Briscoe Manufacturing Co
Of Detroit
c.1886 Benjamin Briscoe (b.1867) established a company, Benjamin Briscoe and Company, making consumer goods by punching them out of light sheet metal; products included oil cans, wash tubs, buckets, sprinkler cans, etc.
This firm was later purchased by the American Can Co.
Briscoe then established the Detroit Galvanizing and Sheet Metal Works, to exploit a machine he had invented for making corrugated pipe. His product range soon expanded to include sheet-metal parts for stoves and ranges.
1900 Briscoe’s younger brother, Frank,. graduated from the University of Michigan and joined the firm, which they reorganized as the Briscoe Manufacturing Company.
1901 The Detroit bank where Briscoe Manufacturing’s funds were deposited failed and the firm was facing bankruptcy.
1902 Briscoe was approached by Ransom E. Olds to manufacture an improved cooling system for the original curved-dash Oldsmobile. Oldsmobile’s chief engineer Jonathan Maxwell had designed the new radiator, but due to a 1901 fire that had destroyed Olds’ factory in Detroit, Oldsmobile could not make the parts in-house. Briscoe talked J.P. Morgan and Company into funding his company to make radiators, bumpers and fuel tanks for Oldsmobile. Briscoe agreed to make 4400 radiators for Oldsmobile.
1903 Also involved in supporting the fledgling Buick company.
1904 Established the Maxwell-Briscoe Company to build a motor car designed by Jonathan Maxwell, who had by then left Oldsmobile, with backing from J. P. Morgan.
c.1907 Attempted to set up the United States Motor Co to consolidate the industry but this venture did not succeed.
After separaring Maxwell, Briscoe tried to revive his automotive career, with the $295 Argo cycle car, until Henry Ford cut the price of the Model T in 1916 enough to make cycle-cars irrelevant.
Briscoe then founded the Briscoe Motor Corporation, with a factory in Jackson, Michigan, eventually making it one of the 20 largest car companies in the United States.
1921 At a time when the USA was experiencing a deep recession, Briscoe sold his interest in Briscoe Motor Corporation and permanently left the automobile industry.