Gottfried Schloemer

Gottfried Schloemer or Godfrey Schloemer (1842-1921) was a coopersmith, mechanic and inventor that lived on the south side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA. His claim to fame is that he built in 1889 the first practical gasoline automobile in Wisconson. Some news articles say Schloemer was the First One in America to make a workable gasoline engine automobile. Certain reports say he was the designer and maker of the first gasoline-powered automobile in the world.

Early life

Schloemer was born near Cologne on the Rhine river August 25, 1842. He immigrated to America from Prussia with his family when he was 3 years old in May of 1845. According to the National Archives he arrived in New York port on the ship Harriett on July 1st, 1845. They then traveled to Milwaukee and arrived there in June of 1846 and bought some farm land on Beloit Road. Schloemer was raised on this farm and when he became an adult he moved out of state and took up jobs in the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Schloemer later moved back to Milwaukee and lived at 545 Fourth Avenue. He then worked for the Toepfer brothers out of a red brick building as a cooper in their machine shop on National Ave in Milwaukee. There with Frank Toepfer he made the first gas-Fueled automobile.

Family history

Schloemer's family line was from Germany according to the 1880 United States Federal Census. Schloemer himself as well as his wife and her parents were born in Prussia, Germany. He was married to a neighborhood girl 3 years his senior, Mary Elisabeth Schmid, on May 30th, 1867. She normally went by the name Elizabeth and was born AbOUT 1839, according to the United States Federal Census. Their children were

• John, b. Jun 1869
• Catharine, b. 1871
• Andrew, b. Nov 1872
• Anne, b. Jan 1875
• Wolgang, b. 1876
• Christian, b. Jan 1880

As of 1892 John, the eldest son, is the only one of the children that has moved out of the Schloemer's home. John has a good reputation as a piano-tuner working for a well known music man of Milwaukee named George Gerber who's business is on National Avenue.

Schloemer's medical history shows he suffered from a hernia for two years starting in the summer of 1890. A doctor friend that had moved back to Milwaukee in 1892 cured him in about 5 weeks.

Schloemer automobile

Schloemer, according to a later testimony of his, said that in 1880 he conceived the idea of a "motor wagon" (a.k.a. "gas buggy", "auto wagon") with an attached gasoline engine to make it self-propelling. He was in the cooperage business at the Toepfer blacksmith shop on National Avenue in Milwaukee at that time. Schloemer went about having a single-cylinder motor made according to his design by the Sintz Gas Engine Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sintz made the engines used later by Charles Brady King and others for their first automobile.

The Sintz engine that was specifically designed and ordered by Schloemer was 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches. It was installed in the "motor wagon" that was made in 1889 by Schloemer. He first drove the motorized wagon on the streets of Milwaukee in 1890.

Schloemer believed in the commercial value of the idea of his "motor wagon" and went about marketing his car. He went about getting capitalists to invest in his invention in later part of the 1880s without much luck. Finally he obtained two wealthy Milwaukee men to invest in his self-propelled "motor wagon" in 1889. They set plans by 1892 to manufacture the car in a large quanities, however the national financial panic of 1893 put a halt on their plans and the investors backed out.

Automobile design

Schloemer had to improvise on his "motor wagon" for an igniting system to fire the fuel, since at this time there was no such thing as a spark plug. He used a home-made make-and-break sparking mechanism consisting of two points of steel striking together causing a "spark" to ignite the gasoline fumes in the cylinder.

Schloemer designed in 1892 and patented a carburetor, which was known as the Gottfried Schloemer carburetor. He used kerosene lamp wicks in the center of it to get the gasoline from the gas tank into the cylinder of the motor to be ignited.

Schloemer also tells in a later testimony that when he first drove his "motor wagon" down the streets of downtown Milwaukee for the first time he remembers he went down West Water Street and stopped at Spiegel's [...] Store to purchase some items. When he came out of the store there was a large crowd around the automobile and found it necessary to ask a policeman to clear a passageway for him to leave. Once he started the motor the very loud noise scared the people that gathered and they immediately scattered.

[[File:Schloemer 1889 patent.jpg|thumb|left|