| The one-cylinder direct drive motor wheel was
developed by Arthur William Wall of Birmingham, England around
1910. The concept was made popular in this country by the A.O.
Smith Company, who licensed Wall's design. They produced the
Smith Motor Wheel to be mounted on bicycles and on the buckboard
Flyers as early as 1915.
In May 1919, A.O. Smith sold the Motor Wheel to the Briggs &
Stratton Corporation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Briggs & Stratton
re-engineered the motor, improving some shortcomings such as the
unreliable magneto. The new motor wheel, designated type D, was
now called the Briggs & Stratton Motor Wheel. Its primary
application, like the Smith that preceded it, was on bicycles
and the Flyer, but it found many other applications such as a
snowmobile-type vehicle, as power for small railroad hand cars,
as a strange and dangerous-looking devise to pull ice skaters,
and as a purpose-built scooter built around the wheel.
Briggs & Stratton produced the Motor Wheel and Flyers until
1925, when they sold the Flyer to Automotive Electric Services
Corp. of North Bergen, New Jersey. Briggs & Stratton kept the
motor that had been the heart of the Motor Wheel and adapted it
to other applications such as lawn mowers and running small
equipment. The Motor Wheel motor was the progenitor of all
Briggs & Stratton motors to follow.
Automotive Electric Services (AES) Corp. continued to
manufacture the Flyer under the Auto Red Bug name. AES continued
to sell Flyers with Briggs Motor Wheels until the supply of
those motors was exhausted. AES then switched the Red Bug to
electric power and continued to manufacture them until some time
in 1928.
Production numbers for all variations are not known exactly,
but best estimates are that thousands of motor wheels were
produced with the bulk sold in the United States but a large
number exported to Japan. The best estimate of Briggs & Stratton
Flyers produced is roughly 2,500. The number of Auto Red Bugs is
anyone's guess, but there are definitely more Red Bugs surviving
than any of the other variations.
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My1920 Briggs & Stratton Flyer. Photo taken in
fall of 2003. View larger photo
Close-up of my fully restored Motor Wheel as
mounted on my Flyer. View larger photo
An almost all-original Flyer belonging to Al
Reeves of Pennsylvania as seen in May of 2004.
View larger photo
The "White Flyer" on display in the AACA museum
in Hershey PA. View larger photo |
