Charles E. Duryea and J. Frank Duryea

Charles E. Duryea and J. Frank Duryea (respectively, born December 15, 1861, Canton, Illinois, U.S.—died September 28, 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; born October 8, 1869, Washburn, Illinois, U.S.—died February 15, 1967, Saybrook, Connecticut) were inventors of one of the first automobiles and the first that was actually built and operated in the United States.

Charles Duryea entered the rapidly growing bicycle business and displayed a marked inventive talent. In 1886 at the Ohio state fair, he saw a stationary gasoline engine that seemed to him to be sufficiently compact to power a carriage or a wagon. By 1891 he had completed a design, and, with his brother Frank, he then constructed a car and engine in a rented loft in Springfield, Massachusetts. In later years a controversy marred relations between the brothers: Charles claimed that the model was completed to an operable state under his guidance, while Frank asserted that he perfected the engine and transmission while Charles was in Illinois. In any case the car made a successful run in the streets of Springfield on September 22, 1893.

An improved version, largely the work of Frank Duryea, appeared in 1895 and won several races. Thirteen copies of it were manufactured and sold, but the company failed, and the brothers went separate ways. Charles made a number of vehicles, some three-wheeled, and Frank developed the Stevens-Duryea, one of the best known of the early standard makes, a high-priced limousine that continued in production into the 1920s.