Perry Okey with Okey Auto #2   Save
Columbus Citizen-Journal Photograph Collection
Description: Photograph of Perry Okey operating the "Okey Auto #2" in 1899 from the Columbus Citizen-Journal Photograph Collection. A typed caption on the back reads "Okey Auto #2, the first one Perry Okey operated on Columbus streets. Picture was taken in spring of 1899 at Long and Fourth by Geo. Smith who ran a dancing school there. Okey made only one of this model -- it had one-cylinder engine, would go 25 miles per hour. He drove it two years between East Side home and city elec plan on west bank of Scioto where he had workshop on 3rd floor. Note Okey's resemblance to the young FDR." Perry Okey (1873-1963) was a resident of Columbus, Ohio. After working for the Columbus Waterworks beginning in 1897, he went on to operate the Okey Auto Company and later the Okey Motor Car Company in the early 1900s. He was an active inventor whose patents included an automobile self-starter, a saw-cutting machine, a fluid-density meter, a computing device, an apparatus for feeding lines, a refrigerating system, a lens grinding machine, and more. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: P339_B11F03_05_01
Subjects: Automobiles--Ohio--History; Automotive technology; Transportation; Inventors; Science and Technology;
Places: Columbus (Ohio); Franklin County (Ohio)