Hall Scott
| Industry | Engine manufacturers |
|---|---|
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Founded | Berkeley, California (1910) |
| Founder | Elbert J. Hall Bert C. Scott |
| Defunct | 1960 |
Hall-Scott Motor Car Company was an American manufacturing company based in Berkeley, California. It was among the most significant builders of water-cooled aircraft engines before World War I.
The company was founded in 1910 by Californians Elbert J. Hall and Bert C. Scott to manufacture gasoline-powered rail cars. Hall was the engineer, Scott the business executive. They produced their first rail car in 1909, which they sold to the Yreka Railroad. In 1910, a factory was opened in Berkeley, California, with headquarters for a short time in San Francisco. The company built interurban electric railway cars for railroads such as the electrified Sacramento Northern, which ran trains from adjacent Oakland to Sacramento and Chico. The rail car business was slow, but some were sold as far away as China.
In 1910, Hall-Scott also began manufacturing aircraft engines for commercial and military aviation. These engines possessed a remarkable power-to-weight ratio for the era, using an overhead cam, overhead valves, hemispherical combustion chamber, and extensive use of aluminum. Their various engine types shared parts and dimensions, reducing cost. Hall helped Jesse Vincent of Packard design the famous Liberty airplane engine, which has a number of features that are discernibly Hall-Scott. Even so, Hall-Scott was too small a business to participate in the manufacture of the Liberties.
Around 1921, Hall-Scott dropped its aero engine and rail car product lines, and expanded into building engines for tractors, trucks, boats, and stationary applications. The firm produced several hundred thousand two-speed rear axles, the Ruckstell Axle, for Ford's Model T through the mid-1920s.
In 1921, E. J. Hall began developing the valve system of Duesenberg racing engines and developed new cam lobe profiles that improved engines' reliability and power output. His research provided an understanding of the importance of the gradual opening and closing of valves and the effect this had on valve spring durability in high-speed engines. The designs he specified gave Duesenberg an immediate advantage and were quickly copied and applied to all high-speed engines using poppet valves, which continued to the present day. This work was done in Berkeley, suggesting that Hall may have used his company's resources.
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