Carl Fisher was busy with the development of Miami Beach when he, Charles T. Kotcher, and James Snowden were cruising on the houseboat “Zigan” when they came across a small island. Eric Collin described Adams Key in a March 19, 1922, article in The Miami Herald. Its “golden sands stretched ...
James Allison
The Winningest Driver in IMS History
The winningest driver at IMS isn’t one of the four-time Indianapolis 500 winners or Jeff Gordon, who won five Brickyard 400 races. Rather, it is Johnny Aitken who amassed fifteen victories on the fabled track. Known as “Happy Johnny,” he started racing in 1905 as a member of the National ...
Brickyard Crossing
Brickyard Crossing, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s golf course, can trace its origins to the 1920s in Miami Beach. Golf was becoming a pastime of the rich and the people who wintered in Carl Fisher’s Miami Beach resort demanded it. Interestingly, Fisher really didn’t care for golf. In fact, he was terrible ...
The Zoline Caper
In the early summer of 1914, John Andrus, a Portuguese inventor, was working as a mechanic in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He told Dr. W. B. Chambers, a prominent auto racing enthusiast living in McKeesport, about the compound he had developed which was not only cheaper than gasoline but also could make ...
Prest-O-Lite
Prest-O-Lite was the primary factor which made the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a reality. While both Carl Fisher and James Allison might have had the financial wherewithal to build the Speedway, the success of Prest-O-Lite made it easily achievable.
In the early twentieth century, Percy (“Fred”) Avery obtained the French patent ...