Rolls-Royce Archives
         « Prev  Box Series  Next »        

From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Letter from General Motors to Rolls-Royce of America regarding a request for information on a harmonic balancer.

Identifier  ExFiles\Box 25\3\  Scan194
Date  6th December 1926
  
GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION
224 West 57th Street
New York

December 6, 1926.

Mr. Maurice Olley,
Rolls-Royce of America, Inc.,
Springfield, Mass.

Dear Mr. Olley:

I received your letter of November 27th while in Detroit last week and had an opportunity to discuss Mr. Hives' request with Mr. McEvoy, who is Manager of our Patent Department. He has cabled Mr. Kennington, who represents us in London in engineering matters, as follows:

"Hives Chief Experimental Engineer Rolls Royce desires information Summers Harmonic Balancer as to design and method of operation See no harm in you and Sewall giving him same."

The Mr. Sewall referred to in the cablegram is the representative of our Patent Department who prosecuted the application for the harmonic balancer in the Patent Office and is very thoroughly acquainted with its application and method of operation. He has been on the other side in connection with some other patent matters and I thought it would be best to have him get in touch with Mr. Hives direct.

I have never gone into the mathematics of the harmonic balancer myself but explain its operation on the basis that the pivoted weight, which is under spring control, is proportioned in such a way as to tend to set up counter impulses at the rotative speeds where the torsional periods tend to occur. In this we believe it differs from the damper used on the Rolls-Royce and attributed by many to Lanchester, in which a frictionally mounted flywheel is used as a damper, acting to prevent the building up of vibration at the torsional speeds.

I had about a week in London in October and had some very pleasant visits with Commander Briggs who showed us the new PhantomCodename for PHANTOM I Rolls and other interesting things.

Sincerely yours,

HENRY M.{Mr Moon / Mr Moore} CRANE
Tech. Asst. to the President
  
  


Copyright Sustain 2025, All Rights Reserved.    whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble
An unhandled error has occurred. Reload 🗙