Duryea, Charles Edgar (1861-1938)

US manufacturer. He started building bicycles and, along with his brother, Frank Duryea, developed and built the first US petrol-driven car. Together, they formed the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in Springfield, which in 1896 sold the first US cars.

He was born near Canton, Illinois. It was in 1893 that the Springfield Evening Union reported the Duryea car had been driven on city streets. The brothers successfully raced an improved version of the car against European models, but they quarrelled and left the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1898. He organized the Duryea Power Company of Reading, Pennsylvania, manufacturing three-cylinder cars. He was president of the American Motor League and author of The Handbook of the Automobile, a 1906 correspondence-school textbook.