1864 Ransom
Ransom Eli Olds was born to Pliny and Sarah Olds in the northeastern Ohio town of Geneva. When Ransom was 16, the Olds family moved to Lansing, Michigan, so that Pliny Olds could start his own business. He opened a machine shop called Pliny Olds & Son. That son wasn't Ransom but his older brother, Wallace.
Ransom, though, worked in the shop part-time, after school and on weekends. He took business courses at the Lansing Business College, but his attention remained in his father's machine shop. When Ransom turned 21, he bought his older brother's share of the business. Ransom worked tirelessly. Not long after becoming his son's partner, Pliny realized Ransom was better capable of taking their family business to another level, and by 1890, Ransom Olds acted as general manager of the family company.
Ransom guessed that the demand for the steam engine would increase through the 1890s and he turned the company's attention to manufacturing the engines. His guess bore fruit, and it also led Olds to experiment with steam engines as a means for propelling water and road vehicles. It's not clear exactly when he began working on road carriages; he claims in 1886, but it was likely sometime after that.
His first vehicles were crude, displaying little outside information of existing steam-engine technology. His father disapproved of his son's obsession with road vehicles, saying, "Ranse thinks he can put an engine in a buggy and make the contraption carry him over the roads. If he doesn't get killed at his fool undertaking, I will be satisfied." Ransom continued his experiments with steam engines, enduring much ridicule, until he decided the steam engine was not the future of the self-propelled vehicle.
Nevertheless, one of his last steam engines, a 1200-hundred-pound vehicle ostensibly capable of pushing 15mph (provided the road was flat), gained Olds the attention of Scientific American magazine. Then, in 1893, Ransom's vision took shape when he saw demonstrations of gasoline engines at the Chicago World's Fair. By 1895, his company had already applied for a patent on their own design of a gasoline engine. Production of the gas-burning engine brought record profits to Olds' business.
Ransom began experimenting with gas-burning horseless carriages, and in June of 1896 he completed a prototype. It wasn't the first such vehicle (among others, the Duryeas had already built gas-burning cars) but Olds' car generated unprecedented interest--due, at least partly, to the successful manufacturing company that lay behind it. Olds then raised money to go into production on his car. He incorporated the Olds Motor Vehicle Works separately form P.F. Olds & Son. The venture was largely speculative, fueled by the money of already rich Lansing businessmen who were willing to part with a small sum in hopes of getting a great return.
As it turned out, the money wasn't enough for Olds to go into production. In searching for more capital, Olds merged his family business with the Olds Motor Works and sold new shares of their combined stock to raise the money he needed. On March 8, 1899, the Olds Motor Works, the actual grandfather to today's Oldsmobile, was formed.