James Ward Packard was an American automobile manufacturer and inventor. He and his brother founded the company that produced some of the world’s finest automobiles.
Background
James Ward Packard was born on November 5, 1863 in Warren, Trumbull County, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Warren and Mary E. (Doud) Packard. His father was a successful business man, engaged first in the hardware trade in Warren and later in extensive sawmill operations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. His father was a successful business man, engaged first in the hardware trade in Warren and later in extensive sawmill operations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. James spent a normal boy's life at home and developed a particularly keen interest in mechanics and electricity.
Education
James Ward Packard spent a normal boy's life at home and developed a particularly keen interest in mechanics and electricity. He prepared for college in his birthplace, and at the age of seventeen entered Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the youngest in the class, graduating in 1884 with the degree of mechanical engineer.
Career
Immediately after his graduation, James Packard went to work in a steam power plant in New York City, and a year or so later obtained the job of foreman for the Sawyer-Mann Electric Company, New York, manufacturers of the Sawyer-Mann incandescent electric lamp. This association presumably gave him his first real opportunity to engage in research and experimentation, for in the course of the succeeding five years he acquired a number of valuable patents. These included a new form of incandescent lamp, a lamp socket, and four patents on improvements in vacuum pumps for exhausting the air from incandescent lamp bulbs. In 1889 the Sawyer-Mann Company was sold to the Westinghouse interests, which sale included the transfer of Packard's patents; and, although he had the opportunity to connect himself with the new owners, Packard returned to his home in Warren and with his brother started an electrical business under the name of the Packard Electric Company.
The following year, with the aid of local capital, the brothers reorganized their company as the New York & Ohio Company, and for more than ten years engaged in the manufacture of electrical transformers, fuse boxes, measuring instruments, and cables. At first these products were of the conventional type, but Packard, devoting his time especially to research, devised a number of improvements, which were immediately manufactured by the company. Thus on October 9, 1894, he obtained two patents for a transformer and fuse box. He devised a number of further improvements in transformers in 1897 and 1899, and perfected a new electrical measuring instrument in 1900. Early in this decade Packard had become interested also in the "horseless carriage" and bought a French De Dion-Bouton motor tricycle which, incidentally, had been constructed in Massachusetts. He also investigated the early European horseless carriages and as a result, between 1891 and 1893, conceived the idea of building such a vehicle himself. Assisted by one of his shopmen, he drew up plans for a vehicle and negotiated for the purchase of a gasoline engine from Charles King of Detroit.
The depression of 1893 unfortunately halted for five years the actual building of the automobile. In 1898, however, he purchased one of the first Winton automobiles and shortly afterwards, in company with George Weiss, who had been one of the organizers of the Winton Company, and W. A. Hatcher, the Winton shop superintendent, he designed and built his first automobile, which was given a road test Nov. 6, 1899. Following this successful trial, the Ohio Automobile Company was immediately formed as a department of Packard's electric company, and the manufacture of Packard automobiles was begun early in 1900. After several years of successful operation, in 1903, with the assistance of outside financial help, he reorganized his company as the Packard Motor Car Company and established a new plant at Detroit, Michigan, where it has remained ever since. Although president of the new company, Packard continued to live in Warren. The mercantile side of the business had very little appeal for him, however, and after a few years he relinquished the presidency and for the remainder of his life acted as consultant and adviser to the company.
As in his earlier electrical work, so in the automobile field his greatest interest was in research, and he contributed many valuable improvements to the automobile. These included: gasoline engines, transmission, ignition and carburetion systems, chassis construction, and braking mechanisms. His success, it has been said, was due primarily to his sensitiveness to mechanical crudeness and his talent to see how things that had been done could be done better. His homes were storehouses of useful and experimental devices, including a collection of watches, which, for exquisite beauty and intricate mechanism, was perhaps the finest ever assembled by an individual. It is now in the possession of the Horological Institute of America, Washington, D. C. His philanthropies were many, the outstanding ones being a million-dollar laboratory for electrical and mechanical engineering given to Lehigh University and the sum of a million dollars given to the Seaman's Institute in New York. He died on March 20, 1928.
Achievements
James Ward Packard was one of the best auto engineering industrialist and the founder of the Packard Motor Car Company and Packard Electric Company. Packard became one of the most prestigious marques in the world. He was also the founder of Packard Laboratory for electrical and mechanical engineering at Lehigh University.
Connections
On August 1904, James Ward Packard married Elizabeth Achsah Gillmer of Warren, Ohio, who survived him at the time of his death in Cleveland.
