THE CUNNINGHAM COMPANY

By Staff
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Cunningham Lawnmower, made in the years of 1946 to 1955. I have three of these but just this one is restored.
Cunningham Lawnmower, made in the years of 1946 to 1955. I have three of these but just this one is restored.
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Cunningham sickle bar. Sorry I didn't have the engine on when I look this picture.
Cunningham sickle bar. Sorry I didn't have the engine on when I look this picture.

559 Sheldon Road, Palmyra, New York 14522

I think this article will be of interest to many small engine
collectors. I have never seen Cunningham mentioned in GEM.

This is the story of a firm, James Cunningham, Son and Company,
that once made carriages and now makes crossbar switches. Founded
in the days of handicraft, the firm survives-and prospers-in an era
so new that most of us have not yet caught up with it: the era of
automation. Moreover, Cunningham has always been owned and managed
by the members of one family. Its fourth president is the
great-grandson of the first. But something more than a name has
survived: the firm has spanned the Industrial Revolution without
losing its essential character for quality production.

However, the history of a company, even as old a company as
Cunningham, should not be presented without some explanation, for
‘company history’ can mean anything from advertising to a
statistical abstract of operations; as a form of reading matter it
is suspect.

At some of the shows that I attended last year, I recall seeing
two Cunningham engines. This sparked my interest in these little
engines and the reason for this story. I now have seven of these
engines, three on lawnmowers, one on a sickle bar and three extra
engines.

The Cunningham Company was founded in 1838 in Rochester, N.Y. by
James Cunningham who came to Rochester from Cobourg, Canada, a
small town near Toronto. He had a great interest in woodworking and
designing. The young company started producing sleighs and buggies.
In order to sell his products, Cunningham would often hitch up a
team of horses to a buggie and hook up several more buggies in a
string and head upstate New York toward Buffalo and Niagara Falls
demonstrating his product. More often than not, he would return
home on horseback: the indication of a successful selling trip. The
company built not only carriages, but also ambulances and
hearses.

Prices ranged from $400.00 to $2500.00, depending on the design
and the amount of wood carving that went into each product; a lot
of money in those days.

In 1848 the original factory burned, but business was good and
Cunningham was able to replace it with a new building immediately.
This building still stands today on Canal Street in Rochester. It
is now occupied by the Bravo Macaroni Company.

Things weren’t always good at the Cunningham Company as it
survived two depressions, one in 1857 and the other in 1873, and
also two strikes, first one in 1882 and the second in 1904.

In the early 1900s, it became quite evident to the Cunningham
Company that the automobile was replacing the carriage. The early
automobiles were either electric or steam. Around 1900 there were
1,000 companies making autos of some sort, but as late as 1925 only
fifteen survived. At first they made only bodies and assembled the
rest of the car from engines, transmissions, axles and radiators
made by proprietary companies, but by 1910 it was producing all
these itself. Prices rose to $4,500 and $5,000. These cars were not
made for the popular market but for customers of the sort that
bought its carriages.

In 1916 Cunningham made the first car in America with a V-8
engine. It was the first car to do away with running-boards, using
instead, steps of brass-framed aluminum. As in the carriage-making
days most of the metal- and wood-work was done by hand. By 1919,
prices rose, a roadster cost $6,200, the average price for a town
car was $8,000 but cars made to order might cost as much as
$15,000. I’m sure some of you old timers out there in engine
land will remember the Cunningham car. I can’t recall seeing
one myself.

In 1928 Cunningham ventured into a new market, plane production.
Not many were made, but did make planes from 1929 to 1936. In 1931
Cunningham ceased to produce cars. For five more years it made
bodies for other manufacturers, in particular, a town car body for
Ford which added $2,000 to Ford’s current price of $600; and
then in 1936 it was entirely out of the automobile business.

I remember seeing one such car, a 1936 Ford owned by a wealthy
family in Rochester, N. Y. It was a town car, with the chauffeur
sitting in the open.

It seems that the Cunninghams liked to experiment. As early as
1927 they were working on a light fast army tank. In March 1928,
its first tank was tested at Aberdeen, Maryland. It was equipped
with a revolving turret and armed with a 37 millimeter cannon and a
.30 caliber machine gun. It traveled twenty miles an hour, more
than three times as fast as any tank that had been produced up to
that time. In 1935 Cunningham developed a tank that would go
fifty-five miles an hour.

By 1943 Cunningham was employing eight hundred men in a variety
of war jobs. Most of its work consisted of sub-contracts for other
producers, notably gear boxes operated by servo-motors for
controlling wing surfaces, canopies, gunners’ turrets, and tail
surfaces in bomber planes. Aside from their military value, these
had some significance for the firm; they were forerunners of its
present electro-mechanical products.

When the war ended in 1945, Cunningham had the satisfaction of
having made an honorable contribution, but essentially it was in
the same situation it had been in during the late thirties. It
lacked a product suited to its special talents.

Hopefully, in 1946 the firm produced small farm and garden
machines: sickle-bars, lawn-mowers, garden tractors and rotary
tillers. By 1948 there were more than ninety other companies in the
overcrowded field. The garden tractor was equipped with a Wisconsin
engine and the others with the Cunningham engine. There were two
models of the Cunningham engine, the EA and the EB. The EA is the
scarcer model. I have only one of these. Essentially, they are the
same except for the carburetor. Both models are rated one and a
half horsepower. As near as I can find out, 225,000 to 250,000 of
these small engines were made. Just when production was stopped on
this garden equipment I’m not sure, but I believe it to be
1955.

Although Cunningham was producing garden equipment in 1948, it
ventured into still another line. Apparently no manufacturer had
given serious consideration to it. Trailer living was becoming a
standard feature on the American scene. Cunningham made a survey
and then designed and produced a complete line of plumbing fixtures
for house-trailers.

By 1950, Cunningham was enjoying a modest success in plumbing
fixtures for house-trailers. It attract ed the attention of larger
competitors, better equipped to exploit the markets it had
discovered. Already competition from mass-producers of plumbing
fixtures was beginning to make itself felt, but even as this was
happening, Cunningham, almost by accident, found the product that
it was suited by temperament and tradition to make. This was the
crossbar switch.

In 1946 a young electrical engineer, Andrew W. Vincent, left his
job with Stromberg-Carlson in Rochester in order to devote himself
to perfecting a small dial telephone system of his own
devising.

The switch that Vincent considered was-and still is-the ultimate
development of electro-mechanical telephone switching. Early
telephone systems had relied upon an operator at a switchboard to
make connections between callers. As the number of subscribers
mounted and as telephone systems were linked from town to town, the
role of the operator became more complex; it was simply to find and
hold a path of communication through a network of wires. The
crossbar switch changed that by performing this role automatically.
When you dial a number nowadays you are, in effect, instructing a
machine instead of a human operator to connect you with whatever
telephone you are calling. A lot more could be written about the
crossbar switch, but I feel it would be of no interest to the
engine collector. I have left out a lot of history of the
Cunningham Company, but feel that I have brought out the most
important part of a company that has been in business for one
hundred and thirty eight years.

The Cunningham Company is now located in Honeoye Falls, N.Y.
having moved there in 1961.

  • Published on Jan 1, 1978
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