Selecting one story that truly stands out from the crowd might prove a fool's errand, but if pushed to choose, one that grew up amidst corn fields of south-central Indiana and over the next 100 years spread through 200 nations over six continents of the globe would have to be a leading candidate.
The most skilled novelist might be challenged to come up with a more unlikely cast of characters or set of circumstances or twists of plot. Our chief protagonist is a short, slight, bespectacled tinkerer, barely out of his teens. As suggested in the quotes above, he came to embody the traits of both the most exuberant carnival barker and the most careful scientist.
This was facilitated to at least a slight degree from the very beginning by his barrel-hoops making father, Frank Cummins, moving the family from small town to small town in Indiana and Ohio looking for the best stand of elm trees to produce the highest-quality hoops.
It’s also been hinted that the quietly dominant females in the household---mother, sister, nieces---were perhaps overly protective of W. G., that in their view there may not have been a suitable wife to be found. Then too, both Clessie Cummins and Irwin Miller commented at different times that W. G. Irwin, despite his formidable, sometimes gruff, exterior may really have been a very shy man.
Clessie was equally firm in his opinion that W. G. Irwin’s father, Joseph Ireland Irwin, the white bearded 84-year old patriarch of the extended Irwin-Sweeny-Miller family and Columbus’ wealthiest citizen, was not shy in the least. Joseph I. had come to Columbus in 1846 with 30 cents in his pocket
Clessie harbored his own doubts---the matter had already raised his apprehensions---but he kept the doubts to himself and assured Irwin with all the bravado he could muster that it was “all in knowing the tricks.”
Half-galloping the four blocks to the Packard’s garage-abode to keep up with the much taller Irwin. Clessie wondered just what tricks he did need to know. He had intended to secure a Packard service manual before laying eyes on the car, but it was obvious Irwin was in no mood for delay.
Alas, as both had feared, Clessie couldn’t budge the engine. Just as Irwin turned in resignation, a thought occurred. Clessie recalled that he had rocked small 2-cycle boat engines back and forth against compression. Was there possibly a way to make that work with an engine this large? There was only one way to find out.
Grabbing a cloth and dipping it into the gas tank, he lifted the hood and squeezed a few drops of gasoline into the priming cup atop each cylinder. Closing the cup valves, he rocked the engine two or three times with the crank. He hopped into the driver’s seat, wiggled the spark advance and---presto---the mammoth engine roared to life!
Like the bullet passing though J. I. Irwin’s hat, the story very well could have ended then and there. October 8, 1908 would remain a red-letter date in Clessie Cummins’ life, but it would not be the last time he pulled a rabbit out of his hat.
Over the next several years, Clessie became almost a member of the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller household. The family was not only charmed by his winning personality, they soon found that he could repair anything or solve any problem that would admit to a mechanical solution.
It’s not known whether W. G. Irwin admitted aloud that Clessie Cummins---eight grade education notwithstanding---was an engineering genius. But after catching the first hint of it that day in the family garage. He surely came to appreciate before much time had passed that Clessie had the makings of genius.
Displaying the juxtaposition of talents and interests typical of the brood, Hugh Miller, also the son of a Disciples of Christ minister, was a college professor, a businessman, and a politician.
Noted for his erudition, he nonetheless processed enough of the common touch to win election to the Indiana General Assembly in 1902 and the lieutenant governor’s seat in 1904.
He was defeated for governor in 1908 and the U.S. Senate in 1914, but was given a very good chance of winning the state’s other Senate seat in 1916. The opportunity never arrived; he contracted tuberculosis and was forced to drop out of the race in December 1915. He thereafter led a quieter life, devoted to business, mostly at the Irwin Union Bank. He had just retired as chairman of the Cummins Engine Company when he died in 1947.
One daughter, Clementine, was born to Nettie and Hugh Miller in 1905, and on May 26,1909, Joseph Irwin Miller entered the world. Irwin Miller was to cast a long shadow---one that extended in living form into the 21st century and linger yet today.
Clessie and Ethel had become acquainted when Sweeney maintained his office in the upstairs of the Irwin garage. In time they would have five children; Brainard (the only Cummins offspring to have a full time career with Cummins Engines), Beatrice, Mary Beth, Jow, and George.
Sadly, Ethel died just after George’s birth in 1925. Clessie, left with five motherless children, met Estella (Stella) Feldman, the sister of a business acquaintance in New York City, shortly afterward.
Two years after Clessie married Ethel, he and Ethel’s brother, Brainard McCoy, took and ill-organized and often harrowing voyage down the Mississippi in Clessie’s home-built motorboat. Clessie learned several lessons from this expedition.
Avoiding danger and excitement was not among them---that was something he never completely outgrew---but being well-provisioned and well-prepared was, and this included having a reliable fuel source.
Gasoline was seldom readily available in 1912, particularly on the water; Kerosene usually was. Clessie was sure that a reliable way could be found to run internal combustion engines without gasoline, using only cruder forms of oil. Safely home, he began studying oil engines (diesel design).
He concluded that they were all lacking, most of them victims of unnecessary complication. Besides, almost all oil engines then in use were behemoths that took up to 30 tons of weight to produce 200 horsepower. There had to be a better way; Clessie was sure he had found a challenge worthy of his sustained attention.
The next year W. G. delegated to Clessie the redesign of the Irwin stables into a new garage. The renovated building contained room for the Packard and an electric car the family had purchased for around-town use, as well as for Clessie’s experiments and repair business. The opening of the Cummins Machine Works was announced and soon Clessie was clearing $500 to $600 per month, seriously impressive money for 1914-15. By 1916, all repair work was dropped in favor of contract machine work.
With America’s 1917 entry into World War I, Clessie found himself with a contract for machining wheel hubs for artillery wagons. The machine works were transferred into a former railroad warehouse where fifty men labored round the clock. With the war winding down at the end of the next year, Clessie had no idea how to generate enough revenue to meet his payroll. The only hope he could see was to break into the engine manufacturing business.
The next fortuitous occurrence came to pass in October 1918 with his discovery of the Hvid engine. Designed in the Netherlands, the 4-cycle Hvid used a cup adjoining the combustion chamber as a sort of pre-combustion chamber. On the suction stroke of the piston, fuel was delivered into the cup; on the compression stroke, combustion occurred first in the cup and continued into the main chamber, eliminating the injection of fuel by high pressure.
Clessie traveled to Chicago where, on November 11, 1918, a demonstration of the engine lived up to his hopes. He learned that for the payment of a $2,500 licensing fee and a $5 royalty per engine, he could build Hvids in his own shop. At the moment, the war ended. There would be no engine production for the War Department, but Clessie was confident other markets abounded.
W. G. Irwin, encouraged by Clessie’s enthusiasm, agreed to the capitalization of a new company. On February 3, 1919, after the signing of a Hvid licensing agreement, the Indiana Secretary of State issued a certificate of incorporation to the Cummins Engine Company (the Engine Company, as it would come to be called) with $50,000 in capital stock divided into 500 shares of $100 per value.
Seventeen days later, some 2 investors met to organize the company operations. Clessie Cummins was elected president. Four officers of the company, including Clessie, plu W. G. Irwin comprised a five-member board of directors. The design had been completed for two engines, using the Hvid principle: a one-and-one-half and a three horse-power, each developing its power at 900 rpm, with bore and stroke dimensions of 3 x 4.5 and 3.875 x 5.5, respectively. Now all that remained was to find a market. The Fledgling company lacked the capital to continue long without a revenue stream.
The clouds parted once more in the fall of 1919. Sears, Roebuck, and Co., America’s largest retailer, approached Cummins to discuss a contract for 4,500 engines.
The Sears story presents one of American business history’s great ironies. The company was strictly a mail-order business for its first 40 years; it thrives with no “bricks-and-mortar” locations until 1925. In 1919 everything from clothing to tools to automobiles to houses could be obtained through the sears catalogue.
Hvid “Thermoil” engines, manufactured by the Hercules Engine Co., Evansville, Indiana., were already a catalogue item, but Hercules could not satisfy Sears demand.
Hvid “Thermoil” engines, manufactured by the Hercules Engine Co., Evansville, Indiana., were already a catalogue item, but Hercules could not satisfy Sears demand. Hercules plant manager, V. E. (Mac) McMullen---later to be a longtime Cummins executive and board member---suggested that the new cross-state centure might be able to fill the breach.
Clessie recalled that the Sears proposition “nearly took my breath away.” The Cumins employment rolls swelled to at least 85 men and an addition was made to the building. The severe economic downtown of 1920 seemed to be affecting Cummins not at all. But it turned out that Clessie and his work force had much to learn about production schedules and quality control. W. G. Irwin’s refusal to see the value of investing in the best available machine tools was a hindrance Clessie was never able to surmount completely.
The Hvid design also contained defects not initially suspected. The road to success with Sears was turning out to be rockier than anticipated. The contract was cancelled in 1922 with 1,400 engines unsold.
The impression seems to have persisted that Clessie Cummins’ savvy as a businessman did not match his technical genius or marketing prowess. While this may not be completely lacking in truth (it’s a comparison that sets a high bar, after all), it was Cummins, not W. G. Irwin or any legal advisor, that had the foresight to secure in writing from a Sears executive further guarantees that exceeded the contract’s terms.
Clessie now found the Hvid contract had no provision for voiding the license. After consulting with a patent attorney, he concluded his only escape route was to develop a new technology that would bypass the Hvid patents. In 1921, he applied for a patent covering a “Circulating Oil System for Old Engines.” Subsequently approved, it contained the necessary magic.
Development of the famous single disc fuel pump proceeded from this point;the patent in fact contained elements of the pressure-timed (PT) system, considered revolutionary when it was marketed 30 years later. A more complete discussion of the single disc, double disc and PT systems---their development, their operation, and the way they compared---will follow in part Two of this story in November/December. For now, the most important point to note is that it was at this juncture that Clessie realized that he needed a full-time, professionally trained engineer.
Kudsen’s steady, solid Nordic temperament may have provided needed ballast for the usually sunny, though sometimes mercurial, Clessie. At any rate, their partnership was a success. Knudsen would remain with the Engine Company until 1948 and played a key design role in the development of the epochal H-series engine, soon to be discussed.
The F was Cummins’ first home-grown engine model, and it was available in 1, 2, 3,4 or 6-cylinder versions. Its 5.5 inch bore and 7.5 inch stroke worked out to a whopping 178.2 cubic inches per piston for a 1,069-cubic-inch engine in the 6-cylinder version.
The F in basic form developed 12.5 horsepower at 600 rpm. This engine performed best pulling heavy loads at controlled speeds, exactly the kind of performance required by fishing trawlers. (At this point, it should be mentioned that lack of electrical ignition was one feature that gave diesels an advantage in marine applications.)
The F, with its exposed inner workings, proved less than ideally suited for coping with the dust and grime of heavy construction work; before the end of 1925, the semi-enclosed P and W versions were available. A toehold had been gained in a market that came to be dominated completely by diesels, though Cummins was never to establish a position rivalling Caterpillar’s.
The F, N, P, and W models represented a learning experience. It was a difficult one at times, but it led in the right direction. Lessons learned were put to good use in the new Model U that debuted in 1928.
The U was possibly the world’s first fully enclosed diesel engine. It substituted vertical valves for inclined and introduced the new and generally reliable single-disc fuel pump that served its purpose for the next 20 years. As the ‘20s roared louder. Cummins gained a share of the luxury yacht market, producing marine engines of up to 175 hp. Smaller engines, for such uses as lighthouse generator sets, provided more of a bread-and-butter market. Whatever their intended purpose, 155 engines were sold in 1928.
The car 8s owned today by Cummins, Inc., and was restored by James Butler (engine) and Harold Hatter (body and interior). Clessie Cummins drove this car as his personal transportation in the late 1930s.
As long ago as 1924, he had fielded the idea of building a special engine for a publicity run to New York. He quickly as possible with a U-model layout drawing and a measuring tape and not to forget his coat and hat.
When a bewildered Knudsen appeared shortly, he was told they were leaving for Indianapolis to buy a car that would accommodate a Model-U engine. Cummins’ later recollection of the day’s events was that the usually imperturbable Knudsen thought he (Clessie) had lost his mind.
As far as can be told, no one had previously given even a moment’s thought to adapting any of the engines Cummins had built over the last 10 years to automotive use. Ready markets seemed to be much more along waterways or even railways than highways.
Pushing all such thinking aside, Clessie knew that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. As he told an extremely skeptical Knudsen, “When the house is on fire, I’m going to throw anything wet I can find on the blaze.”
After a frantic several days of necessary modifications, the diesel was shoe-horned into the Packard engine compartment. Only the cooling fan wouldn’t fit, but with the more efficient, lower-horsepower diesel transferring less heat into the radiator, it was deemed unnecessary.
A change in the engine’s governed speed from 1000 to 1300 rpm and in the rear end ratio from 4.69:1 to 2.5 raised top speed from 20-55 mph.
W. G. Irwin was in no mood for a Christmas outing in the snow, much less one in Clessie’s “new car” that Irwin knew had been bought with his money. Cajoled by his sister (who had been let in on the secret), he finally consented. Before the Jaunt was over, Irwin had seen the car’s engine and realized its provenance. Petulance turned into excitement.
According to Clessie, Irwin exclaimed that the car contained one of “our” engines; previous references had always been saved; a case can be made that highways diesel power in America became a reality on Christmas Day, 1929.
Clessie and W. G. talked almost until midnight; never once was closing the Engine Company mentioned. Clessie knew, however, that he could leave no stone unturned in capitalizing on the newly-stoked enthusiasm. He decided that he would drive the still less-than-totally proven car from Columbus to New York for the January 6, 1930 opening of the National Auto show.
In spite of detours, a minor electrical fire, and dead batteries that precluded shutting down the engine, Clessie pulled up to Roosevelt's door at 3:58. The 6,000-lb auto had required 30 gallons of fuel for the 792-mile trip, averaging 26.4 mpg., for a total fuel cost of $1.38!
Despite not being allowed inside Grand Central Palace for an official part in the show, the party-crashing Packard and its sleep-crazed driver became the toast of the town. Even Walter P. Chrysler wanted his picture taken with the cummins-powered competitor and had to be dissuaded by his publicity people.
Completing his 2,780-mile journey by way of Atlantic City and Detroit, Clessie spent time demonstrating the car to Henry and Edsel Ford and to Charles F. Kettering. Henry Ford floated the idea of diesel-powered aviation, but then gave the wise advice that the market for the engine was trucks, not automobiles.
For the 1931 Indianapolis 500 a few months later, the same car was given a waiver through the good offices of track general manager Eddie Rickenbacker to run as a special engineering entry. Number 8 with Dave Evans at the wheel, finished a respectable 13th, posting a speed of 86.17 mph and becoming the first car ever to finish the race without refueling.
Cummins ran once more at Indianapolis in the 1930s, fielding two entries for the 1934 Indy 500, both smaller and lighter than Number 8 and carrying 4-cylinder versions of the new Model-H engine, one modified into a 2-cycle variant. The 4-cycle car showed promise, but left the race with a damaged transmission. The 2-cycle car managed to finish, but with the engine in tatters. This was the end of the story for 2-cycle development by Cummins.
The now-venerable Model U was still considered primarily a marine engine, but it was to be given more chance to strut its stuff on the highway---and what a show it performed! In early August 1931, an Indiana truck with a special cargo body, carrying the Number 8 race car and supplies and sleeping provisions for three men, left New York for California. On board were Clessie Cummins, Dave Evans, and Ford Moyer.
This had to have been of more than passing interest to Depression-weary truckers, desperate to cut operating costs. Clessie boarded a train for home and completion of the project he had been promising: a high-speed diesel truck engine.
H-Model
Clessie and H. L. Knudsen had been analyzing what the basic design for the new engine should be since the summer of 1930. Clessie knew that Knudsen’s conservative design philosophy would give the engine enough strength to survive both abuse and subsequent power increases.
Almost the entire Irwin-Sweeney-Miller family was on hand to see the new engine draw its first breath on November 9, 1931. The local newspaper announced that evening that “A babe was born in Columbus today---a babe of the automotive world, which in time may grow to be the most popular bus and truck powerplant in the country.”
These were prophetic words. Versions of this engine in its original 672 cubic inch, 2-cylinder per head configuration were produced for the next 37 years and the 743 cubic inch, 4-valve version even longer. The 855 cubic inch derivative lasted into the 1990s and boasted ratings of up to 475 hp. Its direct descendent, the N14, became the first fully electronic Cummins engine and was produced into the 21st century.
The H engine received a baptism by fire far exceeding anything seen before and probably since. Many would have thought it foolhardy at the least.
From December 11 to December 26, 1931, Clessie Cummins and co-drivers Dave Evans, Ford Moyer, and Lt. Lawrence Genaro, Army Air Corps officer and part-time racer, drove an Indiana truck with a 6-cylinder Cummins H engine 5,840 consecutive laps around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a tidal of 13,535 non-stop miles, shattering a world record.
The engine was never shut down and the truck’s wheels never completely stopped moving.
Clessie’s final 1930s marathon was run coast-to-coast in 1932 with the same engine that had run at the Speed-way now installed in a Mack bus. Dave Evans, Ted Kelly of CUmmins, and two automotive journalists also were aboard for this trip. This time 3,220 miles were covered in 91 hours and 10 minutes with an actual running time of 78 hours and 10 minutes. This was a schedule that would have beaten the fastest express train. With a 5-speed overdrive transmission and 2-speed rear, 65 mph was often achieved.
The only mishap was an axle broken at Lordsburg, N. M., railroad crossing; an elderly blacksmith. Roused from his sleep, was able to perform repairs that enabled the bus to make Los Angeles in record time. Gross weight was 21,550 lbs. Fuel consumption was 365 gallons, for a mpg reading of 8.82 and fuel cost was $21.90. The bus and its engine had both performed far beyond expectations.
The bus trip had brought Clessie’s golden age of Barnum and Bailey stunts to a close. There was a great deal less to prove that there had been three years earlier. But it was clear that a man of Clessie’s restless inclinations wasn’t going to settle down to mind the store.
From the spring of 1930, just about the time Clessie began hitting the road on an almost full time basis, until the early months of 1934, the company’s day-to-day operations had been overseen by general manager John Niven, a friend of Clessie’s and business protege of W. G. Irwin. Irwin had backed Niven and partner Ivan Hedden in a California supermarket chain called Purity Stores some years earlier.
The bus trip had brought Clessie’s golden age of Barnum and Bailey stunts to a close. There was a great deal less to prove that there had been three years earlier. But it was clear that a man of Clessie’s restless inclinations wasn’t going to settle down to mind the store.
From the spring of 1930, just about the time Clessie began hitting the road on an almost full time basis, until the early months of 1934, the company’s day-to-day operations had been overseen by general manager John Niven, a friend of Clessie’s and business protege of W. G. Irwin. Irwin had backed Niven and partner Ivan Hedden in a California supermarket chain called Purity Stores some years earlier.
Fortunately, John Nevin had installed an apprentice at store headquarters in San Francisco some months earlier, a young man who had completed graduate studies in england and decided on a business career. This young man was proving a quick study, so it was decided that he and Niven would swap places. Niven returned to California and Irwin Miller returned home to Indiana. Cummins Engine Company now had a general manager who would stay in place for some time to come.