Joseph Ledwinka (December 14, 1870 – November 26, 1949)''Buddgette'', January 1950 was an automobile engineer.

Early life

Joseph V. Ledwinka, a distant relative of

Hans Ledwinka Hans Ledwinka (14 February 1878 – 2 March 1967) was an Austrian automobile designer. Youth Ledwinka was born in Klosterneuburg (Lower Austria), near Vienna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He started his career as a mechanic, an ...

, was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, and emigrated to the United States in 1896.

Career

Ledwinka was employed in his first job as carriage trimmer (

upholsterer Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word also refers to the materials used to upholster something. ''Upholstery'' comes from the Middle English word ...

) at the Chicago Coach and Carriage Company where he developed his first patented design for a four-wheel-drive electric vehicle with four-wheel brakes, several of which were built by Westinghouse. Later he became a chief engineer for the Chattanooga Railroad of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

, where he designed special drives for electric trolley cars. Coming to Philadelphia in 1910, he started working with

Edward G. Budd Edward Gowen Budd (December 28, 1870 – November 30, 1946) was an American inventor and businessman. Early life Edward Gowen Budd was born in Smyrna, Delaware, on December 28, 1870. He studied engineering in Philadelphia in 1888. He took corres ...

for the

Hale & Kilburn The Hale & Kilburn company of Philadelphia was a furniture manufacturing company founded by Warren Hale and Cheney Kilburn. The Hale & Kilburn company's primary business was the production of railroad car seats for the greatly expanding America ...

company where they pioneered the pressed-steel car body paneling manufacturing process starting in 1909. In 1912, they established their own factory, the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company, in Philadelphia where they formed automobile panels by drop pressing and power hammering later followed by drawing and stretching of panels. He worked as the chief engineer. They supplied body parts to

Dodge Dodge is an American brand of automobiles and a division of Stellantis, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Dodge vehicles have historically included performance cars, and for much of its existence Dodge was Chrysler's mid-priced brand above P ...

. In 1923,

André Citroën André-Gustave Citroën (; 5 February 1878 – 3 July 1935) was a French industrialist and the founder of French automaker Citroën. He is remembered chiefly for the make of car named after him, but also for his application of double helical ...

took up the Budd license for his all-steel B12 model. In 1929, Ledwinka designed the front-wheel drive Ruxton car. In the 1930s Ledwinka was involved in the design of

Chrysler Airflow The Chrysler Airflow is a full-size car produced by Chrysler from 1934 to 1937. The Airflow was the first full-size American production car to use streamlining as a basis for building a sleeker automobile, one less susceptible to air resistance. ...

body and worked with

Ferdinand Porsche Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche AG. He is best known for creating the first gasoline–electric hybrid vehicle (Lohner–Porsche), the Volkswag ...

on the early VW prototypes. He retired from Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. in 1942 and remained as a consulting engineer until his death. Ledwinka was an author of over 300 technical

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s relating to automobile design.

Personal life

Ledwinka's first wife died in the summer of 1905. He married Laura B. Leidy in 1906. He had four stepsons. He was a member of the

Society of Automotive Engineers SAE International, formerly named the Society of Automotive Engineers, is a United States-based, globally active professional association and standards developing organization for engineering professionals in various industries. SAE Internatio ...

and the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

Death

Ledwinka died on November 26, 1949, at Presbyterian Hospital in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

References

* Margolius, Ivan and Henry, John G. (1990). Tatra - The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka. Harrow: SAF Publishing. , pp. 122–123 * Margolius, Ivan and Henry, John G. (2015). Tatra - The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka. Dorchester: Veloce Publishing. , pp. 147–148 * http://www.coachbuilt.com/des/l/ledwinka/ledwinka.htm

External links

Mike Karwowski collection of Budd Company photographs
(1916, 1919) at

Hagley Museum and Library The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Pont ...