The Silent Waverley
Version 3.0
For more information about Waverley, please see the U-Z webpage.
In 1886 Charles F. Smith, who moved to Indianapolis from Kentucky a few years earlier, founded The Indiana Bicycle Company as a modest retail store. He soon found partners and went into manufacturing to cash in on the bicycle boom. In 1895 they got a trademark for the Waverley brand, taken from a series of popular romantic novels penned by Sir Walter Scott.
Factory building commenced around 1889 and came to an abrupt halt in 1896 as the bicycle boom had peaked. By 1897 the Waverley factory campus consisted of six major buildings on a full city block. The power plant had automatic underfed coal stokers fueling seven boilers producing 700 horsepower of heat and electricity for the complex. It was a relatively modern factory campus that ran machine tools from 24 local pods of shafts, pulleys, and belts that were driven by large electric motors. This was much more efficient than the pre-electric era factories, where power was distributed from a central steam engine, or water wheel, directly turning large, complex, shaft, pulley, and belt systems. There were machine shops, forges, metal presses, a paint shop, and enameling ovens. The plant turned out bicycles by the train-car load. Almost every part was made at the factory, or by the related steel tube and tire companies.
The problem in 1896 was that several dozen other bicycle makers had ramped up to mass production, flooding the market and cutting prices to where it was very hard to make any money, regardless of volume. It became clear to many successful bicycle makers that the arena for growth and profits was in the embryonic motor vehicle business.
The American Electric Vehicle Co of Chicago was one of the first emergent companies. They had a car on the road in April of 1896, the single-motor cars designed by Karsten Knudsen and two-motor cars designed by Clinton E. Woods. The chassis was made for them by the Elgin Sewing Machine & Bicycle Co, and the bodies by the Fischer Equipment Co. American seems to have produced only five vehicles the first year, as they lacked factory and finance.
That same April, Hiram Percy Maxim was demonstrating a prototype Columbia Electric runabout he made for bicycle king Albert Augustus Pope.
When American approached Indiana Bicycle about the possibility of manufacturing wire wheels for their cars, Charles F. Smith, Loren S. Dow, and Philip Goetz realized their Indianapolis factory could easily make entire cars, and proposed a merger. American sent a runabout to Indianapolis for inspection. In May of 1898 they bought a stake in American Electric and began producing similar vehicles, but with brazed steel tube frames like their bicycles, under the brand name Waverley Electric. The merger never gelled, but the Waverley management had rights to the Knudsen designs and patents. The Waverley version was built under the direction of their former West Coast bicycle distributor James Simpson Conwell, who was brought in from San Francisco in late 1897. A woodworking and coach building factory was added when the automobile era began, there was plenty of floor space for assembly and letting paint dry.
The Waverley versions had a different chassis, but used the same Knudsen designed single-motor drive system and steering gear. The motor turned a pair of jackshafts. At the wheel ends of the shafts, straight cut pinion gears drove outside toothed ring gears mounted to the wheel hubs, which spun at the ends of a stationary solid axle. The motor, differential, & jackshafts were all in a wide cast housing, which also served as part of the suspension to keep the pinion gears in alignment with the large ring gears, all moving with the axle. All elements in the housing had the same center of rotation. The motor armature was hollow, allowing the longer jackshaft to pass through it.
Straight cut gears were noisy and at higher speeds they could howl.
The first Waverley Electric sold went to Indianapolis resident Frank Staley in June of 1898. The first motorcar in Los Angeles was a Waverley runabout sold to Steve Hall by Rambler bicycle dealer W. K. Cowen. He told a reporter at the 1917 Los Angeles Auto Show, that he then sold four of the “tally-ho” type Waverleys to Hall, who intended to run a stage line taking tourists from downtown Los Angeles to Lucky Baldwin’s ranch in Arcadia. The rough dirt roads, combined with the high seating position, defeated the concept, as passengers were thrown about with some force.
In 1899 several prominent bicycle manufacturers, organized by baseball hero and sporting goods magnate Albert Goodwill Spalding, built a coalition in an attempt to return profitability by closing factories to reduce the over-capacity that was destroying profit margins. A smaller share of a profitable enterprise looked better than full ownership of a failing one. This trust was called the American Bicycle Co. It had no relationship to the American Electric Vehicle Co.
Among the many companies that became part of the trust was the Indiana Bicycle Co. The investors wanted to take the buyout, while the managers wanted to keep making electric cars of the American Electric type.
The rights to American Electric based vehicles were not part of the Indiana Bicycle deal. Dow and Goetz resigned, took their rights to the American Electric based Waverley design, and started a new company in Indianapolis called the National Automobile & Electric Co, which became better known for their gasoline cars, and connection with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Executives from some of the 44-47 companies that were part of the holding company’s partnership became the new directors of The Indiana Bicycle factory and the Waverley brand. R. Lindsey Colman from the Western Wheel Works – a nemesis of Albert A. Pope – became the new President.
Parts of the Cleveland Machine Screw Co also became part of the American Bicycle trust. With them came the electric car and battery patents of Elmer A. Sperry. He was hired to consult with company engineer Robert H. Hassler, refining his design for production as the new Waverley Electric.
Waverley’s extensive factory campus was re-tooled for making the new Electric. It was lighter weight, lower to the ground, and more efficient. Hassler had the patent for an elegant single motor drive system that eliminated chains and drove the rear wheels from the center of the axle. They replaced the straight cut bevel gears in his patent application with herringbone type gears, which were quiet and self-adjusting. Sperry primarily devoted his time to developing the design and manufacture of his battery and motor. He also designed electrical elements of the Waverley vehicles, and their charging systems. Hassler and Sperry did not stay with Waverley long, and both went on to build highly successful eponymous companies. After 1903 staff designers, principally mechanical engineer Harold H. Kennedy and electrical engineer Victor E. Chamberlin updated the cars.
Waverley developed a range of models built on the same light chassis, with a few heavier two-motor models such as a Surrey and a Station Wagon, which had an outside driving position with an enclosed passenger cabin.
Instead of heavy inside-drive Broughams, they featured a removable Coupé top that would enclose Chelsea and Stanhope models in foul weather. The Woods Electric of Chicago also used this design strategy. Their most popular model at the start of the century was a simple, relatively inexpensive, open, two-occupant style rig, generally known as a piano box runabout, which Waverley called a Road Wagon. It was the electric equivalent of the curved dash Olds, and sold very well.
Albert A. Pope was one of the biggest dogs in the pack of bicycle related company owners with a stake in the American Bicycle trust. In June of 1900 he sold his interest in the Electric Vehicle Company’s lead cab scheme, based on their recent merger with Pope’s Columbia Vehicle Manufacturing Company. Over the next two years he used some of these funds to buy out other stakeholders in American Bicycle, if the price was right. The trust also sold off many of the assets, including the steel tube and rubber tire companies. Several of the idled factories were sold (or swapped for equity) to parties in the trust, for any use other than bicycle making. Former bicycle competitors became motor vehicle competitors.
The automobile manufacturing companies, which only included Waverley and the Toledo Steam car at the time, became the International Motor Car Co. Several of the more popular brands of bicycles were continued by another branch called the American Cycle Manufacturing Co.
In September of 1903 all parts of American Bicycle went into receivership. The Pope interests, now with the largest stake, took full control.
Pope was very fond of putting his name on things, so both the automobile branch and the bicycle branch were folded into his revived Pope Manufacturing Company. The brand became Pope-Waverley, although Pope had little direct involvement with the Waverley vehicles. He removed the American Bicycle management from Waverley, and Albert A. Pope became the new President, with his son Albert Linder Pope as Vice President, and cousin George Pope as Secretary/Treasurer.
The Pope Manufacturing Co ran many bicycle and automobile manufacturing enterprises in several states. They were headquartered in Boston Massachusetts, where the Waverley Company was “Desk 5.”
Long-time Pope associates Herbert H. Rice and Wilbur C. Johnson handled on-site management. They built Pope-Waverley into one of the most important electric car companies, with worldwide sales.
Industrial vehicles were a growing part of production. In 1906 an additional floor, adding about 7,000 square feet, expanded one of the factory buildings. Two floors of that factory were designated for commercial vehicle production, principally light delivery trucks.
Although Waverley, and a few other parts of the Pope holdings, were doing well, the bank panic and recession of 1907 was too much for the far flung, and over leveraged, Pope Manufacturing Company. Albert A. Pope was 64 and in failing health. It became clear they were not able to meet that year’s debt obligations, and bank loans had dried up.
His oldest son, Albert Linder Pope, was appointed receiver, and accepted an offer for the Waverley motor vehicle enterprise of $200,000 from a coalition of Indianapolis businessmen, put together by Rice and Johnson. Pope Manufacturing also got the company’s cash assets, amounting to $106,420.71, and emblematic of the company’s success. A smaller restructured Pope Manufacturing Co remained, making gasoline automobiles, motorcycles and bicycles through 1915.
Principal investor William B. Cooley became President of “The Waverley Company,” with Rice as Vice-President, and Johnson as Secretary. Carl von Hake, of the Indiana Coffin Co––obviously looking for investment diversity––was Treasurer.
The electric pleasure car market around 1908 was shifting from light open cars to inside drive Coupés on shaft-drive bevel gear platforms. The Waverley design had the motor(s) attached to the axle, which, due to unsprung weight, had practical limits as motors got heavier and cars got faster.
Waverley’s staff engineer Harold H. Kennedy came up with a shaft drive system that was unique in having a transverse driveshaft, roughly parallel to the rear axle. To accommodate play between the moving axle and a stationary motor, the transverse shaft had slip joints at both U-joints. This design, introduced in a 1910 gentleman’s roadster with a faux radiator, allowed manufacture of all significant components to remain at their factory. In November they finally introduced a conventional Brougham for the 1911 model year.
1913 was a tough year for America, with a sharp recession, accompanied by record spring floods and severe winter blizzards throughout the Great Lake states.
At the Waverley Company’s annual meeting on December 10, 1913 it was declared a prosperous year, with $1,312,815.94 in gross receipts against $441,336.64 spent on salaries and wages. The surplus, including undistributed profits, was $590,000, against a capitalization of just $190,000.
By the mid-teens Waverley cars were becoming harder to differentiate from the competition. Design across the industry had standardized with enclosed Coupés using worm gears or the newer spiral-bevel Hotchkiss type shaft-drive, which remains standard in front-motor rear-drive cars and trucks. Lower priced competition came to market, such as the Milburn and the new line of light-chassis Detroit Electrics, driving down profit margins. The luxury gasoline car brands that electrics competed with had become much more civilized in comfort and reliability, with electrical systems for starting and lighting.
1916 was the last year for Waverley cars as the United States shifted to a war economy. All they offered was a Brougham, with two different seating arrangements. This last iteration of the Waverley was a full thousand pounds lighter than the previous year’s model. They also capitulated to Hotchkiss shaft-drive with a spiral-bevel gear set. Waverley did no automobile advertising after mid-year.
The company went on for a while longer taking in sheet metal fabrication and forge work for other companies.
Albert Augustus Pope, who liked to be addressed by the honorarium Colonel, passed away August 10, 1909.
Charles F. Smith, who got the nickname “Indiana Smith”, passed away in May of 1918.
Albert G. Spalding and James S. Conwell - a descendent of Betsy Ross - both moved to Southern California. Spalding, with his new wife, built an impressive ocean view estate and pursued Theosophy near San Diego. When Conwell died, in December of 1917, he was President of the Los Angeles City Council.