Sigur Whitaker on Prest-O-Lite

By Sigur Whitaker
Prest-O-Lite was the primary factor which made the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a reality. While both Carl Fisher and James Allison might have had the financial wherewithal to build the Speedway, the success of Prest-O-Lite made it easily achievable.
 
In the early twentieth century, Percy (“Fred”) Avery obtained the French patent rights for converting compressed carbide gas into a bright light. This technology was already used in lighthouses and buoys. He had also developed a small metal cylinder about a foot long filled with acetylene gas with a three-foot length of copper tubing gas and a forked tip attached at one end. Avery believed it could be used for headlights. Between the acquisition of the patent and the development of the device, Avery had used all his capital.
 
With no money to bring the device to market, Avery visited various automobile manufacturers in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana trying to interest them in the invention. He was turned down because the automobile manufacturers believed the device was too dangerous.
 
Avery approached Carl Fisher at Fisher’s automobile dealership. There, he demonstrated the apparatus by striking a match on his shoe and putting the flame up to the end of the coupling. Poof! The flame emanating from the coupling was brighter than anything then available. At the time, automobiles primarily used oil-powered coach lamps to light the way. They frequently went out due either to the bouncing of the vehicle or the wind. If this new device could provide a steadier and brighter stream of light, it would revolutionize the early headlights. The issue was the instability of the acetylene gas.
 
Fisher asked Avery to let him keep the invention so that he could further investigate it. Not terribly excited about the idea but with no other prospects for its sale, Avery acquiesced. Fisher put the tank on a shelf at his dealership and went to meet Allison for lunch. Over lunch, Fisher told Allison about the invention and offered him a third ownership in this new venture for $10,000. Knowing that Fisher’s capital was tied up in the new dealership, Allison was suspicious of the proposal. Allison inquired as to how Fisher was going to come up with his share of the money, to which Fisher replied that he had “discovered” the device and that Avery would be a third partner. Had Allison accepted Fisher’s proposition, he would have effectively bankrolled the venture. But like Fisher, Allison didn’t have $10,000 to gamble on this new invention.
 
But the allure of the lighting system had hooked Allison and, like Fisher, he thought the invention had great promise. Understanding that the greatest obstacle to the device was the explosive nature of the gas, Allison proposed that he would try to determine if the canister was safe.
 
Allison took the canister from the shelf at Fisher’s dealership and went to the West Washington Street bridge spanning White River. Looking from the bridge, Allison hypothesized that if the canister did not explode upon the impact of hitting the rocks below, it was probably safe for automobiles. Not knowing what the result of his impromptu test would be, he threw the device onto the rocks. The canister did not explode. Allison collected the canister from the rocky shore and returned to Fisher’s dealership, where they agreed to start the new company.
 
The Concentrated Acetylene Company was started on September 6, 1904, “for the purpose of manufacturing, assembling, handling and selling lamps, reflectors, receptacles and gas for automobile, carriages, mines, buoys, and all other machines and things in which artificial gas is necessary or required to be used.”
 
In a dilapidated shed on the northside of Indianapolis, Avery and an assistant, Jack Noble, began experimenting with the canisters. They had to be careful to balance the need to have a canister which was small enough to fit on the running board of an average sized vehicle but also large enough that it wouldn’t have to be filled too often. The containers also had to be leak-proof and reasonably safe to operate. An additional concern was determining the type of tubing and the valves needed to feed a steady stream of gas to the headlights.
 
Noble had the unenviable task of filling the cylinders from a hand pump. Although the canister had survived being thrown from the bridge, the men quickly learned the danger of acetylene gas. The frequency of explosions resulted in complaints from neighbors. Slowly, the invention was perfected.
 
With Fisher’s marketing ability, the men enticed Packard to use their system of lighting on the 1904 vehicles. With the lighting source being far superior to other sources, the business quickly expanded. As the growth in the automobile industry took off, so did the fortunes of the Consolidated Acetylene Company. The complexity of their product grew from a simple canister to feed a lamp to the point that the “Prest-O-Liter” automatically regulated the pressure and was able to feed two, three, or five lamps providing for automatic lighting. Not only could up to five lamps be lit, but also, by slightly turning the knob, the driver could change the brightness of the lamp.
 
Having expanded beyond the capacity of the shed, the business was relocated to a three-story building on the southeast side of Indianapolis. Located near the stockyards, it had easy access to rail transport enabling the company to ship its product nationwide. About the time of the relocation, Fisher and Allison decided that the name didn’t have much pizzaz. Thinking of how quickly and easily it lit headlights, the new name Prest-O-Lite was adopted.
 
Prest-O-Lite thrived and the company advertised itself as the “World’s Largest Makers of Dissolved Acetylene.” They had charging plants not only in Indianapolis but also in seventeen cities across the United States, and Winnipeg, Canada. In addition to the charging stations, there were branch stores and service stations located throughout the United States as well as with foreign agencies as far away as Japan.
 
The driver of the company’s profitability was not the initial sale of the system but, like Gillette and its razor blades or Hewlett Packard and its inkjet cartridges, it was the refilling of the canisters. Used canisters could be returned as late as 4 p.m. to one of the refilling stations and it would be returned by train the next day.
 
The willingness of Fisher and Allison to take a chance on this invention paid off handsomely. By the time they built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, both were multi-millionaires.
 
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