Royal Page Davidson

Royal Page Davidson (October 9, 1870January 16, 1943) was an American scholar, educator, professor, and inventor. He is associated with helping to organize Northwestern Military and Naval Academy in Highland Park, Illinois. He reestablished it in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

He organized the first US military bicycle corps and was the leading pioneer of armored military vehicles in the United States. He invented or helped innovate the first armored anti-aircraft military vehicle, the first armored military radio car, the first armored military field kitchen truck, and the first armored military hospital vehicle. He is labeled the "father" of the American military armored vehicle.

Early life

Davidson was born in Somerville, New Jersey, on October 9, 1870. His parents were Harlan Page Davidson and Adelaide S (Ford) Davidson. His father was from Hooksett, New Hampshire, and his mother was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is descended from the Davidsons of Scotland in the paternal line and his maternal ancestors were early colonial settlers. He grew up in Somerville and Salem, New Jersey. He received his early basic education in the country public schools of the area. Davidson's family moved to Townsend, Vermont, in 1885 and lived there for a year. They then moved to Morgan Park, Illinois, in 1886 and in 1888 they moved to Highland Park on the north shore of Chicago.

Mid life and academic positions

Davidson attended the Massachusetts Agricultural College as a freshman in 1888 and that year graduated as a freshman from the University of Wisconsin. He also attended Northwestern Military Academy at the same time and was a member of the first graduating class in 1888, when he was 18 years old. In 1889, he became a member of the faculty and a colonel in the Illinois National Guard. In 1891, he was commandant of the cadets at the Northwestern academy. He was in that position until 1913 and during that time the academy was made a post of the Illinois National Guard and was recognized by the United States War Department as a distinct military school. Davidson then became superintendent of Northwestern Military Academy upon his father's death in 1913. He was its secretary and treasurer from 1912 to 1914 and its superintendent and president from 1913 to 1939. His father, Harlan Page Davidson, founded the academy in 1888. The Highland Park property was eventually sold in 1923 for $50,000 ().

Davidson decided in 1915 to move the academy to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, when the Highland Park main building was destroyed by fire. He purchased 85 acres where the popular Kayes Amusement Park had been, which had opened in 1873 on Geneva Lake south shore east of Fontana, Wisconsin. Davidson was a staunch prohibitionist and he convinced Assemblyman Sidney Clayton Goff to present a bill before the Wisconsin Legislature to create an alcohol-free zone to prohibit any saloon to be within five miles of the new proposed Academy site; the bill was passed and signed into law.

Davidson had a two-story, multiple-winged monumentally scaled Neo-Classical Revival school building constructed there that was more than four hundred feet in length. The rectangular wings that extended east and west were terminated by a porticoed pavilion. The building, known as Davidson Hall, contained all the classrooms, living quarters and indoor recreational facilities that the academy needed for its 180 students. The fifty-foot wide main building had north and south facades that contained the main entrances. Each facade had corners that were terminated by two-story tall Tuscan Order pilasters. The main building, named Davidson Hall, had a full story basement level and was usable from 1916 with its final completion in 1920. The building grounds had 1000 feet of the Lake Geneva southern shoreline. Davidson changed the name of the school to the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy.

Military

Bicycle Corps

Davidson is the founder of the first American military bicycle corps and in the fall of 1894 he organized it at Northwestern Military Academy with 17 boys. He formed the military bicycle corps of cadets on the idea that perhaps the bicycles could be used for military purposes. He was convinced that the bicycle offered a way to speed up troop movement and deployment. One of the military exercises Davidson put his cadets through was to take their bikes and 54 pounds of equipment to climb over a 16-foot wall. They were trained to complete the task in under three minutes. The cadet bicycle riders demonstrated on many exercises that a rifle-carrying bicycle infantry could travel 50 to 75 miles per day with riders still in condition to fight a battle after hours of cycling. The bicycle corps was known as the "horseless cavalry" and traveled from Chicago to Lake Geneva on a regular basis. Davidson offered the government the services of his bicycle corps when the Spanish–American War broke out. He was turned down since the military bicycles had minimum firepower and left the bicycle riders exposed. The new invention of the automobile showed better combat possibilities, as it could be better armed and have armored protection against enemy firepower.

The "Davidson's Rough Riders," as the bicycle corps came to be known, on June 7, 1897, rode 850 miles from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The corps of 12 bicyclists carried a message from Major General John R. Brooke, commander of the department of Missouri, to Secretary of War Russell A. Alger as a publicity stunt. Each cadet had carried 31 pounds of equipment on the bicycle excursion that consisted of rifles, tents, and cooking utensils. They pedaled a 24-pound bicycle and had to walk their bikes and carry their equipment more than 100 miles of rough trails during their journey. They camped out each night in all kinds of weather and Davidson's journal records that it took 14 days and six hours to cover the 850 miles to Washington. Although the cadets pedaled their bicycle almost 60 miles per day, none of the cadets dropped out. The successful 1897 bicycle trip to Washington DC gave him the confidence to send his armored car to the nation's capital to demonstrate it to the War Department.

Armored cars

Davidson was the leading pioneer of armored military vehicles in the United States starting in 1898. He is described as the inventor of the first military vehicle in United States. In 1898, he made a three-wheeled, three-man vehicle armed with a gun carriage with a gasoline motor and an automatic machine gun. The Colt Model 1895 .45 caliber gun protruded through a split armor plate and was operated by two gunners. The machine gun had a range of 2,000 yards. Davidson and four cadets left Fort Sheridan on July 20, 1899, in his armored car with a message from Major General Joseph Wheeler to Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles in Washington, D. C. The scheduled route of the armored car would have taken Davidson and his cadets from Chicago through Indiana, then to Toledo, Buffalo, New York, Philadelphia and into Washington DC. Some newspapers and magazines wrote that the trip was very daring and others reported it as a foolish thing to do. The vehicle had 22 breakdowns along the way and got stuck in mud several times. The vehicle never made it to Washington and stopped at Indiana.

In 1899, Davidson developed two upgraded versions and made those on Duryea quadricycles. There were many newspaper articles at the time with imaginative stories and drawings of Davidson's military vehicle. Davidson's gasoline military vehicle was much simpler than their futuristic drawings. Later it was developed into the Automobile Battery armored car. Today's historians can trace the lineage of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle back to Davidson's vehicles. Davidson is labeled the father of American military armored cars because the idea can be traced back to him. He was a pioneer among American armored vehicle advocates and has been featured in military publications like "Illustrated History of Military Vehicles" by historian Ian V. Hogg. In 1899, he modified a Duryea tricar with a six-horsepower gasoline engine with a forward armor shield that protected the driver and gunner. The vehicle had a gun carriage with a Colt 7mm automatic gun that could fire 480 shots per minute and is considered the world's first armored car. Three years later, he mounted machine guns on two cars driven by steam engines.

File:Davidson Duryea gun carriage 1899.jpg, Davidson designed three-wheeled
gun carriage military vehicle, 1899
File:Davidson-Duryea 4wheel.jpg, Davidson-Duryea four-wheel
gun carriage military vehicle, 1900
File:Two Davidson armored cars 1900.png, Two Davidson armored cars constructed at Northwestern Academy, circa 1900
File:Davidson working with cadets on armored car, c 1900.jpg, Davidson working with cadets on armored car, circa 1900

Automobile Corps

In 1909, Davidson purchased a Cadillac automobile and attached a machine gun and tripod to it. With cadets, he modified it to become the world's first anti-aircraft vehicle, as it could eliminate intruders from the sky and became a Balloon Destroyer. In 1910 a Gatling Gun detachment of anti-aircraft vehicles was formed with three Cadillacs, each mounted with two machine guns and driven on a Glidden Tour and ultimately presented to President Taft in front of the Navy Department building in Washington DC. In 1911 two Cadillacs were equipped with radio equipment for communications and searchlights for finding enemy dirigibles that were doing reconnaissance.

Cadillac cars were fitted with machine guns through 1915. The Davidson-designed Cadillac vehicle for military use as a purpose-built armored car bears his name. The Davidson-Cadillac armored car was the first American fully armored military vehicle. The rear of the Davidson-Cadillac was open-topped, and a Colt machine gun was mounted there with a protective shield. The crew was protected by armor that surrounded the entire vehicle. Despite its innovative concept, the armored car and tank received little support from senior officers of the United States Army. This failure to see the potential benefits of armored fighting vehicles caused Americans to fall behind other nations in the development of this technology.

In 1915, Davidson and 30 honor cadets drove an automobile corps of eight modified Cadillacs in a Glidden Tour from Chicago to the Exposition at San Francisco and back amidst much fanfare by reporters along the route. The caravan started near the Highland Park school where Davidson was in the Reconnaissance Car. They started on June 10, 1915, and they intended to pass through Moline, Iowa City, Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake City to arrive in San Francisco for the Panama-Pacific Exposition on July 14, 1915.

The Davidson military vehicles included a field kitchen truck, a hospital transport with x-ray equipment, a quartermaster motorcar with radio equipment that had a 50-foot collapsible antenna, and an anti-aircraft style motorized carrier with an upward-firing .30 caliber machine gun for destroying enemy biplanes. The convoy did little in getting the U.S. Army interested in military special purpose vehicles, but it did bring much attention to the Cadillac automobile and the need for a quality national road system. After Davidson's experiments, it was almost a century later that the U. S. Army had a major force of wheeled armored fighting vehicles on display to the public.

Affiliations

Davidson was associated with the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, the Union League Club, the National Geographic Society, and the Navy League. He was also a member of the Union League Club of Chicago the Army and Navy Club of Chicago the Lake Geneva Country Club of Lake Geneva Wisconsin the Big Foot County Club of Fontana and the American Society of Political and Social Science. In 1913 he filled the dual position of secretary and treasurer of the Association of Military Colleges and Academies of the United States in 1918, 1919 and 1920. Davidson contributed to various journals that were associated with the military and science. He was an inventor of various military equipment, including the first field hospital automobile with X-ray equipment that was powered by an electric generator on the vehicle.

Later life and death

Davidson was injured in a fall at Northwestern Military and Naval Academy on February 17, 1942. He had stumbled over a rug in his room and hit his head on a radiator. At the time he suffered a stroke and was taken to the Walworth County, Wisconsin, hospital for treatment. After several months of treatment in the hospital he was able to go back to his Illinois home on June 8. His condition continued to be frail and he was unable to participate in that year's graduating ceremony at the academy. That summer he convalesced at home and only received a few graduating seniors. On October 7, he went with his wife and sister to his winter home in Avon Park, Florida. He improved some as the year came to a close, but in the new year he deteriorated rapidly and died there on January 16, 1943. He was cremated at Orlando, Florida, and his ashes are buried at the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy at Highland Park.

Legacy

Davidson announced in 1941 that he was making an outright gift of the academy to the episcopal diocese of Chicago. He said he no heirs and wanted to make sure that the school would continue to operate at the high standards he and his father did during its history and had confidence that the Episcopal church of Chicago was able to that. At the time the academy was valued at $750,000 (). Davidson conferred the titles of a quartermaster, teacher, commandant, and superintendent of the school for over thirty years.

Davidson's four-wheeled armored car that he designed in 1887 was given to the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry in 1949 by the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy. From time to time it is loaned back to the academy on special occasions. On one occasion the world's first armored vehicle was loaned from the museum back to Northwestern Military and Naval Academy during centennial celebrations in 1987. Otherwise the armored car is on permanent display in Chicago.

See also

*Davidson-Duryea gun carriage
*Davidson Automobile Battery armored car
* Davidson-Cadillac armored car

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidson, Royal Page
1870 births
1943 deaths
People from Somerville, New Jersey
20th-century American inventors
Massachusetts Agricultural College alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni