![]() filed an appropriation request to buy the company the following year. Liberty 12-A Inverted Engine on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.įollowing James Allison’s death in 1928, General Motors Corp. During the 1920s, Allison Experimental Company (Allison Engineering Company by 1921) worked on rebuilding and inverting Liberty engines. The focus in the Speedway area quickly shifted back to automobiles and racing, but interest in aviation there had just begun. Just one month after the war’s end, in December 1918, the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced that the Indianapolis 500 would resume in May 1919. Allison Engineering Company Main Street Building and Employees, 1921, photo courtesy of Indiana Memory. The Speedway area also saw the development of an aviation repair depot where workers helped repair, modify, and test hundreds of airplanes and aircraft engines. According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the Liberty represented “America’s major technological contribution to World War I.” The United States’ auto industry produced over 20,000 of these engines during the war and Allison’s Speedway company played its part in this endeavor. By mid-1918, the War Department awarded government contracts to Allison Experimental Company to build parts for the Liberty aircraft engine. Allison originally built the shop to redesign and rebuild foreign and domestic racecars. Allison, photo courtesy of Allison Transmission: History and Heritage.Įntrepreneur and Indianapolis Motor Speedway co-founder James Allison quite literally shifted gears when he devoted his precision machine shop’s resources on Main Street, just south of the track, to the war effort in 1917. Instead, the Speedway area became a hub for wartime production, with aircraft engines taking center stage. ![]() While there was no roar of race cars, the area was by no means quiet. It has only been cancelled on two occasions: during World War I (1917-1918) and World War II (1942-1945). ![]() The race attracted drivers and fans from all over the world. The Speedway area has been home to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” since 1911. This weekend, some 300,000 fans are expected to descend upon the Town of Speedway to watch the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500. With their collaboration and expertise, we are sure we are going to bring IGD to a completely new level of design, simulation, and manufacturing capabilities.Note: For those interested in learning more about aviation in the Speedway area during World War I, see “ Speedway: An Aviation Hub During World War I.” We are very proud to have Allison Transmission as a member of the RIT’s Gear Research Consortium. Allison Transmission has regional offices all over the world and manufacturing facilities in Indianapolis, Chennai, India, and Szentgotthárd, Hungary. Allison Transmission’s products are specified by more than 300 of the world's leading vehicle manufacturers and are used in a wide range of market sectors including bus, fire, construction, distribution, defense, and specialty applications.Īllison was founded in 1915 in Indianapolis, Indiana, where the company's global headquarters is still located. Allison Transmission is the world’s largest manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles and is a leader in hybrid-propulsion systems for city buses. RIT and the Gear Research Laboratory welcome Allison Transmission as a new member of the RIT's Gear Research Consortium.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |