Although "Stanley" is the first name that comes to mind in conjunction with steam cars, the White Company of Cleveland actually built more steamers in a shorter period of time than their Massachusetts rival.

Moreover, White steamers were significantly more advanced, of higher quality and performed better, albeit at a cost of greater complexity.

Thomas White had begun manufacturing sewing machines early in the Nineteenth Century.

It was his sons, Walter, Windsor and Rollin, who took the firm into the automobile business.

Rollin was the most interested in automobiles, and went to Europe in the 1890s to study the burgeoning motor industry there.

He returned to the U.S.

in 1898 and developed a monotube boiler that quickly raised steam.

He and Walter and Windsor began building steam cars in the sewing machine factory in 1900.

The White car was more sophisticated than its main competition, the Locomobile, which had been designed by the Stanley brothers.

Rollin's fast-heating boiler ...