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RIKERs LISTED IN "National Cyclopaedia of American Biography" 1932, Vol. 22, pg. 61 RIKER, Andrew Lawrence, engineer and inventor, was born in New York city, October 22, 1868, son of William James and Charlotte Lawrence (Stryker) Riker. He was a descendant of Abraham Rycken, a native of Holland who settled in New Amsterdam in 1638: the line of descent from him and his wife Grietje Harmensen running through their son Abraham and his wife Grietje Van Buytenhuysen; their son Andrew and his wife Jane Berrien; their son Samuel and his wife Anna Lawrence; and their son John and his wife Lavinia Smith, his grandparents. Mr. Riker was educated in schools of his native city, and was a student for one year in Columbia University. In 1886, however, he began to devote his entire time to electrical and mechanical engineering, a field in which he had been an original investigator for several years. As early as 1884, he had designed and built an electric tricycle, the first successful vehicle of its kind in America, and to commercialize his inventions in this line founded the Riker Electric Motor Co. in 1888. His experiments with electric motors led to his invention of the first toothed armature, now a recognized structural feature. In 1890 he built the lightest and most compact lighting plant then available for marine work. In 1894 he developed a gasoline propelled tricycle, and an electric racing car, one of the fastest of its type ever built, and in the following year completed the first of his four-wheeled electric cars. He was particularly successful in building high-speed cars, and in 1899 established the world's speed record for electric cars of one mile in sixty-three seconds, which continued unsurpassed for ten years. By 1900, five-ton electric trucks, produced under his direction, were in use in New York city, and several of his early light wagons were in constant service for more than seventeen years. The motors built by the Riker Electric Motor Co. were recognized as standards of construction for vehicle work, many of them being used by other inventors and builders, and imitated in sundry details. Mr. Riker became vice-president of the Locomobile Co. of America, Bridgeport, Conn., in 1902, and designed their first gasoline propelled car, which embodied many features then unfamiliar in America. It had a sliding gear transmission, steel frame, four-cylinder vertical engine with high tension ignition, bronze base, bronze gearcase, and a gear driven electric generator. It was constructed secretly at Chicopee, Mass., and its first appearance in New York city was widely heralded. In 1904 Mr. Riker designed a special ninety horsepower racing car, and in 1906 built several under the old 1,000 kilogram weight limit, which, equipped with large-bore and short-stroke engines, attained speeds of over 100 mph. In 1908 he designed the famous Locomobile No. 16, which, driven by George Robertson in the Vanderbilt Cup race, broke all records, attaining an average speed of sixty-four and one-half miles an hour. During his career he was granted numerous patents on gas engines, dynamos, motors, electric systems, transformers and automobile parts. He had an extensive and intimate knowledge of both the mechanical and the electrical problems involved in automobile design and manufacture. In 1900 he was awarded a medal by the French government for merit in motor-car design. He was appointed to the U. S. naval consulting board in 1915, and was chairman of its committee on internal combustion motors and a member of its committees on aeronautics and transportation. He was a founder of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and its first president (1905-08); a life member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, British Institute of Automobile Engineers, New York Electrical Society, the Automobile Club of America, and the Engineers, Aero, Transportation, Fairfield County, Pequot Yacht and Pootatuck Yacht clubs. Politically he was a Republican, and was affiliated with the Episcopal church. Mr. Riker was married April 9, 1890 to Edith, daughter of James Raynor Whiting, of New York city, and had four children; Edith Whiting, wife of Bertram Willway Ainsworth, of Bath, England; Charlotte, wife of Hoyt Ogden Perry, of Southport, Conn.; Andrew Lawrence, Jr.; and William James Riker (d. 1910). Mr. Riker died suddenly at Fairfield, Conn., June 1, 1930. [This page was last updated 11/23/01]
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1868 - 1930 (61 years)