{"product_id":"steinmetz-electric-motor-car-corporation-stock-certificate-from-1921","title":"Steinmetz Electric Motor Car Corporation Stock Certificate from 1921 early Electric Car","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis listing includes your choice of green or blue color variants of an original stock certificate from Steinmetz Electric Motor Car Corporation, dated 1921. Available in green and blue. Printed by the Security Bank Note Company of Philadelphia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe certificate shows horizontal and vertical fold lines and minor toning, with punch cancellation holes present. Overall the impression is clean with bright ink. Offered as a collectible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCharles Proteus Steinmetz was, quite simply, \u003cstrong\u003ethe most famous scientist in America \u003c\/strong\u003ebefore Einstein arrived. The \"Wizard of Schenectady\", a four-foot-tall immigrant who fled Germany one step ahead of the police for his socialist politics, became General Electric's crown jewel, holding over 200 patents and doing more than any living person to make alternating current commercially practical. His mathematics of hysteresis loss and his symbolic notation for AC circuits transformed electrical engineering from trial-and-error tinkering into rigorous science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNewspapers called him the \"modern Jove\" for creating artificial lightning in his lab; Edison visited him, Einstein posed for photographs with him, and Henry Ford reportedly paid him $10,000 for a service itemized as \"making chalk mark on generator: $1. Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1920, promoters incorporated the Steinmetz Electric Motor Car Corporation in Baltimore, trading on that singular reputation to sell investors on the electric automobile, at precisely the moment the window was slamming shut. Ford's Model T, with its plummeting price and a gasoline station on every corner, was strangling the electric vehicle's commercial prospects throughout the early 1920s. The company produced a handful of electric trucks and announced an electric passenger car, but Steinmetz's death in October 1923 removed its greatest asset, and the venture collapsed soon after.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCertificates tied directly to \u003cstrong\u003eCharles Proteus Steinmetz\u003c\/strong\u003e's name draw collectors from both the automotive history and the electrical engineering history communities, giving this piece cross-category appeal that most early 1920s preferred stock certificates cannot claim.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ticker History","offers":[{"title":"Green","offer_id":52808990261535,"sku":"AUTO-SEMCC-SI-GRN-1921-001-GRN","price":199.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Blue","offer_id":52808990294303,"sku":"AUTO-SEMCC-SI-GRN-1921-001-BLU","price":199.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0836\/8757\/1743\/files\/steinmetz-electric-motor-car-corporation-stock-certificate-1921-front-1.jpg?v=1787624330","url":"https:\/\/shop.tickerhistory.com\/products\/steinmetz-electric-motor-car-corporation-stock-certificate-from-1921","provider":"Ticker History","version":"1.0","type":"link"}