Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 213

Price Realized: $ 531
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.) Correspondence and business records of the Kinetic Power Company. 175 items tipped in to or laid in to 83 scrapbook leaves. Folio, 13 3/4 x 9 inches, original 1/2 calf, worn and lacking backstrip; minor wear to contents. Vp, 1896-97
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Additional Details

The Kinetic Power Company was founded in Boston by Arthur Pillsbury Dodge (1849-1915) to produce innovative locomotive engines. General and former Maine governor Joshua Chamberlain served as its president. Offered here is the correspondence as trustee and stockholder of Frank Reed Kimball (1853-1924) of Salem, MA, a graduate of Bowdoin College, who was instrumental in gathering subscriptions and advising the new company. Highlights include: the original stock subscription list to exploit the work of Dodge, "who has perfected the Storage Steam Power System of motive power for street and other railroads" for the "sale of Motors or Motor-cars" (listing Kimball with 1000 shares), and two photographs of the company's first prototype car. It also includes dozens of letters from founder Dodge offering updates on the company's activities, as well as with the well-established Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, which contracted to build the company's prototypes. The correspondence continues through Kimball's apparently tense severance of connection with the company in May 1897. A fellow investor sent instructions regarding company funds, and Kimball replied "You must be very ignorant in regard to the syndicate business. . . . I do not care to be annoyed with any more letters of this kind. . . . I have taken these letters to my attorney." With--a small quantity of unrelated papers from Frank Kimball's mother Susan Sawyer Kimball (1818-1902) of Salem, including her 1882 diary, receipts, checks and financial correspondence from 1876 to 1899.