[SEL] Surviving Factories

[Patrick M Livingstone]

You make a good point Ted. I have seen some interesting, let's say,
stretches of the truth in engine catalogues. Quite often just clever wording
but sometimes just outright fabrications. I have a Bartram catalogue that at
no point says that the engines were not made by them. They even have one
engine which is called a model KL which is interesting as all their engines
at the time were made by Kelly & Lewis. They quite happily sold engines made
by others as their own and they were not the only company around the world
who did this.
Patrick

Patrick M Livingstone
Leichhardt NSW
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Index.html
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pml/
-----Original Message-----
The former "Witte" factory building is still standing here in Kansas City,
although the foundry was torn down many years ago.

Interestingly, the Witte building is a rather shabby little wood frame
structure, not even close to the grand Brick and Mortar edifice that is
represented in and on the cover of several of the original Witte Catalogs.

Of course Witte, along with many if not most of the engine sellers of the
day, played fast and loose with the facts when trying to make their company
appear to be of long standing and solid stature.

Many of them would claim to have been in the engine business for periods of
time that at the would have had them building engines long before engines
came into regular use.

A lot of "Vender", or mail order operations, would buy out a failed engine
manufacturer,  then use the history of that failed company to mask the fact
that they them selves were not actually building engines, but selling
someone else's product under license.

A little slippery, but it sure looked "Grand" in the catalog.
Ted Brookover