Edward G. Budd

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Edward Gowen Budd (1870–1946) was an American inventor and businessman.

Budd was born in Delaware in 1870. He studied engineering in Philadelphia in 1888. In 1899, he transferred his knowledge of pressed steel to the railroad industry. He worked with the Pullman Company on a contract for Pennsylvania Railroad, building the first all-steel car.

He founded the Budd Company in 1912, which initially specialized in the manufacture of pressed-steel frames for automobiles. His company soon was supplying an all-steel sedan body to auto manufacturers such as General Motors, Studebaker, Willys, Oakland and Tatra. His first big supporter were the Dodge brothers, who purchased 70,000 bodies in 1916. However, Dodge placed the steel bodies onto conventional chassis frames. Budd envisioned pushing his technology even further. In 1924, he found another visionary in André Citroën. By 1934, they had developed the Citroën Traction Avant, the first unibody, pressed steel automobile. William Morris, founder of the Morris Motor Company in the United Kingdom was also in tune with Budd's philosophy, in 1926 he and Budd set up the Pressed Steel Company in Cowley, Oxford to produce car bodies for Morris Motors.

In order to hold all of this steel together, Budd also pioneered the use of arc welding in automobile manufacturing.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Budd pioneered the fabrication of stainless steel, and helped create the Pioneer Zephyr, a streamlined train of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. During World War II, Budd was also the original maker of the Bazooka projectile and the rifle grenade.

Legacy

Budd's Pioneer Zephyr was the first of many streamlined passenger trains. The original trainset is on permanent display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. In 1985, 40 years after his death, Edward G. Budd, the "father of the stainless-steel streamliner", was inducted into Dearborn, Michigan's Automotive Hall of Fame.

References

PBS Online / WGBH (2000) [Edward G. Budd].
President and Fellows of Harvard College (2004), [20th Century Great American Business Leaders: Edward G. Budd].
[Steel in our lives]. Retrieved January 19 2005

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