Olds, Ransom Eli

SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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b. 1864 Geneva, Ohio, USA

d. 1950 Lansing, Michigan, USA

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American pioneer motor manufacturer.

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He began his working life in 1885 as a bookkeeper in his father's machine shop in Lansing, Michigan, where he became a partner soon after. Encouraged by his success in making a small steam engine, heated by an ordinary gasoline stove burner, he built a three-wheeled, self-propelled vehicle in 1887. Increasingly interested in the internal combustion engine, he adopted it for a further vehicle which he completed in 1896. The following year he founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company and, to take the place of the family machine shop, the Olds Gasoline Machine Works. In 1899 the assets of the motorvehicle company were diverted into a new company, the Olds Motor Works, and operations were transferred to Detroit. In 1904 he resigned and founded the Reo M Car Company (an acronym of his initials) and organized several subsidiary companies as suppliers of components. After 1915 he tended to drop out to give more time to other interests such as the Ideal Power Lawn Mower Company, set up to manufacture a mower he had invented, the Capital National Bank and R.E.Olds and Co., an investment company.

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Further Reading

Dictionary of American Biography, 3rd edn, New York: Charles Scribner.

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