Daimler-Knight

At Los Angeles, one Charles Y. Knight, an almost mythical personage, inventor of the sleeve-valve motor, now wealthy, retired and 56, might have beamed again last fortnight with the pleasure of the prophet honored anew in his own country. John North Willys (Willys-Knight, Willys-Overland) had just returned, with his wife and daughter Virginia, from two months in Europe, where as usual he had mixed business with pleasure. Debarked at Manhattan, he had said:

"Although I am positive that the light weight car is the car for the future, at the same time there is a demand for a limited number of big, extra powerful and luxurious motor cars. To meet this demand I am bringing back to the Stearns Motor Co. in which I have a large interest, a proposition which will give it the exclusive sale in the U. S. of a new Daimler-Knight sleeve-valve motor of 180 horsepower, the most powerful stock car ever built.-

Daimler of England was the first motor car to use the sleeve-valve method of regulating gasoline motor intake and exhaust, the principles of which Charles Y. Knight had worked out in 1904.

Mechanically-minded son of an Indiana miller, he none the less, to gain livelihood, had learned the printing craft. As a printer he worked among the Dakota Black Hills, at Minneapolis, at Chicago. There he founded the periodical Dairy Produce, fought against spurious oleomargarine. (In 1902 Congress passed the bill he demanded, the oleomargarine be not colored artificially.) He wrote a textbook, The Dairyman's Manual.

He bought an automobile, the now forgotten Knox.

This Knox annoyed Mr. Knight with the noise its poppet valves made. He tinkered with it; thought; devised the sleeve-valve principle.

U. S. motor makers scorned his invention. They preferred the poppet valve system of George B. Selden (1845-1922) of Rochester, even though they had to pay royalties on his alleged basic patents.

Inventor Knight, prophet outcast at home, went to England, where the Daimler company of Coventry, was "sold" on the new motor. This was in 1908. Since then the Knight motor has become prized equipment for the Mercedes in Germany, the Panhard, Peugeot and Voisin in France, the Minerva in Belgium, the Russell-Knight in Canada.

In the U. S., F. B. Stearns (now retired) received, in 1912 the license to use the motor in his Stearns-Knight cars. In 1915 Mr. Willys, who learned the merits of the motor from gossip during a transatlantic trip, bought the rights for the light car field. No U. S. passenger cars but the Stearns-Knight and Willys-Knight may yet use this motor, although the Federal Truck has it and, strangely, the Yellow Cab, which is now owned by General Motors, great maker and marketer of poppet-valve motor cars.

The Knight patents have until 1934 to run. Then there doubtless will be a scramble of manufacturers who will install this engine. But Mr. Knight, retired at Los Angeles with his royalties ever flowing, has been so improving the mechanism that he can keep his own licensees always ahead of competitors.

* The Stutz, 92 h. p., is reputed the most powerful stock car built in the U. S. In price the Daimler-Knight competes with the Rolls-Royce, various models of which sell at from $14,000 to $16,300. Locomo-biles cost from $2,360 to $15,000; Lincolns, $4,260 to $7.500.