Fully charged Into The Great Wide Open

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The car seen here is believed to be a Williams Runabout and the photographs are said to be of 1907 vintage. Yes, that’s a charging station behind it and we reckon the Electric Runabout has just been unplugged from the charger (detail picture here) for a little spin by our Friday Lady seen here at the tiller. Change that hat first for an even more flamboyant type, open that very modern garage door and Into The Great Wide Open, where adventure awaits!

Williams

We understand that Williams’s vehicles had previously been equipped with combustion engines but a chain of events led to the car becoming electric. From one source: “William Demars put into production the Demars Electric built by his company, Demars Electric Company, Cleveland, OH, in 1905. The principal owner was John Blakeslee. In early 1906, Blakeslee formed a group to buy out Demars and started his company, Blakeslee Electric Automobile Company. A twenty of these cars were built, when J. F. Townsend, H.A. Williams and several members of the Byrider family, who all of them had been unsuccessful in building the Williams Gasoline Car, purchased the Blakeslee Electric and began making cars under the Williams Electric model name.”

It wasn’t for long though. The project lasted for less than a year under the Williams name, when the Williams Motor Carriage Company was taken over by the next visionary: the Byrider Electric Automobile Company. Again, it lasted only another few years before the model finally disappeared. Hey, who said it was easy making money with electric cars?

Words Jeroen Booij. Pictures NY Heritage digital collections, Schenectady Museum.

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