Did you know that one of the earliest motor vehicles was designed right here in Oceanside? It was invented by Wilton S. Schuyler, who named his motorized vehicle the “Oceanside Express”.
Wilton was the son of John F. and Anne (Barlow) Schuyler. Born in 1875 in Superior, Nebraska, Wilton Sumner Schuyler came to Oceanside with his parents in 1887.
In 1888 his father built a hardware store on Third Street (now Pier View Way). It is very likely that Wilton began working on his invention at his father’s store, which was later converted into a boarding house and is now The Brick Hotel at 408 Pier View Way.
The July 23, 1898, edition of the Oceanside Blade newspaper reported: “W. S. Schuyler, the Oceanside inventor, has just been granted seventeen claims for patents on a motor carriage. Oceanside is getting to the front with its representation of inventions. We’ll soon be riding in motor carriages …”
Wilton Schuyler was just 24 years old when he developed his prototype and was issued his patent for “a gasoline-engine, propelled vehicle.”
He commented years later, “At the time I commenced designing the self-propelled vehicle, the word ‘automobile’ was not yet used. Horseless carriage and motor vehicle were the names used in such vehicles. The only such a vehicle I had ever heard of at that time was made in Los Angeles, California, and it had four 1-cylinder engines, located on the four corners of a frame and all solid to the axles.”
Schuyler filed his patent for his vehicle on April 1, 1898, and then received Patent, No. 624,689, on May 9, 1899.
A portion of his patent paperwork read: “Be it known that Wilton Sumner Schuyler, a citizen of the United States, residing at Oceanside, in the county of San Diego and State of California, have invented new and useful improvements in Motor Vehicles, of which the following is a specification:
“One particular object of my invention is to so arrange a motor-vehicle that the motor and all of the heavy mechanism may be carried upon a spring-supported vehicle-bed, so as to avoid the loss of power….
“A particular object of my invention is to provide means whereby a motor-vehicle capable of satisfactory general use may be produced and without the use of pneumatic tires, which are expensive, liable to wear out, and unsatisfactory in use from various other reasons.“
Schuyler’s vehicle also included a headlight which turned in the same direction as the front wheels were turned, as well as a power steering apparatus.
The headlight invented by Schuyler was used on some of Henry Ford’s first Model T’s and for awhile Wilton was engaged in the manufacturing of these headlights. The power steering device which Schuyler designed was used on various types of modern heavy machinery.
By 1910 Wilton Schuyler and his wife Carrie, whom he married in 1897, had moved to Missouri where he manufactured gas stoves. In addition to his prototype automobile, Schuyler had a number of other patents which included a fire alarm, a pancake turner, an adjustable pulley-hanger, a washing machine and an accelerator for combustion engines.
Schuyler died in Springfield, Ohio in 1949 at the age of 73. His obituary, which was published in dozens of newspapers from coast to coast, made mention of his early “automobile” invented in Oceanside, California.
Wilton S. Schuyler’s obituary was published around the US, noting his invention of an early “automobile”
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