Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe

Chapter Six
HUNGERFORD INVENTIONS
Over more than a half century, Daniel and Floyd
Hungerford imagined and developed a variety of
inventions. While this book elsewhere mentions important
Hungerford products, e.g. aircraft engines and the
rocket car, this section identifies additional projects.
Some Hungerford work was only incomplete, elusive
sketches. Other inventions, including some that were
patented, came closer to production.
TWO-CYLINDER
OPPOSED AIRCRAFT ENGINE
Dated 1909–1910, a two-cylinder, thirty-horsepower
engine combined air and water cooling using fins and
copper water jackets. The layout was similar to the
Detroit Aero Engine, an air-cooled device used in light
aircraft of the 1910 period. Additional description
appeared in part earlier in chapter two of this book. The
engine survives in the collection of the Glenn H. Curtiss
Museum in Hammondsport.
Figure 21. Daniel and Floyd Hungerford, left to right, posed
with the two-cylinder aircraft engine designed and built by them
in 1909.
AUTOMATIC STOP AND REVERSE
MECHANISM A.K.A. FURNACE REGULATOR
A handbill promoting Daniel Hungerford for assembly
in the election of 1948 included the information that
among Hungerford’s inventions was “the all-electric
furnace regulator”. The 1910 patent granted to
Hungerford for the automatic stop and reverse mechanism
suitable for use in a thermostat was described
above in chapter one. The rights to the patent were
assigned to Hungerford’s employer, the American
Thermostat Company.
ROTARY AIRCRAFT ENGINE
Working with Amos P. Newlands, the Hungerfords, in
1928, applied and received a patent in 1932 for the valve
fitted to the hub for a five-cylinder, two-stroke engine
(cylinders each firing during one revolution). Curtiss
Museum curator Merrill Stickler noted in 1979 that
there were two Hungerford “cased rotary engines of
unusual design” in the Museum’s collection. 171 One
example is the five-cylinder engine, while the second is
a smaller, four-cylinder machine. Photographs from the
Hungerfords show both free-standing engines operating.
The author does not know if either engine ever was
installed in an airplane.
Newlands (1875–1973) appears in the 1906, 1938 and
1949 Elmira city directories as a painter. In 1912, he was
an engineer at the Hotel Rathbun. And from 1914 until
1933, he worked as a chauffeur for the Copeland family
in Elmira. 172 Newlands was identified (1940) as a carpenter
residing with his wife Millie on West First Street
a few blocks from the Hungerfords. His work as a
chauffeur and, if independently employed as a painter
or carpenter, likely left him time to visit and consult
with the Hungerford brothers. What education he had
beyond the ability to read and write reported in the
1920 census is unknown here.
Schuyler Lathers related that Daniel Hungerford
received $10,000 from the federal government during
World War One for an aircraft engine. With no
Daniel and Floyd Hungerford: Rocket Power, Interstellar Travel and Eternal Life, by Geofrey N. Stein. New York State Museum Record 4, © 2013 by The
University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York. All rights reserved.
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