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He told me that the engine made two
hundred revolutions a minute and that the chain pinion could be shifted
to let the wagon stop while the engine was still running. This last is a
feature which, although in different fashion, is incorporated into
modern automobiles. It was not important with steam engines, which are
easily stopped and started, but it became very important with the
gasoline engine. It was that engine which took me into automotive
transportation. I tried to make models of it, and some years later I did
make one that ran very well, but from the time I saw that road engine as
a boy of twelve right forward to to-day, my great interest has been in
making a machine that would travel the roads. Driving to town I always
had a pocket full of trinkets--nuts, washers, and odds and ends of
machinery. Often I took a broken watch and tried to put it together.
When I was thirteen I managed for the first time to put a watch together
so that it would keep time. By the time I was fifteen I could do almost
anything in watch repairing--although my tools were of the crudest.


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