Kelsey

In 1897, Cadwallader "Carl" Kelsey, at the age of 17, built his first car. It was a small four-wheel car. In 1899, while at Haverford College, he built his second car with a friend named Sheldon Tilney. It had a 5-hp single-cylinder Buffalo Gasolene Motor Co. engine and only three wheels. They called it an Auto-Tri. They decided to go into full manufacturing, but their fathers thought the automobile was an "instrument of the devil" and so sent the two young men back to studying at college. The Kelsey and Tilney Auto-Tri was given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1923.

In 1901 Kelsey built another car this time with four wheels and two-cylinders. After graduating from college, his father gave him money for a service shop in Germantown so he would stop making cars. He became a dealer for Autocar and in 1902, he built his last car in Philadelphia, a four-cylinder car.

Kelsey bought the Philadelphia dealership for the Maxwell, and after record sales he was hired in 1905 as Sales Manager for Maxwell-Briscoe. During his time as Sales Manager, Maxwell became the third largest manufacturer of automobiles. He left in 1909 to develop his own version of a low price car.

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C. W. Kelsey, in 1930, became the distributor for the Siemens rotary tilling machine, improved it and in 1932 established The Rototiller Company in New York City. He retired as President in 1960 and was still inventing and tinkering when he died in May, 1970.