Studebaker's engineers: Zeder, Skelton, Breer — and the brothers' empty patent file

1852–1920 · CRAFT IN THE WAGON ERA, ENGINEERING IN DETROIT

The negative first: It is worth stating plainly, because the firm's fame invites the opposite assumption: no letters patent in the name of any Studebaker brother was located in the record reached for this section. The wagon shop's contribution to the art was craft, scale, and organization — the Businesses and Studebaker sections carry that record — not patented invention by its founders. The company's patent-era engineering belongs to hired engineers, and their geography is part of the record: much of it sat in Detroit, where Studebaker's automobile engineering was headquartered, rather than in the South Bend wagon works. The commanding case is the trio the industry remembers as the Three Musketeers. Fred M. Zeder, a 28-year-old university graduate, joined Studebaker as a consulting engineer in 1913 and became chief engineer a year later; with Owen R. Skelton, brought in for his transmission work, and Carl Breer, the three ran Studebaker's engineering through the war years and launched the successful 1918 line — the Light Four, the Light Six, and the Big Six.

The marque's historians credit the team's earlier six-cylinder cars of 1913 as the first automobiles to employ monobloc engine casting — the cylinder block cast in a single piece — and that credit is printed here as the marque histories give it, attributed, not as a patent: no patent document for it stands in this record. Under Zeder's successor as chief engineer, Guy P. Henry, Studebaker introduced molybdenum steel and an improved clutch design, again innovations of engineering practice carried in the marque literature rather than in any patent this section can cite. The trio's ending is the famous part: on 14 July 1920 Zeder, Skelton and Breer walked out together for Willys-Overland, taking twenty-eight Studebaker engineers with them, and within a few years, hand-picked by Walter P. Chrysler, they had become the nucleus of Chrysler Engineering — the engineering brains of a competitor assembled in Studebaker's own shops. The inventive credit here is real but must be carried at its true weight: named, documented engineering achievement, located chiefly in Detroit, with the South Bend works as employer and manufacturer rather than as the room where the drawings were made.

Sources:

1. Richard M. Langworth and the standard marque literature as carried in the Studebaker corporate record — Zeder's appointment (consulting engineer 1913, chief engineer a year later), Skelton and Breer, the 1918 Light Four, Light Six and Big Six, Guy P. Henry's succession, molybdenum steel and the improved clutch.
2. The Three Musketeers record (Zeder-Skelton-Breer) as carried in the automotive-engineering histories — the departure of 14 July 1920 with twenty-eight engineers, the Willys-Overland move, and the formation of Chrysler Engineering under Walter P. Chrysler.
3. Marque-history credit for the 1913 six-cylinder cars as the first with monobloc engine casting — printed as attributed marque history; no patent for the feature was located in the record reached.
4. Negative search, stated in the text: no letters patent in a Studebaker brother's name was located in the patent indexes searched for this section.