1932, Vol. 22, pg.
61
RIKER, Andrew
Lawrence, engineer and inventor, was born in New York city, October
22, 1868, son of William James and Charlotte Lawrence (Stryker) Riker.
He was a descendant of Abraham Rycken, a native of Holland who settled
in New Amsterdam in 1638: the line of descent from him and his wife
Grietje Harmensen running through their son Abraham and his wife Grietje
Van Buytenhuysen; their son Andrew and his wife Jane Berrien; their son
Samuel and his wife Anna Lawrence; and their son John and his wife
Lavinia Smith, his grandparents. Mr. Riker was educated in schools of
his native city, and was a student for one year in Columbia University.
In 1886, however, he began to devote his entire time to electrical and
mechanical engineering, a field in which he had been an original
investigator for several years. As early as 1884, he had designed and
built an electric tricycle, the first successful vehicle of its kind in
America, and to commercialize his inventions in this line founded the
Riker Electric Motor Co. in 1888. His experiments with electric motors
led to his invention of the first toothed armature, now a recognized
structural feature. In 1890 he built the lightest and most compact
lighting plant then available for marine work. In 1894 he developed a
gasoline propelled tricycle, and an electric racing car, one of the
fastest of its type ever built, and in the following year completed the
first of his four-wheeled electric cars. He was particularly successful
in building high-speed cars, and in 1899 established the world's speed
record for electric cars of one mile in sixty-three seconds, which
continued unsurpassed for ten years.
By 1900, five-ton electric trucks,
produced under his direction, were in use in New York city, and several
of his early light wagons were in constant service for more than
seventeen years. The motors built by the Riker Electric Motor Co. were
recognized as standards of construction for vehicle work, many of them
being used by other inventors and builders, and imitated in sundry
details. Mr. Riker became vice-president of the Locomobile Co. of
America, Bridgeport, Conn., in 1902, and designed their first gasoline
propelled car, which embodied many features then unfamiliar in America.
It had a sliding gear transmission, steel frame, four-cylinder vertical
engine with high tension ignition, bronze base, bronze gearcase, and a
gear driven electric generator. It was constructed secretly at Chicopee,
Mass., and its first appearance in New York city was widely heralded. In
1904 Mr. Riker designed a special ninety horsepower racing car, and in
1906 built several under the old 1,000 kilogram weight limit, which,
equipped with large-bore and short-stroke engines, attained speeds of
over 100 mph. In 1908 he designed the famous Locomobile No. 16, which,
driven by George Robertson in the Vanderbilt Cup race, broke all
records, attaining an average speed of sixty-four and one-half miles an
hour. During his career he was granted numerous patents on gas engines,
dynamos, motors, electric systems, transformers and automobile parts. He
had an extensive and intimate knowledge of both the mechanical and the
electrical problems involved in automobile design and manufacture.
In
1900 he was awarded a medal by the French government for merit in
motor-car design. He was appointed to the U. S. naval consulting board
in 1915, and was chairman of its committee on internal combustion motors
and a member of its committees on aeronautics and transportation. He was
a founder of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and its first
president (1905-08); a life member of the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers, and member of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, British Institute of Automobile Engineers, New York
Electrical Society, the Automobile Club of America, and the Engineers,
Aero, Transportation, Fairfield County, Pequot Yacht and Pootatuck Yacht
clubs. Politically he was a Republican, and was affiliated with the
Episcopal church.
Mr. Riker was married April 9, 1890 to Edith, daughter
of James Raynor Whiting, of New York city, and had four children; Edith
Whiting, wife of Bertram Willway Ainsworth, of Bath, England;
Charlotte, wife of Hoyt Ogden Perry, of Southport, Conn.; Andrew
Lawrence, Jr.; and William James Riker (d. 1910). Mr. Riker died
suddenly at Fairfield, Conn., June 1, 1930.