Schnauferl

[George Smolinski]

 

 

 

 

A pair of Viennese Ladies riding in their Schnauferl - this photograph is from from Automobile Magazine circa 1900.

Cute little buggy. I don't see any kind of engine or motor. Wonder if it was electric.

[Larry Schramm]

I would think it is gas as it appears to be a radiator in front of the front axle.

[JFranklin]

I like the handlebar steering. 

[jhh2206]

Friends 

 

 

I got all exited and looked up Schnauferl.  I thought it was another obscure make to find out about but alas it is just a German term for old car.  At least we could start a Schnauferl Gesellschaft or something.

 

Not enough room in the body for a boiler or water tank. Drum under the car looks like the crankcase of a one cylinder DeDion engine. I suspect it may be a French confection .

 

Best

 

 

John Harley

[wayne sheldon]

My first thought at first glance also was something in the De Dion knockoff line. De Dion Bouton was a French company, one of the foremost when France fought for supremacy in automotive design in Europe. Germany was foremost, first, with not just one (Benz), but two (Daimler) people developing practical gasoline powered automobiles only a few months and miles apart. Relatively few years later, French scientists were rapidly developing significant improvements to Benz and Daimler designs, and pushing for world domination in the automotive industry. One of the leaders of the French movement was De Dion! By the mid 1890s, they were producing automobiles of their own design using small single cylinder engines of their design. De Dion in turn, began licensing their designs to other countries as well as other French companies for manufacture elsewhere because they lacked the ability to manufacture enough themselves to meet the demands of the time.

By 1900, they were selling thousands of their little one cylinder engines all over the world to other companies for which to manufacture automobiles. Even the first few Pierce automobiles used a De Dion engine. Dozens of other small engine companies around the world built licensed copies of the De Dion engine (many companies building many hundreds of the engines!), while numerous other companies built unlicensed knockoffs of the engine. Waltham Orient in the United States built and sold a small single cylinder engine based upon the De Dion engine, but I don't know if theirs was licensed or not.

There were dozens of companies all over the world manufacturing automobiles similar to the De Dion Bouton. Some look so much like the De Dion Bouton that it takes an expert to tell them apart. A lot of them have individualized designs that even a person like me can tell they are one of the copies. 

Most years in recent decades, I watch the reports of the annual London to Brighton Run in England. De Dion Bouton is often one of the most represented marques! There are always quite a number of De Dion copy cars also. Marques such as Star (English) and Rochet began as copies of the De Dion.

 

Benz and Daimler also licensed automobile manufacturing based upon their earlier designs. This went on as those two fought over recognition of who was actually first.

Benz designs were manufactured in several countries including England and the United States.

 

Just a little background for those less familiar with really early automotive history.

[jhh2206]

George

 

This is the only surviving  two cylinder Pierce "Arrow". In 1903 Pierce was still the name of the car and "Arrow" was the name of the model. It was restored about 15 years ago by the late John Hovey.  One of his brothers owned  of Victor's House of Music where  I worked . It has a two cylinder DeDion engine.

 

John brought the carburetor in to be cleaned in the ultrasonic cleaner. It was a substantial bronze affair weighing a few pounds. The cleaner was 90 gallons so tubas could be cleaned in it. The carburetor promptly turned the fluid black and plugged a clean filter. It sure looked nice afterward.

 

I have the DeDion  book around here someplace. I also have a picture  I took of the car round here with John standing next to it, this is one I found on the net.

 

DeDion and Bollee did a lot of ingenious work early on.

 

John Harley

Edited January 8, 2023 by jhh2206 (see edit history)

[Marty Roth]

13 hours ago, Larry Schramm said:

I would think it is gas as it appears to be a radiator in front of the front axle.

My first thought, as well-

Good catch, Larry

[1937hd45]

Today De Dion is most often remembered for their rear axle design, and another early French car Panhard is remembered for the rear axle bar. 

[wayne sheldon]

A collector I have known for thirty years now had (I imagine still has because I cannot see him ever letting that treasure go!) one of the earliest Pierce automobiles. The single cylinder Mottorette with the engine mounted on the rear axle! His was a very original car in surprisingly good condition considering that when I saw it, it was just a hundred years old! If I recall correctly, Pierce began building their own single cylinder engines about that time, and I don't recall if his Motorette had a De Dion or Pierce built engine. (Someone please correct me if I am misremembering there?) As I recall, his was built early in the second year of Pierce building motorcars. He made a comment to me about wishing it was a first year but that those are so rare he thought he might have to settle for a second year production Motorette.

I never did take a photo of that car. I wouldn't post one if I had without his permission.

 

The OP photo here doesn't have good detail. However, that dark blob under the car slightly forward of the rear axle looks like a De Dion engine crankcase to me.

 

John Harley, Thank you for posting that photo of the two cylinder "Arrow"! I cannot recall ever seeing one of those in person. It certainly is an incredible automobile!

[Paul Dobbin]

Austrians may have had a pet name for old cars that Huff & Puff.   My guess is air cooled gas engine like the I H Auto Buggy.   Viennese Ladies are in Vienna, Austria.   Looks to be about the size of the first mass produced Oldsmobiles.

[John E. Guitar]

Here is a photo of Jules-Albert de Dion and Georges Bouton taken by Jules Beau in 1899 at the Critérium des Motocycles. Jules Beau is generally considered to be the first sports photographer in the world. The car looks like the same model as the one the two Viennese ladies are in.

 

It's interesting how heavily retouched the Viennese photo is. People complain about photoshop but it's really nothing new.

 

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Beau

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georges_Bouton_et_Jules-Albert_de_Dion_(au_Critérium_des_Motocycles_de_1899).jpg

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by John E. Guitar (see edit history)

[Billy Kingsley]

I believe the photo in the opening post is actually a very detailed drawing. 

[wayne sheldon]

Billy K, Without knowing the original and subsequent sources of the picture, it can be hard to tell exactly what it is. It has the look of a common type of pictures used in many magazines of the late 1800s and very early 1900s. While there were a few very high end magazines that could and would print actual photographs on a lot of pages? The process to set up the photo and print them in quantity was quite expensive, and very few magazines used more than a very few full photographs in most issues.

There were several cheaper to print methods of printing pictures. Various types of "printing blocks", that could be made and used offering different losses in detail from the real original photograph. Some of those methods were "artist enhanced", where people (usually a trained artist) would trace a photo from a negative projection onto a print block form which would then be used to make the print blocks. These could be sent out to newspapers and other periodicals for mass printing. 

Higher quality magazines would employ better artists and have them spend more time preparing pictures for printing.

With computers at the time nearly a century in the future? Technological methods in those days of transferring photos to mass printing did exist, and were used by higher quality magazines. They maintained a bit more detail and grayscale than did most of the artist enhanced methods. Many of the finest periodicals in the world at that time were published in France. And I suspect that is what this picture is. Although it also could be one of the better artist enhanced photos. Some of those people were really good!

 

In the USA, National Geographic often published a lot of good photos. But that was mostly a few years later.

[John E. Guitar]

On 1/7/2023 at 11:33 PM, George Smolinski said:

 

 

 

 

A pair of Viennese Ladies riding in their Schnauferl - this photograph is from from Automobile Magazine circa 1900.

Cute little buggy. I don't see any kind of engine or motor. Wonder if it was electric.

George, do you still have the original image? Can you repost it? The original link seems dead.

 

Here is a scan at the Smithsonian of Automobile Magazine for November 1899. There's a lot of interesting information.

 

https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/automobilemaga1189919newy

 

Below is a low resolution image I extracted from the Smithsonian pdf.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by John E. Guitar (see edit history)

[George Smolinski]

Sorry, no.