Frank Atwood Huntington Inventions Information

Frank Atwood Huntington (August 9, 1836 – February 16, 1925) was an American inventor.

Huntington was born in Atkinson, Maine on August 9, 1836. He had twelve siblings, being number thirteen and the last child born in the family. Huntington's ancestors were interested in the lumber trade. His father owned a sawmill and a shingle mill. What he learned in his youth was reflected in his innovations and patents later.

Huntington at the age of twenty-one went to San Francisco. In 1858 he took charge of a lumber mill in Monterey County, California. He later managed a shingle mill in nearby San Mateo County. While there the inadequacy of the sawmill machinery gave him ideas for improvements to shingle machines. He later obtained patents for his innovations in improvements to sawmill machinery.

Sometime in the early part of the 1860s Huntington went to Humboldt County, Nevada and tried mining for a while. He had varying degrees of success. Later he went to Arizona. After years of adventure in Arizona and other places and not succeeding as well as he wished, he gave up mining and returned to San Francisco. Here he commenced to make good use of his inventive skills and in 1865 began to manufacture sawmill machinery. He introduced a number of improvements to sawmill machinery which he patented.

When he moved back to San Francisco he first was located in the Pacific Saw Company's Building in San Francisco where he remained three or four years until 1870. He shows up in the 1870 San Francisco census. From time to time he moved his headquarters of mining machinery to the Kittredge Building and to the Vulcan Iron Works in San Francisco. He is then found at 45 Fremont Street and later at 213 to 219 First Street in San Francisco.

On September 18, 1873, Huntington married Laura Caroline Folzer. They had one child, a daughter named Marie Louise. They lived at Webster and Durant streets in Oakland. Huntington was a family man and spent his leisure time with his wife and daughter at their elegant home. From time to time he had Chinese servants at his home.

In 1889 Huntington patented a gasoline engine propelled vehicle, four years before the Duryea brothers built and tested their first vehicle in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1893 — considered by many as the first American gas powered car. It is likely Huntington was the first inventor of a gasoline engine car on the west coast of the United States. While it is not known whether Huntington’s vehicle was successfully built, his patent 411196 has certain claims that represent a self-propelled gasoline engine car.

In the years he was in California he experimented incessantly with machinery. He gave to the public various inventions of practical value. Besides being a practical inventor he was also a manufacturer of his special machinery. In 1891 he was experimenting on what was considered a most important invention.

His mining experience gave him the idea for a roller quartz mill, improved ore crushers, concentrators and many other needed mining equipment improvements of older mining machinery. It is inventions like his that made San Francisco the center of the manufacture of mining machinery for the United States.

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