science · 26 August 1950 · 75 years ago
death
Died 26 Aug 1950 at age 86 (born 3 Jun 1864).
American inventor and automobile manufacturer, designer of the three-horsepower, curved-dash Oldsmobile, the first commercially successful American-made automobile and the first to use a progressive assembly system, which foreshadowed modern mass-production methods. When young, he worked in his father's machine and repair shop, in Lansing, Mich., where he experimented with small steam engines. In 1887, for a distance of one block, Olds drove Lansing's first automobile, an experimental steam vehicle. He continued to work with steam, gasoline and electric power. Eventually he produced a gasoline-powered vehicle that seated four persons and could do 18 miles per hour on level ground.
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