile-related inventions, especially concerning car safety, throughout his life.
Offered here is a very large, wide-ranging archive concerning Fritchle’s family life, his inventions, and his project, later in life, to research his genealogy. These materials include many photographs of Fritchle’s family and home, his electric cars, and his windmill installations; a short autobiography written some time before 1932 and a firsthand description of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake; hand-drawn diagrams of inventions such as roof-mounted automobile headlights, a radio cabinet, and the “Dextratoaster”, alongside letters to various manufacturers soliciting their interest in working with him and Fritchle’s attempts at advertising copy; and several handmade family trees with correspondences from distant family back in Germany. They show Fritchle to be a gifted, eccentric mind, always on the lookout for ways to make life safer and easier.
Most of the material relating to the Fritchle electric car is photographic or patent-related. One striking photo shows Fritchle posing with his electric coupe and two large white dogs, and there are a number of shots of various models driving around Denver and climbing the rugged terrain outside the city. Two labeled photographs show the factories: employees in front of the first Fritchle automobile factory around 1908, and the exterior of the second and last factory, occupied between 1910 and 1918. There is also a shot of the company baseball team, with uniforms reading “100 MILE FRITCHLE ELECTRIC” across the chest of their uniforms. A catalog of the electric cars shows the various available models, with general specifications and prices—which neared $100,000 in today’s dollar—and there are patents for six components of the cars, including the safety brake and body design. As Fritchle wrote in his short autobiography, included in the archive,
“In these, the pioneer, days of automobile manufacturing there were few parts manufacturers in the United States so I had to build my own axles, steering parts, motors, controllers, batteries and bodies. Neither were there experienced automobile mechanics in Denver so I had to learn and then teach the employes [sic] in the various departments the essentials of the technique.”
One of the most interesting electric car shots is labeled “Mrs. J. C. Osgood’s Mountain Home and her Fritchle Electric”, and it shows the car driving up the long driveway of the Cleveholm Manor in Redstone, Colorado – a company town founded by mining mogul and robber baron John C. Osgood. The Fritchle electrics, while they lasted, were true luxury cars.
Fritchle’s next venture would be the Fritchle Wind-Electric Plant, which used a windmill to generate electricity for isolated farmhouses. Several photographs showcase parts of the plant, including an automatic switchboard, and a generating attachment that would be affixed to a wood wheel. Several others show plants installed at various farmhouses. In an October 1922 clipping from the New York American, titled “Windmills Versus Oil Wells”, it is clear that the illustrations of modern windmill electric systems are drawings of some of these photographs. Fritchle also copied three testimonial letters from happy customers; John T. Anderson writes that his family has “had all the electricity necessary for lighting a ten-room house, barn and yard, for pumping water for pressure system, including bathroom, for washing, ironing and churning” and has “had no expense and the noise is hardly noticeable in the house” (January 3, 1922).
Following this, in 1923, Fritchle would move to Chicago to work in radio manufacturing, which he writes was “quiet at the time”. He worked at several radio companies before starting out on his own, designing, patenting, and pitching his Fritchle Radio and Radiocabinet. This archive contains a significant amount of material relating to these projects: photographs of the radio cabinet, copies of the patent, Fritchle’s handwritten notes about how to advertise it, and correspondence with various radio and cabinet manufacturing companies. In his personal notes, he claims that his radio reproduces “all the tones, from the highest note of the canary bird to the lowest note of the pipe organ [...] in their original quality and volume” (No Date). However, the letters he would send out focused on the cabinet’s visual aesthetics – he is sure that its curved shape, which set it apart from its boxy contemporaries, would make it the “ultimate masterpiece” in radio cabinet design, “just as certain as there was an ultimate masterpiece in the grand piano and violin, which has endured for centuries” (No Date). James Woods of the Showers Brothers Furniture Company—which manufactured cabinets for Crosley Radio—shows the most interest, and promises to meet with Fritchle in Chicago. He writes:
“I am very anxious in seeing that we give your patented cabinet very careful consideration, because if it contains the details as outlined in your letter I am sure that it will have a ready acceptance on the market today.” (October 6, 1928)
However, Woods and Fritchle never met up, and Woods shortly writes that “At the present time we can not see our way to manufacture the cabinet covered by your photographs” (October 17, 1928). Fritchle does not receive a reply from Studebaker, Brunswick Radio Corporation, and others; Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation writes that “we have no desire to make a change in our present models” (October 13, 1928). Nor does B.J. Grigsby of Grigsby-Grunow reply to Fritchle’s multiple letters, although Fritchle “regard[s] this subject of vital importance to your continued success” and “can not believe you would neglect its immediate consideration and reply” (October 19, 1929). Fritchle would persist for a while, but in 1932, he would close shop in Chicago and move to Long Beach, California, to open an electric and mechanical repair shop.
Shortly after Fritchle’s arrival in Long Beach with his second wife Hester, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake would occur. The earthquake destroyed his apartment building; the archive includes several of his photographs of the aftermath. It also includes a harrowing retelling of the incident in a copy of a letter written several weeks later. Fritchle would describe the earthquake as “the first time in my life that I felt absolutely helpless and powerless to fight my way out of danger”:
“I yelled earthquake, as the earth waves struck the massive building, rocking it like a cradle in a Northerly and Southerly direction and the more rapid superimposed wave frequencies bounced the floors and furniture, shook the plaster off the walls and spilled the dinner in preparation, from ‘soup to nuts’, on the kitchen and dining room floors. The gas range danced a jig to a new position and everything loose was turned topsy turvy” (March 28, 1933).
Fritchle would spend his first few years in Long Beach working on ideas for auto safety inventions. In 1934, he would start pitching his pneumatic bumper and roof-mounted headlights. The archive includes four hand-drawn diagrams of the bumper; Fritchle writes to Paul Litchfield at Goodyear that “If you are favorably impressed with my Pneumatic Auto Bumper I could help develop it in your factory”, because “I am now free to devote my full time to anyone who can use my services” (August 14, 1934) – he seems to have become unemployed at some point around this time, as his Relief Administration work assignment from 1935 suggests. Litchfield objects to the cost and attractiveness of pneumatic bumpers generally, writing that Goodyear has “considered many times but have not attempted to develop” them (August 21, 1934). Fritchle counters that he “can not accept your objections to my pneumatic bumper as sufficient reason to abandon the idea” (August 30, 1934), and Litchfield replies curtly that “we have given the matter careful investigation and consideration, and the decision has been made” not to follow up (September 6, 1934).
Fritchle would turn his attention to the problem of night driving and headlight glare. Included in the archive is a very large, 8 by 32 inch diagram of his novel headlight design, the explanation of which proposed that mounting the headlights on the top of the car was the “only solution to the Head-Light Glare Problem” (September 7, 1934). He pitches the design to C.D. Nash of Nash motors, writing:
“Please give me a job in your research department and let me help develop this Driving Light idea and many others which I have accumulated [...] I am middle aged, active and at present, not a high priced man” (September 11, 1934).
He also pitches it to Chrysler, who write back that “no interest is indicated” (September 18, 1934). Never discouraged, Fritchle tries his hand at a few cooking inventions. One of these is a highly complicated device for cooking asparagus or “other things which require a higher heat on one part than the other” (No Date), of which there is a photograph and a hand-drawn diagram in the archive. The other is the “Dextratoaster”, which “makes it easy to make perfect DEXTRATOAST, commonly known as Melba Toast” (November 1939). The device consisted of a rack with a series of wire hoops, with which one was meant to toast an entire loaf of sliced bread, at a low heat, for several hours. Though he sent details of the device to a patent attorney in Washington, D.C., it’s not clear that it ever was patented. However, at least his family liked the device; his brother-in-law described it as “just the contraption we want” (December 22, 1939).
The remainder of the material in the archive concerns Fritchle’s family life. He attempts to reconstruct his family tree, to reach distant relatives in Germany, and find out why his family left the country – he asks the Institute of Germans Living Abroad whether there was “any Jewish blood in the Fritschle or Magdalena Graybost (my grandmother), family?” (January 24, 1939). There are also many photographs of his family, especially his two young songs Oliver N. and Stanton Fritchle with their mother, Blanche Neiswander (1879–1960) in what is probably Denver.
Overall, an interesting and well-illustrated archive of the personal life and lesser-known inventions of a 20th-century automobile pioneer. Of interest especially to historians of sustainable energy. (Inventory #: List2605)
The Fritchle electric car was far from his only invention, though. After the closure of his auto company in about 1917—the electric car could no longer compete with its gas-powered counterpart—he would develop a wind-electric system, using the same battery, to bring power to rural farmhouses. He also designed a radio and patented a design for a special cabinet for it; suggested ideas to various transportation agencies for tackling problems of barnacles and fog; and, later in life, worked on several inventions for cooking. He continued to tinker with automobile-related inventions, especially concerning car safety, throughout his life.
Offered here is a very large, wide-ranging archive concerning Fritchle’s family life, his inventions, and his project, later in life, to research his genealogy. These materials include many photographs of Fritchle’s family and home, his electric cars, and his windmill installations; a short autobiography written some time before 1932 and a firsthand description of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake; hand-drawn diagrams of inventions such as roof-mounted automobile headlights, a radio cabinet, and the “Dextratoaster”, alongside letters to various manufacturers soliciting their interest in working with him and Fritchle’s attempts at advertising copy; and several handmade family trees with correspondences from distant family back in Germany. They show Fritchle to be a gifted, eccentric mind, always on the lookout for ways to make life safer and easier.
Most of the material relating to the Fritchle electric car is photographic or patent-related. One striking photo shows Fritchle posing with his electric coupe and two large white dogs, and there are a number of shots of various models driving around Denver and climbing the rugged terrain outside the city. Two labeled photographs show the factories: employees in front of the first Fritchle automobile factory around 1908, and the exterior of the second and last factory, occupied between 1910 and 1918. There is also a shot of the company baseball team, with uniforms reading “100 MILE FRITCHLE ELECTRIC” across the chest of their uniforms. A catalog of the electric cars shows the various available models, with general specifications and prices—which neared $100,000 in today’s dollar—and there are patents for six components of the cars, including the safety brake and body design. As Fritchle wrote in his short autobiography, included in the archive,
“In these, the pioneer, days of automobile manufacturing there were few parts manufacturers in the United States so I had to build my own axles, steering parts, motors, controllers, batteries and bodies. Neither were there experienced automobile mechanics in Denver so I had to learn and then teach the employes [sic] in the various departments the essentials of the technique.”
One of the most interesting electric car shots is labeled “Mrs. J. C. Osgood’s Mountain Home and her Fritchle Electric”, and it shows the car driving up the long driveway of the Cleveholm Manor in Redstone, Colorado – a company town founded by mining mogul and robber baron John C. Osgood. The Fritchle electrics, while they lasted, were true luxury cars.
Fritchle’s next venture would be the Fritchle Wind-Electric Plant, which used a windmill to generate electricity for isolated farmhouses. Several photographs showcase parts of the plant, including an automatic switchboard, and a generating attachment that would be affixed to a wood wheel. Several others show plants installed at various farmhouses. In an October 1922 clipping from the New York American, titled “Windmills Versus Oil Wells”, it is clear that the illustrations of modern windmill electric systems are drawings of some of these photographs. Fritchle also copied three testimonial letters from happy customers; John T. Anderson writes that his family has “had all the electricity necessary for lighting a ten-room house, barn and yard, for pumping water for pressure system, including bathroom, for washing, ironing and churning” and has “had no expense and the noise is hardly noticeable in the house” (January 3, 1922).
Following this, in 1923, Fritchle would move to Chicago to work in radio manufacturing, which he writes was “quiet at the time”. He worked at several radio companies before starting out on his own, designing, patenting, and pitching his Fritchle Radio and Radiocabinet. This archive contains a significant amount of material relating to these projects: photographs of the radio cabinet, copies of the patent, Fritchle’s handwritten notes about how to advertise it, and correspondence with various radio and cabinet manufacturing companies. In his personal notes, he claims that his radio reproduces “all the tones, from the highest note of the canary bird to the lowest note of the pipe organ [...] in their original quality and volume” (No Date). However, the letters he would send out focused on the cabinet’s visual aesthetics – he is sure that its curved shape, which set it apart from its boxy contemporaries, would make it the “ultimate masterpiece” in radio cabinet design, “just as certain as there was an ultimate masterpiece in the grand piano and violin, which has endured for centuries” (No Date). James Woods of the Showers Brothers Furniture Company—which manufactured cabinets for Crosley Radio—shows the most interest, and promises to meet with Fritchle in Chicago. He writes:
“I am very anxious in seeing that we give your patented cabinet very careful consideration, because if it contains the details as outlined in your letter I am sure that it will have a ready acceptance on the market today.” (October 6, 1928)
However, Woods and Fritchle never met up, and Woods shortly writes that “At the present time we can not see our way to manufacture the cabinet covered by your photographs” (October 17, 1928). Fritchle does not receive a reply from Studebaker, Brunswick Radio Corporation, and others; Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation writes that “we have no desire to make a change in our present models” (October 13, 1928). Nor does B.J. Grigsby of Grigsby-Grunow reply to Fritchle’s multiple letters, although Fritchle “regard[s] this subject of vital importance to your continued success” and “can not believe you would neglect its immediate consideration and reply” (October 19, 1929). Fritchle would persist for a while, but in 1932, he would close shop in Chicago and move to Long Beach, California, to open an electric and mechanical repair shop.
Shortly after Fritchle’s arrival in Long Beach with his second wife Hester, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake would occur. The earthquake destroyed his apartment building; the archive includes several of his photographs of the aftermath. It also includes a harrowing retelling of the incident in a copy of a letter written several weeks later. Fritchle would describe the earthquake as “the first time in my life that I felt absolutely helpless and powerless to fight my way out of danger”:
“I yelled earthquake, as the earth waves struck the massive building, rocking it like a cradle in a Northerly and Southerly direction and the more rapid superimposed wave frequencies bounced the floors and furniture, shook the plaster off the walls and spilled the dinner in preparation, from ‘soup to nuts’, on the kitchen and dining room floors. The gas range danced a jig to a new position and everything loose was turned topsy turvy” (March 28, 1933).
Fritchle would spend his first few years in Long Beach working on ideas for auto safety inventions. In 1934, he would start pitching his pneumatic bumper and roof-mounted headlights. The archive includes four hand-drawn diagrams of the bumper; Fritchle writes to Paul Litchfield at Goodyear that “If you are favorably impressed with my Pneumatic Auto Bumper I could help develop it in your factory”, because “I am now free to devote my full time to anyone who can use my services” (August 14, 1934) – he seems to have become unemployed at some point around this time, as his Relief Administration work assignment from 1935 suggests. Litchfield objects to the cost and attractiveness of pneumatic bumpers generally, writing that Goodyear has “considered many times but have not attempted to develop” them (August 21, 1934). Fritchle counters that he “can not accept your objections to my pneumatic bumper as sufficient reason to abandon the idea” (August 30, 1934), and Litchfield replies curtly that “we have given the matter careful investigation and consideration, and the decision has been made” not to follow up (September 6, 1934).
Fritchle would turn his attention to the problem of night driving and headlight glare. Included in the archive is a very large, 8 by 32 inch diagram of his novel headlight design, the explanation of which proposed that mounting the headlights on the top of the car was the “only solution to the Head-Light Glare Problem” (September 7, 1934). He pitches the design to C.D. Nash of Nash motors, writing:
“Please give me a job in your research department and let me help develop this Driving Light idea and many others which I have accumulated [...] I am middle aged, active and at present, not a high priced man” (September 11, 1934).
He also pitches it to Chrysler, who write back that “no interest is indicated” (September 18, 1934). Never discouraged, Fritchle tries his hand at a few cooking inventions. One of these is a highly complicated device for cooking asparagus or “other things which require a higher heat on one part than the other” (No Date), of which there is a photograph and a hand-drawn diagram in the archive. The other is the “Dextratoaster”, which “makes it easy to make perfect DEXTRATOAST, commonly known as Melba Toast” (November 1939). The device consisted of a rack with a series of wire hoops, with which one was meant to toast an entire loaf of sliced bread, at a low heat, for several hours. Though he sent details of the device to a patent attorney in Washington, D.C., it’s not clear that it ever was patented. However, at least his family liked the device; his brother-in-law described it as “just the contraption we want” (December 22, 1939).
The remainder of the material in the archive concerns Fritchle’s family life. He attempts to reconstruct his family tree, to reach distant relatives in Germany, and find out why his family left the country – he asks the Institute of Germans Living Abroad whether there was “any Jewish blood in the Fritschle or Magdalena Graybost (my grandmother), family?” (January 24, 1939). There are also many photographs of his family, especially his two young songs Oliver N. and Stanton Fritchle with their mother, Blanche Neiswander (1879–1960) in what is probably Denver.
Overall, an interesting and well-illustrated archive of the personal life and lesser-known inventions of a 20th-century automobile pioneer. Of interest especially to historians of sustainable energy. (Inventory #: List2605)
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